That was several years ago. Now I was back in the Smoky Mountains in September with plans to hike and with a day of good weather forecasted — the perfect opportunity to return to Mount Sterling. A day hike promised a bottom-to-top tour of the the Smoky Mountain forests capped with great views from the summit.

Elizabeth and I started hiking at 10:15 under a sky of low, puffy clouds. The air was warm and humid and the forest floor was thick with grass and ferns. Insects buzzed and clicked.

We were at an elevation of 1,700 feet in the Big Creek valley. The hillside was covered with a cove forest of sycamores (Platanus occidentalis), tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera), eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis), yellow birches (Betula alleghaniensis), and rhododendrons (Rhododendron maximum) — a cosmopolitan mixture of trees from all over the eastern United States. A little higher, we found yellow buckeye (Aesculus flava), sugar maples (Acer saccharum), beech (Fagus grandifolia), and striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) — trees more typical of Michigan than North Carolina. They were very tall and had enormous trunks, and I was convinced we were walking through an old-growth forest that had been undisturbed for centuries.

Beneath these giant trees of the Baxter Creek valley we found four men standing off-trail, carrying an impressive amount of gear. They had overnight backpacks, which were no surprise, but also helmets, climbing equipment, and serious scientific instruments.

They couldn’t have been climbing rocks — there weren’t any around. So I asked them if they were climbing trees. Yes, they said, they were from the Eastern Native Tree Society and they were here to climb the tulip trees to study how their structure changes over time. Many of the trees in this valley were the tallest individuals of their species in the world, two, maybe three, times taller than what most people ever see east of the Rocky Mountains. One of the tulip trees, not far from where we were standing, was the tallest ever measured: 178.5 feet.

I told them that I was into big trees, too, but they looked at me dubiously. One glance at all their gear was all it took to see that I wasn’t into trees the way they were.

We talked some more, then parted ways. “It was pretty neat to find ENTS next to the trail”, I said.

“ENTS? Who are the ENTS? Oh! The Eastern Native Tree Society! Their abbreviation is E. N. T. S. That’s so cool!” Elizabeth responded.

“Yeah, ENTS. Why is that cool?” I said.

“Oh right! You’re not into the Lord of the Rings. The Ents are characters from the story. They were the protectors of the forest and the shepherds of the trees.”

“Really? Like tree people? The abbreviation makes so much more sense now.”

“Yeah. And in time the Ents actually began to resemble the trees they protected.”

I considered the ENTS’s beards, calloused hands, and sinewy muscles. “No kidding,” I said.

By 2,600 feet, we had left the valleys of Big and Baxter creeks and reached a drier hillside. Fraser magnolias (Magnolia fraseri), black tupelos (Nyssa sylvatica), and red oaks (Quercus rubra) appeared, as did bigleaf magnolias (Magnolia macrophylla), whose elephant-ear leaves were over two feet long.

At 2,900 feet, rhododendron thickets took over the hillside, crowding out trees with an alarming ferocity. The shrubs were over ten feet tall and so thick that the trail had to tunnel through them. Only a rare red maple (Acer rubrum) or black tupelo emerged from the thicket’s deep shade.

We entered a grove of eastern hemlocks. They were old and tall, with trunks that dwarfed us as we walked by. For centuries, their branches — packed with dark little needles — had spread cool shadows on the forest floor, depriving it of the sunlight needed for the growth of other plants. But now the forest floor was sunny and filled with saplings. The hemlocks were dead and their needles were gone. The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) had killed them within the last couple of years, desiccating the trees and leaving them unable to produce new needles. The hemlocks stood patiently with their limbs outstretched, waiting to fall and return to the earth. The forest will remain — new trees are already starting to grow — but it will never be the same again, and no one alive today will see the saplings reach the size of the old hemlocks.

At 3,800 feet, we saw striped maple, sugar maple, yellow birch, beech, and the occasional red maple. This was the northern hardwood forest, an assortment of trees you’d have to travel 500 miles north to find near sea level.

By 4,600 feet, we had seen our first red spruce (Picea rubens). Soon after that, we saw our first Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) and our first Carolina hemlock (Tsuga caroliniana). Yellow birch was still around, but it was joined by paper birch (Betula papyrifera) and shrubs like hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) and mountain ash (Sorbus americana). This forest was the analog of the boreal forests found in Canada and the mountains of New England, but this far south, Fraser fir and Carolina hemlock, local endemics, replaced the more widespread balsam fir (Abies balsamea) and eastern hemlock.

We kept climbing. The forest became short and dense. The air turned cool and moist. The ferns, luxuriant grass, and buzzing insects of the of the lower elevations faded away, replaced by moss, fallen needles, and wind murmuring through conifers.

At 1:25 we reached the summit of Mount Sterling. We climbed the 80-foot fire tower on top and watched gray, billowy clouds swirl over the surrounding mountains. The mountains were heavily forested, their lower and middle elevations covered by green broad-leaf trees with rounded crowns and their summits and ridges covered by dark needle-leaf trees with serrated silhouettes.

We ate lunch, then hiked down. We descended through the spruce and fir, through the northern hardwoods, through the dead hemlocks, through the oaks, through the rhododendron thickets, and back to the cove forest. The ENTS were still there, having just completed their climbing for the day. We had been wondering how old the huge trees in the cove forest were, and thought they might know. Elizabeth asked them.

“Eighty, ninety”, one of them said.

“These trees? Here?” I asked, thinking they’d misheard Elizabeth’s question.

But the answer was the same. The tall, massive trees I had assumed were old growth had begun growing in the early 1900s when a field in this valley was abandoned; some of the spindly conifers near the summit, on the other hand, had begun growing hundreds of years ago. One of the ENTS had measured their ages himself. Tree size was not a good proxy for age.

Why were the young trees big, but the old trees small? It was an effect of the environment. I recalled my first visit to the Smoky Mountains, when it was spring in the valleys and winter on the summits. The rich soils, warm temperatures, and abundant rainfall in the cove made trees grow quickly. The rocky soil, cold temperatures, and frequent snows on the high ridges made trees grow slowly.

We said good-bye to the ENTS and kept hiking. I thought about the giant cove forest that hadn’t existed a century ago, and stunted summit trees that had hardly changed in that time. I thought about the dying hemlocks, and the saplings that were going to replace them. And I thought about my previous trip up Mount Sterling and the fact that you can never walk through the same forest twice.

We finished our hike at 4:35.

To do this hike yourself, park at the Big Creek trailhead in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, then take the Baxter Creek Trail out-and-back to the summit of Mount Sterling, a 12-mile hike with 4,200 feet of elevation gain.

No related posts.

The Sierra Nevada will enjoy an Indian summer this late September weekend, with clear skies and highs in the 70s. Elizabeth and I are still fit from our four-day backpack to the Rae Lakes, so I thought it would be a perfect time to revisit Pyramid Peak and take it off my grudge-list of peaks I’d failed to climb.

We hiked Pyramid Peak via Rocky Canyon. Even though the trail is not official, not on any maps, and doesn’t have a trailhead parking area, it’s still tremendously popular. The parking area on the south side of Route 50 was full, so I had to park on the north side.

We searched the roadside for the start of the trail while cars blasted by us at 60 miles per hour. Never mind scrambling to the summit, the most dangerous part of this hike is walking along the highway.

We found a faint trail on the east side of Rocky Canyon. We followed it up the hillside and into the forest, where it became easier to follow. It became wide and clear, in fact, and stayed that way until the summit cone.

We climbed through a fine, old-growth mid-elevation forest of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana), white fir (Abies concolor), and incense-cedar (Calocedrus decurrens).

Many trails in the Sierra Nevada are graded for stock, which means that even in mountainous terrain they rarely climb more than, say, 500 feet per mile. But not this one. Neither officially sanctioned nor maintained, it shot straight up the mountain while winding around boulders and trees: a welcome break from the mule trails.

The trail crossed to the west side of the creek and leveled off. The forest was thinner here and the mid-elevation trees gave way to sparse mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana), western white pine (Pinus monticola), lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), and red fir (Abies magnifica). There were some aspen (Populus tremuloides), but their leaves had not yet turned their fall color.

We saw the golden summit cone of Pyramid Peak through the trees. The trail was still easy to follow, and it took us between clumps of stunted whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) right to the bottom of the summit cone.

We got to the bottom of the summit cone at 1:45. The last 400 feet were a jumble of granite blocks varying in size from toaster to sofa. Elizabeth and I carefully picked our way up the talus, using our hands for balance when navigating around the more uneven blocks. We weaved left and right, but any route seemed as good as any other.

An animal on the summit was watching us. Was it a lone dog? When we got closer to the summit, we saw that it was a golden retriever. She ran toward us, very happy to meet us. Another retriever poked his head up from behind the rocks. How did they get here?

We found the retrievers’ owners lying down on the summit rocks. They were a couple from nearby Pollock Pines and they’d come up the Lyons Creek Trail. Their golden retrievers scrambled around the rocks, so happy they let out occasional squeals of delight.

It was 2:15. At 9,985 feet, Pyramid Peak is the highest point on the Crystal Range, and the views from the summit were excellent. To the northwest shimmered the other ragged peaks of the Crystal Range. To the northeast, 2,000 feet below, lay the dark blue Aloha Lakes, hundreds of them, set in the treeless Desolation Valley. Beyond them rose Mount Tallac, a peak we hiked earlier this summer.

We started our hike down at 3:00. Going down the talus wasn’t any easier than going up, and Elizabeth and I moved slowly, trying not to lose our balance or to dislodge any boulders.

Once we were back on the trail, we made good time on the descent.

The days are getting shorter, and the sun set behind Rocky Canyon as we hiked. Although the mountains behind Lover’s Leap still glowed with afternoon light, the ancient forest of incense-cedar and white fir was cool and blue. We got back to the car at 5:45, a bit over seven hours round-trip.

Related posts:

1. Desolation Wilderness Mount Tallac hike
2. Castle Peak and Andesite Peak from Donner Summit

This Labor Day weekend, Elizabeth and I went on our longest backpacking trip yet: the 46-mile Rae Lakes Loop, one of the most famous and most popular backcountry trips in the Sierra Nevada.

We left home at seven in the evening, which would have put us at the trailhead in the middle of the night if we drove there directly. But I’m not a fan of driving unfamiliar mountain roads or stumbling around campgrounds in the dark looking for a site, so we stopped at a motel in Fresno instead.

Friday: Road’s End to Lower Vidette Meadow
14 miles. 4,500 feet up.

We woke up before dawn and drove east to Road’s End, where the road ends on the rugged western flank of the Sierra Nevada and the hike begins. The drive there was more scenic than I expected, climbing from parched foothills with chaparral and yuccas into mountains with cool, shady conifers, all the while curving under spectacular granite cliffs thousands of feet high.

Before Road’s End we drove by the Sheep Fire, a wildfire started by lightning six weeks ago that has been burning ever since. The Park Service decided the fire wasn’t dangerous, so it has been left to burn naturally and might keep going until the wet-season rain arrives.[1]

We put on our packs and hiked into the wilderness, not to return from it for four days.

We would hike the loop counterclockwise, even though clockwise is preferred since it gets you to the highpoint in 27.5 miles instead of 17.5. But clockwise permits were gone by the time we got ours, so we had no choice but to tough it out on the more aggressive climb.

The hike started in a woodland of oaks and pines, offering big views of three-thousand-foot granite cliffs on both sides of the trail. The cliff tops faded into a gauzy haze from the smoke being drawn up the canyon by rising hot air.

We got on the Bubbs Creek trail and began a stiff climb. The sun beat down on me through the oaks. Gnats and mosquitoes swarmed around my face. The smoke tickled my lungs. Things could only get better.

Once we got above 6,000 feet, the climb let up and the forests became denser.

The granite cliffs were still there, but now their distant pinnacles moved slowly above treetops as we walked.

In the early afternoon, we saw some good-looking campsites below Junction Meadow, but Elizabeth and I were feeling good, so we continued to Lower Vidette Meadow, two miles away and 1,000 feet higher.

We climbed farther up Bubbs Creek, the trees becoming more sparse and the scenery more alpine. The landscape was lit by a faint orange glow as the sun sank in the smoky sky.

We got to Lower Vidette Meadow at sunset. The campsite itself was idyllic, set under a grove of pines beside a broad meadow. A clear stream ran by the site and a short walk into the meadow revealed views of 12,000-foot peaks in all directions.

We had outdone ourselves hiking in, and now, 14 miles and 4,500 feet of climbing later, our joints and heads were aching. We made a quick dinner and tried to get comfortable, but our camp was cold, dark, and lonely.

Three more days. I was already tired and homesick.

Sitting in the dark, we noticed a raging campfire across the meadow with a raucous group of people around it. Although we both wanted to go to sleep, I convinced Elizabeth to come with me to say hello.

It turned out the people at the other campsite were part of a trail crew working on a nearby section of the John Muir Trail. They’d been living and working in the wilderness for 5 months, getting resupplied by pack mules once a week. Their only contacts with civilization were weekly letters and an occasional copy of the Fresno Bee. Their weekend had just started.

We sat at the fire and talked with them until we were about to leave for our camp, at which point they invited us to stay with them. We happily accepted.

We fell asleep to the sounds of talking and laughing as the fire’s light flickered on our tent.

Saturday: Lower Vidette Meadow to Middle Rae Lake
7 miles. 2,500 feet up, 1,400 feet down.

The night was mild, with the temperature only getting down to 46. By sunrise the smoke from the previous evening had cleared completely. It seemed to be following a pattern, being drawn up into the mountains by warm, ascending air during the day and blown out by cold, descending air during the night. The smoke made a formerly invisible cycle visible; it let us see the mountains breathing.

Since we’d made it as far as Lower Vidette Meadow on Friday, we had a mere seven miles to the Rae Lakes today. All we had to do was hike over 11,798-foot Glen Pass. With an early start, we’d probably be able to cruise into camp after lunch, right?

Climbing toward Charlotte and Bullfrog lakes, the view was exceptional. The morning air was smoke-free, and the pyramidal silver mountains that surrounded us were unobscured by distance.

The vegetation disappeared as the trail climbed, leaving us surrounded only by granite and ice. The gullies in the mountains were choked with snow and enormous boulders. The lakes were dark and lifeless.

Tired, we stopped for a rest. Some passing hikers pointed out the pass to us: a tiny notch high on a huge wall of granite; we couldn’t believe how much farther and higher it was.

We made one last push to the pass and, surprisingly, got there in twenty minutes. It turned out that the unusual landscape and the thin air had made it look much farther than it really was. Now we were at the high point of the loop, and only a long, gradual descent back to Road’s End remained.

The Rae Lakes Loop has two halves, at least in terms of effort: a short, steep half on Bubbs Creek, and a long, moderate half on the Kings River South Fork and Woods Creek. Choosing clockwise or counterclockwise only changes which half you do first. Personally, I prefer steep climbs to steep descents, so I’m glad we did it counterclockwise.

We got to the top at 2:45. So much for getting to camp by lunchtime. By then the smoke had filled the air in the higher elevations, and the mountains we had seen so clearly in the morning had faded into the haze. Below us, to the north, were the Rae Lakes, the day’s goal.

Despite being at least a day’s walk from any road, the Rae Lakes are one of the most popular destinations in the Sierra Nevada, and on Saturday—a fine evening, in the middle of a three-day weekend, at the end of summer—hikers had converged there from all points east and west. Nevertheless, Elizabeth and I found an excellent campsite, right next to Middle Rae Lake and with a view of Fin Dome.

As we prepared dinner, a couple we’d seen on the way down from Glen Pass stopped by our camp. They were Jen and Greg, and they were on the same trip we were on. They sat with us while we ate, telling us about their hike and the bear they’d seen on Bubbs Creek. After our dinner, we went to their campsite, where we talked some more and split a bar of chocolate.

The sun set and the stars came out. A few lingering wisps of smoke blew east over the mountain tops and then disappeared. The mountains were exhaling, the cold air in the high elevations following the courses of rivers and streams down into the canyons, taking with it the smoke from the afternoon. At 10,600 feet, the lake was so still that we could see individual stars reflected in it. The granite was illuminated by the light of the Milky Way. The temperature fell to 26 degrees.

Sunday: Middle Rae Lake to Upper Paradise Valley.
14 miles. 3,600 feet down.

We woke up at sunrise to frost on our tent, backpacks, and sleeping bags.

The smoke was gone again and the sky was a clear, deep blue. Even after sunrise, the temperature still hovered below freezing. We hiked with our jackets and gloves on, crunching the frozen trail, getting chilled in the shade and warmed in the sun.

Our hiking was quick and easy, passing by Fin Dome, Arrowhead Lake, and Dollar Lake, as we gradually lost elevation on the way to Woods Creek Canyon.

We walked through a grove of short trees with massive trunks growing from a stark, rocky landscape. They were southern foxtail pines (Pinus balfouriana subsp. austrina)—a subspecies found only in remote parts of the southern Sierra Nevada, and relatives of the foxtail pines we’d seen in the Trinity Alps two weeks earlier (subsp. balfouriana).

It was warm and the sunlight reflecting off the granite cliffs made it feel warmer. The sky was hazy from the smoke that had begun to blow uphill. Elizabeth and I had made good progress, so, below Castle Domes, we rewarded ourselves with a break. We took off our shoes and lay down in the shade of a juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) to eat and drink.

An hour later, our energy was renewed and we continued hiking. We lost more elevation and the forest closed in. Around us were red fir (Abies magnifica), quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides), and juniper, the latter filling the air with its pungent scent.

Hiking down Woods Creek Canyon, we would pass hikers going up. Panting, their foreheads and shirts covered in sweat, they would ask us how far to the John Muir Trail, but I didn’t have the heart to tell them they still had hours of climbing to do. Instead I just pointed them in the general direction.

As we approached Paradise Valley, the smoke was so thick that only the silhouettes of the canyon walls were visible.

The bottomlands at the intersection of Woods Creek and the Kings River South Fork were home to an ancient forest of dense ferns and immense trees. The sun had set over the canyon walls and we walked through a dark, quiet, prehistoric forest of sugar pines (Pinus lambertiana), ponderosa pines (Pinus ponderosa), and incense cedars (Calocedrus decurrens).

Sunday’s hike felt longer than it was, and we were relieved to cross the bridge into Upper Paradise Valley. The campground was full, but we found Jen and Greg and set up camp next to them. We all had dinner together, sharing hiking stories around a small campfire.

We were 3,600 feet lower than we had been the night before at Rae Lakes. Gone were the granite landscape, the wide-open sky, and the bracing air. The sun set; the thick canopy of trees and the steep canyon walls made the darkness complete.

Monday: Upper Paradise Valley to Road’s End.
11 miles. 1,800 feet down.

The temperature never dropped below 46. Elizabeth and I woke up at dawn and packed our bags. We wanted to get some miles in before the heat and smoke arrived. Jen and Greg were waking up as we were about to leave; we said our goodbyes and set off down the trail.

Deep in the canyon, the sun didn’t rise until 10, and neither did the temperature. The forests were cool and silent. We didn’t see any hikers (or bears) for hours, although we kept expecting both. The smoke hadn’t started coming up the canyons yet and the views were clear and crisp.

Halfway down, we saw the Bubbs and South Fork junction—the place where we’d started the loop—for the first time in three days.

By 11, the air that had been warming in Kings Canyon started flowing uphill. It carried an enormous cloud of smoke that filled the entire Bubbs and South Fork junction. The mountains were inhaling, drawing up whatever the air in the lower elevations contained.

The smoke billowed toward us, thicker than ever before. Within minutes, the cliffs vanished and the sun turned faint and orange. The air burned our nostrils. I was worried enough that I asked some dayhikers if the fire had gotten out of control. Everything was OK, they said; they’d driven through it this morning.

We returned to Road’s End in a fog of yellow smoke. The hazy sun beat down on us and we were hot and tired. Ashes fell from the sky like snow flurries. The hike was starting to feel hellish.

By the time Elizabeth and I got to our car, we were happy to leave the smoke behind. But we were surprised to find ourselves a little sad to leave the wilderness and the people we’d met there. It was the longest hike we’d ever done, and we’d accomplished it just as we’d planned.

Related posts:

1. Trinity Alps Four Lakes Loop and Siligo Peak hike
2. Pyramid Peak hike via Rocky Canyon
3. Trinity Alps Canyon Creek Lakes backpacking

We left home at 6:30 on Saturday morning and got to Tuolumne Meadows, 8,660 feet, at 11:00. When we stepped out of the car into the sun, we instantly got hot. It was much warmer than I’d expected for our elevation. I’d forgotten my Chrome Dome, which had served me so well on our Red Slate Mountain trip, and resigned myself to getting by with just my hat.

We took the John Muir Trail south, crossing the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River over a pair of well-built bridges. The river was slow and broad, its emerald water gliding easily over polished granite.

We followed the Lyell Fork upstream through Lyell Canyon. The canyon’s bottom was wide and nearly flat, split down the middle by the sinuous Lyell Fork. Next to the river were blond grass and willows with fading leaves. Farther away were groves of conifers that became thick on the mountainsides. To our left was the attractive Mammoth Peak, its summit a mound of white granite surrounded by shrubby conifers.

After 5 miles, we left Lyell Canyon to cross over to the Rafferty Creek watershed. The forest was thicker and provided almost continuous shade as we climbed. The trees were all lodgepole pines, but I did see a few mountain hemlocks. The understory had labrador tea, currants, and heather. Their blooms had long since gone, but a few of the currants still had berries.

At the pass, 10,600 feet, we had excellent views of the high country all around us. We could see the Kuna Crest to the northeast and the Cathedral Range to the south. We were near timberline and the exposed terrain above us was beginning to glow in the late-afternoon light. The lodgepole pines that had dominated the forest east of the pass gave way to whitebark pines to the west.

We got to Evelyn Lake at 6. Our timing was perfect; we had about an hour to set up camp and make dinner before sunset, then it would get dark just as we prepared for sleep.

The lake was big and dark blue. Its south side was bordered by a granite ridge framing high, ragged peaks. Its east side, where we set up camp, was a gentle slope covered in a woodland of whitebark pines among short, golden grass. Across the lake, to the west, were more peaks, silhouetted against the sunset.

We walked to the lake and were delighted to find a sandy beach on its shore. We took off our shoes and waded into the water. We rinsed off our feet, then sat in the sand and watched the sun set over the lake.

Back at camp, we heated up dinner. I’d made a cat-can stove months ago and I’ve been using it with an MSR Simmerlite as a backup, but this weekend I was confident enough to leave the big stove at home. The cat-can stove weighs 1 ounce and needs only a little denatured alcohol in a plastic bottle for fuel, making it much lighter and simpler than the MSR stove. Success! The little stove worked perfectly.

As we ate, Clark’s nutcrackers flew between the pines, calling to each other with loud ‘kraa-kraa-kraa’s. By the time we finished eating, the sky had grown dark and the half moon in the southwest was casting shadows on the ground.

We went to bed at 9. We were entirely alone at the lake. With no wind, the night was utterly silent. I held my breath in the tent and could hear only my heartbeat and the ringing in my ears. Outside, the cold, clear air was perfect for watching the night sky. We got up to watch the moon set, a big, orange half-disc hanging over the lake. Afterward, we could see the Milky Way and shooting stars.

I woke up at 5:30, which was as late as I could manage considering how early I’d gone to sleep. It was 33 degrees and still dark outside, so I just lay in my sleeping bag until the sky began to get light. At sunrise, we got up and packed our gear.

We left Evelyn Lake at 7:30. The air was brisk, but the sun warmed us as soon as it rose over the mountains. As we walked, our shadows stretched for a good 10 yards over the grasslands.

Vogelsang High Sierra Camp was closed for the season and had been taken apart. All that was left of the white canvas bungalows that had housed trekkers all summer were their wooden frames. The showers were partly dismantled, and their interiors were so rusty that Elizabeth suggested a tetanus shot before anyone used them. Vogelsang Peak was quite prominent from the camp, and I took a good look at it to see the routes we could take to its summit if we came this way again.

The descent to Rafferty Creek was scenic, passing through more lodgepole pine, mountain hemlock, and whitebark pine, with more views of towering silver peaks.

Down in the canyon, we walked through meadows that were golden and scarlet in their fall colors. The forest on either side of the meadows was nothing but old-growth lodgepole pines. But as the day warmed past 80 degrees, the heat and the monotony of the landscape conspired to make me dislike the last few miles of the hike.

Elizabeth noticed lots of lodgepole snags obeying a right-hand rule, their bark twisting counter-clockwise up the trunk. We wondered if this was true for all lodgepole pine snags and talked about why it might be so. But in the end we saw a few obeying a left-hand rule, disproving our theory.

We got back to the trailhead at 12:45. On the way home we stopped at El Agave in Oakdale for a burrito and enchiladas.

Related posts:

1. Olympic National Park Ozette Loop hike