Just keep hiking

@TamiVsTheTrail I’m excited to find this group where you’re documenting your hiking goal. I’ve recently started with goal of hiking. I live by the continental divide trail CDT at high elevation.
I do day walks/hiking around the area but I’m working on a long term goal of hiking the CDT. I’m going to start reading your entire thread but would love to learn more about hiking such as how you prepare, what equipment you use and how you pick your hikes. Best wishes for great fall weather so you can continue your hiking goal!

A few from earlier in the spring; more to follow:

I had a hike today.

I planned to go with a friend for his first day of retirement. He opted out. It was a gorgeous day, and I still wanted to hike, so I was just going to go anyway.

On the way out of my neighborhood, I ran across two friends. She said trails in the local forests weren't bad. I stopped to get mail, dropped a book at the library, and decided that since I'll go out with my friend next week, I'd go to another local trail that has great views but I had left a few weeks ago because even the trailhead was already in a cloud. That day I hiked another area nearby.

That trail is very short. Just a couple miles. I can add more miles in either direction if I want. But I did something different. On the way up, I saw parking at the trailhead down near the bottom. I stopped there to save the gasoline from driving way up to the upper trailhead. It's a nice trail to the top - a little more than eight miles round trip.

The weather was great. I saw blue sky. I saw native oaks. I saw clowns in the forest (Acorn woodpeckers).














I stopped just before the last little loop to the top to eat an orange in case it was too windy up top to stop. It was. I took in some views and kept walking. I saw rain moving in, so instead of stopping in a sheltered area to enjoy a delicious beverage I brought with me to celebrate the first day after January, I just hiked out. It only rained a little bit. Not enough to even pull out my rain gear. But the sun was still shining from an angle, so I got rainbows.

Yep. Another good day.

I did a 10.5 mile hike yesterday in an amazing state park with large waterfalls. South Falls is 177 feet tall. Double Falls is a foot higher. North Falls is a meager 136 feet high.

It was, all in all, a GREAT day. Best in a long time. I tried to not be too impacted by the litter. There will always be some. It wasn't THAT bad. I want to volunteer to go pick it up once a week....

As I approached the start of the trail, where it's closest to the parking so more busy, I heard some amplified sound. I wondered if maybe there was an interpretive presentation. Nope. As I got closer, I realized it was two adults with a small child and a speaker blasting sound out to people who may or may not have wanted to share. Totally inappropriate.

I channeled my inner nine-year-old and looked them right in the face and said, "REALLY?" They said "Really what?" I said, "You're in the *kitten* forest, turn off the *kitten* *kitten* radio and listen to the sounds of nature." They packed up and left, which was good for the people still up there. I walked off shaking my head.

But really - best February day for me in YEARS. It was sunny out. My little 2011 RAV4 is actually fun to drive, and there wasn't much traffic. I took a back route that is about three miles longer but eliminates several miles on an interstate and more miles on a state highway - instead I took scenic county roads through the country and across rivers and through some small towns. The radio was boring me, so I turned on the CD. When the John Lee Hooker CD was done, "Dead Letter Office" from REM came on. The sunroof was open. It was just great. In the moment I realized how good I felt, I was crossing a river and looked to my left to see a pair of bald eagles in a tree. Oh yeah. Then I really needed to find a restroom. I crossed another river and saw a boat launch with a vault toilet. It was clean and just in time. Even though the trails were more crowded than I expected, there was plenty of parking pretty close in. I bought an annual parking pass for state parks, and this is one of the few that charge a fee. I'll probably go back when it's not so nice weather and thus fewer people - no way will I go in summer on a weekend. But yesterday was just fantastic.

This large park includes the "Trail of Ten Falls." The trail is officially about 7.2 miles of "moderate" hiking. There are a few falls you have to hike a bit more to see - I decided to go see them all. The main trail is along two tributaries of a creek. These creeks have been cutting their way through the rocks for 26 million years. The resistant rock is from the Columbia River Basalt flows, and between those layers is a layer of about 20 feet of sand and silt laid down by a stream between flows. The thick layers of lava are resistant to weathering, so they are what makes the large falls when the layers below them gets weathered away. You can actually see charred remains of tree casts in the in-between layers if you look closely along your walk. Really a marvelous place. I was sad to see some litter. I was happy how well maintained the trails are. I was surprised how many people there were, but it was a beautiful warm sunny day. I bet some people took Friday off to make a long weekend. Heck - some people might have taken the week of if they already got last Monday off for President's Day.

There are dozens of miles of back-country trails to explore too. I am a little curious about those, but being among the large falls is pretty nice just as a way to spend a day.

Oh. Here's some pictures (I have fun videos, but not sure a good way to share them):

A friend came to my town for a hike a couple days ago. We went to "the other side" of a trail I often hike/run. We went to the far side because it's more open and thus sunnier - out of the canopy of the forest. I forgot how well-maintained the gravel trails are. Not one spot of mud on my pants or even boots! We hiked farther than I thought she would want to, so we got up to the viewpoint I often hike or walk to from the east side up a creek and across a ridge. It was a very nice day for both of us.

It was about 7.2 miles with about 1400 feet of elevation gain overall.







The day before that I went up a trail that I haven't been on for decades. I have no idea why I don't hike there more often. It's really close by. I will be going back! I focused on it because it's lower elevation so I wouldn't have to hike through the snow. This trail goes through some nice forest, and is on trails not roads. The main trail up is kind of "the highway" with a well-engineered trail that has side rails and has gravel on most of it. It goes up from a City park on the other side of town. My initial plan was just to go up and back on that same trail. It would have been a bit short of seven miles.

When I left the park and entered the research forest, I grabbed a trail map. Good thing. When I got to the top, I used both that map and the GPS on my Garmin fitness tracker to see some other trails and found my way back down using some very much less used trails. Some were pretty muddy. They went through a diverse forest, or I should say a diversity of forest stands. It was very nice. I saw almost nobody else.








They yesterday I "hiked" on a paved path over by the coast.