Trapper Creek Wilderness 5/31/22
I hiked the Trapper Creek Wilderness Loop for the first time last week, and it didn't disappoint.
The first 4 miles are nearly flat, climbing about 700' through beautiful old forest.
- Forest
- Nurse tree
- Trillium
- creek
You see some evidence of the Big Hollow fire that went through in 2020. From what I saw on the ground, and the view from the peak, this fire appears to have been a classic mosaic fire, burning patches here and there. You can see in the photos there are burned trees next to green ones. (There are of course other places, especially on Howe Ridge, where the fire burned all the trees in large patches.)
- Burned trees
- Burned trees
The trail seems to have been recently maintained, and there are some impressive bits of engineering along the way.
- Trail improvements
- Staircase
The first couple of miles had been mostly cleared of downed trees -- thanks Don, and everyone else! Here's the large tree that Don made one cut in:
- Don's cut log
But after that there's still a lot of tree fall across the trail. Most of it is easily navigated, but it does get tiresome by the end of the day.
- Tree across trail, Howe Ridge
Impressive upended tree -- at least this one didn't fall across the trail:
- Upended tree
Trapper Creek Falls are impressive, even viewed from a distance:
- Trapper Creek Falls
Just about at the top of the many switchbacks, at about 3200', I hit snow, which I hadn't expected. I forgot how much farther north I was. The sunny warm spring day suddenly reverted to a mid-winter feel, especially when the sun went behind one of the many puffy clouds in the sky.
- snow!
I did my best to follow the approximate trail to the saddle and junction with the Observation Peak Trail, where I found footprints in the snow. Along the trail to the peak I passed the a pair of hikers and their dog, surprised to see other hikers foolish enough to hike to the peak in the snow!
The upper slopes had much less snow than down in the bowl, and the exposed parts of the summit were completely bare, and covered in flowers, including glacier lillies (or are they avalanche lillies? I can never keep them straight).
- Glacier Lillies
I bushwhacked from Observation Peak down to the Observation trail, and headed back to the trail head. From the peak the trail was almost entirely snow-free.
Saw these mushrooms in one of the burned areas:
- Mushrooms
Looking forward to returning when it's snow-free.
