I took Friday off because the weather was forecast to be nice, real nice. Warm too. I got up at normal 5am and had prepared everything I needed Thursday evening, so all I needed to do was eat breakfast(oatmeal, what else?) and load up the truck. I was on the road at 6:20 and got to the trailhead at 8. A few minutes to put my boots on and I was hiking at 8:10.
This was a trail that I’d read about in the Seattle PI last year and always wanted to do, I’d saved the article. It was in the area of other hikes I’d done in previous years, Iron Mtn, Longs Pass, Ingalls Lake, but no where near as crowded. In fact I was the ONLY one around until I was about a mile from the car heading back. They were two quiet motorcycles heading up – its a full use trail.
The trail itself was fairly overgrown with brush but that didn’t deter me, no problem finding the trail. It paralleled a creek for 2.5 miles before it really started climbing. Since bikes horses are allowed there was some degradation in the trail, and lots of loose dirt and rock, so I had to be much more careful coming down than going up. I did slip twice but was okay. The temps really started to climb as the grade did also. So it was a bit of a warm workout, I drank plenty of water.
At 2.5 hours I got to the top of Johnson Medra pass and took my first break. My goal was to head south on the Koppen Mtn Trail which goes along the ridgeline, then intersect with another trail back to the car, a loop of sorts, but I had a hard time finding the trail, so after my second break(for lunch) with a good hour long rest at the highest point on the trail, another 1/2 mile along, I backtracked the way I’d come.
More pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/cattrain1989/JohnsonMedraTrail
The air smelled so wonderful and the quiet so awesome, it would have been nice to spend the nite up there. There were lots of flies, but no ‘skeeters, so I wasn’t really bothered. A light breeze kept me fairly cool. At 12:30 I loaded up my pack on my back for the trek down. My feet were hot and getting sore, and by the time I got back to the truck they were just short of blisters. I sat in the back of the truck and had some ice water I packed in a cooler, and had a 20 minute rest before heading home. Temps at the truck was close to 90.
Stopped at a burger joint outside of Cle Elum for a rootbeer float, then turned on the a/c and got on the freeway. Home by 4:30. What a day!