July, 2019
Adventuring with friends into the wonderful woods …
I woke up this morning in my comfortable little trailer, knowing that today was my last whole day at Big Creek Campground. Tomorrow morning I would be headed home. Boy had I seen some great stuff in this area. In just these seven days here, I had packed in a lot. And today would be no exception. Today, two friends drove out from the big city to visit me.
We chatted at my campsite for a while, last night’s rain making the plants so green and the air so fresh and our spirits so much at peace. We then jumped in my big white truck and drove back out to the “main” road and had lunch at a small and rustic restaurant (mmm, really good food!).
After lunch, we headed through the magnificent Mount Rainier National Park gate, but hardly got any distance at all past the checkpoint on the main road before we turned off on a side gravel road … a new road for us and a new adventure.
We were headed up Westside Road … about 3.5 miles into the forest, gradually uphill all the way. The road was nicely maintained. The area was so rich and so beautiful.
The hill that this road wound around was so steep that rock had to have been blasted out so the road could go through. Sometimes those rock walls were so steep that they were a bit scary.
Huge rocks rolling onto the road were common here, though usually that happened only in the winter … usually. Or sometimes there were just smaller rolling rock boulders!
But even the rock walls and the boulders were beautiful. And gosh, the moss was so thick and lovely.
The road did narrow down a bit after awhile, but the surface was still well maintained except for the occasional pothole. On the other hand, with our windows open, breathing in that fresh mountain air, and listening to the forest, we drove slowly … and stopped quite often! We drove so slowly that even when the road was a bit of a wash-board, we didn’t mind at all.
Creeks and rivulets and small waterfalls were everywhere.
At one point, we heard a very plaintive, loud howling up ahead. We came around a bend in the road to find this (below) … a Green Bottomed Hoopa Howler with its neck stretched way way up. They are VERY rare! Some people think they look like a dead tree trunk with moss.
As mentioned, we stopped often and enjoyed the drive and the scenery and the sounds and the smells. It took us nearly two hours to get to the end of the road. For that entire time, we saw no other people or vehicles.
At the end of the road there was a locked gate, preventing further vehicle access because of a prior rock slide across the road. But access on foot was allowed so we parked and walked the last section of road toward the gate.
The photo below is of our first view after getting out of the truck. You’ll notice two of us at the very bottom of the photo … walking along quite innocently towards some piles of dirt that were there because of road repair.
But look up! Look up at the top of the photo above. When my friend Karen and I finally realized that mountain was there (and it was RIGHT THERE!), we were stunned.
I’ll tell you about the mountain, but first let me tell you about the piles of dirt. The gravel road right here in this spot had been washed out so many times by a river that runs here that finally a concrete road was built, just to span the river. But the concrete doesn’t meet in the middle. There’s a large culvert there instead, with thick heavy iron planks over it, so most of the water for most of the year will run straight downhill through the culvert. When the river does get high enough in the spring so it fills and overflows the culvert, then the extra water simply runs over the concrete road. The piles of “dirt” in the photo above (and the photo below) are actually large piles of rock/gravel used to maintain this road.
So, ok, now let’s look at that mountain again. It really was stunning.
In the photo below, we’re standing at the locked gate, just a bit past that concrete culvert-bridge. That mountain is about 6,030 feet tall. Where we were standing was about 2,880 feet elevation. So the top of the mountain was about 3,150 feet above us. Believe me, it seemed almost straight up.
Notice the rock flow or debris flow in the photo above. That rock fall originated at that white-ish scar up on the side of the mountain. A big chunk of the mountain simply split off and millions of tons of rock came roaring down the hill, and over the road. Hence the piles of gravel that had been brought in to fix the road. Mostly the road had been cleared by the time we were here, but there were still a few large boulders on or near the road … several of them MUCH larger than my truck.
Yikes!
The photo below is a long telephoto shot of that white-ish scar on the mountain above us.
One wonders when the next split of rock will happen, when the next piece of the mountain will come crashing down. Hopefully it won’t be when anyone is down on that road.
We hadn’t known about the rock fall, so it was a great surprise. Even just the mountain and its incredible presence was a surprise and amazing. I never did find out the name of that mountain. With neighboring Mount Rainier at 14,410 feet, this “little” mountain of 6,030 feet wasn’t much more than foothill to some people, but it was huge to us!
We then got back in the big white truck and drove happily through the peaceful and non-threatening forest, back down towards the main road.
Again, on the drive back down, we drove slowly and stopped often, taking lots of photos.
Who can tell me what these plants are? My friends knew, but I’ve forgotten.
It was a wonderful afternoon, no fancy shenanigans, no salmon hatcheries, no steam trains, no blueberry farms or UFOs or Sasquatches, no old houses or new houses. In fact, no human beings at all. Just the three of us friends and the amazing world of the forests and the mountains. What a special way to end my camping trip here.