Hiking with Younger Legs

Let me first assure you that "Hiking with Younger Legs" is not a reference to MY legs, but to my son's ... and his dog. My legs are old and worn ... and the reason this entry in the blog is six months after the hike is--although I would like to have a good excuse--because I'm basically a lazy writer. If I could write each day as I hike, I would keep my blog up-to-date, but I haven't figured out how to type faster on my smaller devices.

It all started when my son and daughter-in-law hiked in the Goat Rocks Wilderness in Washington months earlier and after seeing their photos, I decided that would be my next destination. At 72, I have a bucket list of places to hike, but keep adding to it. My son, Jeff, and I were able to work out our schedules for a July 2016 hike up through the Snowgrass Flats area and connect with the PCT. 

After Jeff got off work on Tuesday, we drove up to the Berry Patch Trailhead in Washington where there was a small camping area and pitched there for the night. Jeff's Blacknose Cur dog, Vyda, was making the trip with us. The camping area there is kind of rough--they were doing some work on it--but there is a picnic table and a parking lot. Knowing that I would be hiking uphill at altitude most of the next day, I turned in early.

Old man and a yellow dog

The next morning we were up and packed shortly after daylight and drove back down to the Snowgrass TH and began our hike. We were hiking in on Wednesday hoping to avoid some of the crowds that come to this area on the weekends. We hiked up the Snowgrass Trail a little over 3.5 miles and took the cutoff east over to the PCT before getting to Snowgrass Flats. I think that cutoff is there to give PCT hikers a way off the trail when Old Snowy gets a big snow dump late in the PCT season. This was my first hike using GaiaGPS and I messed up several times when I would take a break on the trail. Sometimes I would forget to stop the recording when I sat down for a while, and sometimes I would forget to restart the recording when I got up and started hiking. Through no fault of the GaiaGPS app, I didn't get very accurate readings on the times or the distances between stops on the trail. I've gotten better. It's not a terribly long hike up to where we were going, but on old legs, it was a workout.

At the intersection of the cutoff with the PCT we ran into some PCT section hikers who had run into a mountain lion over near Cispus Pass. Jeff had hiked on ahead (as he often did) and talked with several PCT hikers who had come over Cispus Pass and had seen a cat. One guy saw the cat stalking his dog and yelled at it before it could overtake the dog.

Vyda, cooling off

[I never worry about mountain lions because they usually like to chase down their fast-fleeing prey and there is no way they will mistake my slow pace for a fast-fleeing prey.] The only critters we saw/heard on the hike were marmots whistling at us. We both saw a very large marmot watching us on our hike down the trail. Almost at the same time we both said, "Did you see that marmot?" As you can see in the photos below, there are a lot of rugby football-sized boulders for them to hide in. I really hadn't seen a lot of marmots since my hiking days in Colorado.

Mt Adams

Jeff and I had decided that instead of hiking to Goat Lake, which hikers had told us was still frozen, we would hike the PCT up under Old Snowy and base camp out of there. It was a good choice. From our campsite in a small wooded area just off the PCT we could see that Goat Lake was still snowed in and the camping sites over there were very limited. We decided that we could hike over there fairly easily if we had the time and the inclination.

As I alluded to, several times Jeff and Vyda hiked on ahead because the younger legs were having trouble hiking as slowly as the old pair. Vyda got tired and hot one time and lay down in a snowmelt stream to cool off. Of course she was hiking twice as far as we were hiking because she kept wanting us to throw a stick she could fetch and bring back to us. We would throw the stick, she would run ahead or off the trail, grab the stick and bring it back to us. She was putting in a lot of additional miles.

Old man crossing snow

We hiked over several broad patches of snow, but the snow was beginning to melt and it was interesting to see how close the snow crossings were to the actual PCT. I hadn't hike on snow since leaving Denver in the early 90s, so I was careful about my footing. On the way up we had great views of Mt Adams to the south and Mt St Helens a little to the west of Adams. 

View from our campsite

 Although we found several campsites around where campers had built short stone walls to block the wind, we chose a site that would have a windbreak from trees. Jeff and Vyda pitched his Tarptent backed up to the a small stand of trees and I pitched my LightHeart Solo down in the midst of a small patch of trees. There were four guys/two tents about a hundred yards from us in a well-used campsite that Jeff had seen on a previous trip. Our grove of trees was large enough to provide us a place to nap in the sun and out of the wind.

Father and son

At night we ate Packet Gourmet meals, gumbo and Chicken-and-Dumplings, prepared with snowmelt water. I had packed in chopped chicken breast which I added to the gumbo. For breakfast we ate home-prepared oatmeal that I had vacuum sealed in Mississippi. For lunch we ate mostly junk we had crammed in our packs before leaving.


The second day we hiked up to the PCT above us and followed a trail in the rocks up to the western slope of Old Snowy. As we were looking up we saw what appeared to be a cross planted on the edge of the slope. When we got there we found that it was a sign saying that the trail we were actually on was the PCT and the trail below was actually the horse trail part of the PCT. We wondered how many PCTers hiked across the snow fields on the horse trail instead of catching the edge of Old Snowy. We sat up high in the rocks and looked at the view I knew I would never get to see again: Adams, St Helens, and Ranier to the west. What a gorgeous, gorgeous view! And of course we could look down on the Goat Lake area and see some elk grazing in a field below it.

PCT sign on Old Snow

Goat Lake in the cirque

My son and I always do well hiking together and get into some heavy political discussions, although he's pretty much a liberal like me. Mostly we have fun discussing gear. Jeff works for the Oregon Mountain Community in Portland and is on the cutting edge of knowledge about gear, so I have fun asking him "which do you think is better" questions. We discussed stoves, packs, tents, and everything in between. He's very patient hiking with me, but sometimes overestimates what I can do in my 70s. I guess one always thinks of his/her father as younger. 


After waking up in a thick cloud the second morning, we packed up without hurrying since we were hiking down hill most of the day. Jeff was going to take us back down the Snowgrass Trail so I could see the popular Flats. The cloud burned off and we began our downhill trek. When we got to the intersection of the PCT and the Snowgrass Trail I thought of all of the NOBOs Hummingbird and Bearclaw in 2013 who had to bail on their thru-hike because of the early season snow dump that caused them to make a decision to end their hike. I also thought of Rockin' hiking through this beautiful section with her daughter, Stealthy. Rockin' has hiked so many beautiful trails that this section of the PCT might only be a distant memory to her, but, to me, it was my last chance to get here.

Mt Ranier from the western slope of Old Snowy

The team

Jeff and I hiked back down uneventfully and drove back to Portland, continuing our conversations about the state of the world since he moved up from Mississippi. I am eternally grateful to him for hiking slowly and putting up with my sometimes peculiar ways. I love the guy dearly and am deeply thankful for our adventures together.

Mt Adams from near our campsite