Easton - Labor Day Weekend 2008

This weekend, Labor Day weekend was an OYO hike for me. So my little family - Faith, Clayton, Don, myself and our dog, Diesel, headed to Easton to camp in our trailer with our friend's, the Pigg's, at their cabin. We drove up Saturday afternoon after the Cougs vs. Okalahma college football game in Qwest Field (poor Coug's) and then the next morning got up for a hike. We wanted to hike to Rachel Lake and set off for exit 62 off of I-90. Following the directions in the hiking book I'd brought along, we turned off the designated Forest Service road and began the "approximately 4 miles" drive towards the trailhead, with our friend Julie following behind. However, at "approximately 2 miles" it fealt like we'd driven easily 4 miles and the road was rapidly deteriorating and trees were scraping the sides of the cars. The van wasn't taking well to the slow crawl up the forest road and we got the feeling we were going to overheat, get stuck or were possibly on the wrong road! So we turned around, consulted the hiking guide and headed back to Easton and exit 70 to try a different trail.

We decided to try the Kachess Ridge trail. The guide book says the hike "wastes no time in starting to climb" and we have to agree! For most of the first mile is an almost steady climb. Faith found the going a little tough, but perservered and kept on going. The trail evened out and every once in awhile we had views of Mount Baldy, Domerie Peak and Easton Ridge. For the second mile we walked along the bank of Silver Creek, hiking upstream. At almost two miles, the trail crosses the creek or you can take the trail to the left and up the Beacon Ridge Trail.

Beacon Ridge Trail is more of a footpath than the Kachess Ridge Trail. So far we had seen more horses and mountain bikes on the trail than fellow hikes, but it was clear that no one else but hikers had been using this trail. And speaking of bikers, I have to tell you about the man we ran into a couple of times on the trail today. His right leg had been amputed just above the knee and when we first saw him, he was at the trailhead starting - riding single-legged - up that steep first mile. It was amazing to me that he could get that bicycle up the trail with one leg when I knew that it would be a struggle of endurance for me to get a bicycle up that trail with two legs!

Back to our hike.... We headed up Beacon Ridge Trail and almost immediately began running into blown down trees across the trail. And as we ventured on the trail became more overgrown and clearly less maintained. We (I) really wanted to see the peak that used to serve as a base for an air traffic beacon, but before we had gone more than a quarter mile, we decided to turn back. With Faith and Clayton along, and not having someone with us who had hiked this trail before, we just didn't want to take any chances. So once again this day, we changed up our plans and headed back to Silver Creek where we hung out for about 15 minutes to eat some lunch.

It was here that we once again ran into the one-legged mountain biker. He was coming down the Kachess Ridge trail and reported that it looked like there had been an avalanche this winter that wiped the trail out. A new trail had been cut but he didn't know where it went. At this point, we decided to call it good and head back down the trail. We ran into more mountain bikers and horses, but no more hikers as we headed down.

Even though our plans changed several times, we really enjoyed the day. We were pretty hungry and on our way back to our trailer, we stopped off at Mountain High Burger for some burgers, fries and shakes. A great end to a great hike!