This was kind of a spur of the minute hike. I had thought about going out, but we have been in the middle of a heat wave, so I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I thought maybe I could leave really early and avoid most of the heat, but then I didn’t sleep well on Thursday night – the dog woke me up twice! Anyway, I decided maybe he was trying to tell me something so I headed out about 7am for a short hike. Decided to do Thunder Mountain and Skookum Lake – almost skipped the lake though. Bodie is having more trouble hiking these days – I wasn’t sure if he could do the whole thing, plus I had forgotten to bring a bowl for him for water. I improvised with the lid to my water bottle which seemed to work OK. Even though we got an early start, it was still a pretty warm day. The portions of the trail that went thru the sun were pretty warm indeed.

Not a lot to really say about the day. Nothing really unusual happened – just a nice day in the woods.

A few highlights:

There were quite a few lilies along the trail – both white and purple:

On the way down to Skookum lake, there is a fair amount of blowdown, including these two areas that are quite a mess – the second one I cleaned up a bit to make it easier to pass (a tough crawl under):


I had read about this spring, but never saw it before – it was really the only place on the trail with any water, and it was running pretty slowly:

I’m always amazed at how I see things now that I never used to see. Like this section line tree:

If you know where to look, there are all sorts of signs in the woods.

We got back to the truck a little after noon and headed home with the A/C blasting away in the truck. It felt REALLY good. Bodie was pretty tuckered out from the day, but I think he enjoyed himself.

A good, although very warm day in the woods.