2023 was a very good year of hiking for me, with a new record for days of hiking and miles hiked. In addition, we made significant strides in recovering the lower segment of the old Bull of the Woods trail, doing 5 days of cutting on that trail, as well as cleaning up the Alder Swamp trail after it being inaccessible for 2 years after the fires. The highlight of the year was probably the very challenging trip to the Necklace Valley, which had a LOT of offtrail travel and a LOT of elevation gain. Climbing Schreiner Peak was another highlight – it is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and finally did it this year.
Some Stats:
- 48 Days of hiking – this was a new record
- 279 Miles – This was a new record
- 66,000 Feet of elevation gain
Some highlights:
- Located and mostly completed the lower 2 miles of the Old Bull of the Woods trail (up to the 280 spur)
- An extremely challenging trip with Carly to the Necklace valley
- Road 45 was reopened!
- Finally climbed Schreiner peak!
- Explored the Salmon Mountain area with Charles finally seeing the old Indian trail going straight downhill across switchbacks
- Lost my second drone due to my own stupidity (but learned a LOT in the process)
- Got to take a very interesting hike with Abby and Carly at the coast (God’s Thumb)
- Got to take a hike with Abby to Memaloose Lake
- Got to explore some interesting waterfalls
- Completed explorations of several burned trails:
- Cold Springs – the whole route
- Fish Creek (old road 54)
- Memaloose Lake and up to South Fork Mountain
- Horseshoe Saddle and Ruddy Hill
- Most of the back door trail and part of Fish Creek Mountain
My goals for 2024 are to continue to explore burn damaged trails – see which ones might be candidates for some restoration work, continue the work we started on old Bull of the Woods (pushing a good route south of the 280 spur as well as refining the route north of there). I’d also like to continue to do more work on abandoned trails – doing a cutout day of Baty Butte and doing some more work on the 511 would be good targets. I’m sure there will be more surprises and adventures along the way as well.