Today’s hike was a “hiking light” day – This was one of the few days I could get out and I wanted to get out in the woods but the weather forecast was terrible. Lots of rain and also wind were supposed to come in later, so I decided to stay close to home and do the Mosier creek hike – it isn’t too far and doesn’t take too long but it is kind of pretty in its own way.

We headed out later than normal since this was going to be a short hike. I’m glad we didn’t wait too long since it started raining a bit when we were headed back. We headed up the old logging road and soon got to the crossing of the beginning of Mosier Creek:

From there we continued down the road and into the cut – we followed a path that the mountain bikers have cut into the hillside down to the road – we then followed the road down to as close as we could get to the lake. At that point we had to head across the cut area to the edge of the cut where there was another trail. It was near here where we got a good look at what I’m calling Mosier Creek Lake (it has no official name on the maps):

At the far end of the lake you could hear and see ducks swimming on the lake:

And while we were looking around, I noticed that someone had dragged a boat down to the lake:

After looking around a bit we headed back up the trail – there was a bike path heading back up that we missed on the way down which made going back up a lot easier. Once we got to the road we walked the road to the spot where we came down from. As we were walking back up the path they had created, I thought I’d take a picture of the path they’ve spent some effort building:

We continued up the trail to a turn – I thought the last time we were here we headed more along the edge of the cut and I saw some vague “trail” in that direction so we went out that way. I think the brush has had its way with it and the old route is quickly becoming buried in brush. We went a little ways and into the uncut area. It was at this point where I saw a pretty large old tree – I set my hiking pole up next to it to show how big it is:

After that we looked around a bit more and rather than try and find more trail back into the woods, we decided to go back the way we came in – it was certainly a lot easier.

As we were walking the road back, I was wondering how long ago this area was cut – it had to have been quite some time ago (100 years?) since the regrowing trees are decent in size. I took this picture of a couple of the old stumps next to the re-growth:

By this time the wind was kicking up and we were starting to feel bits of rain – we hadn’t really felt much in the way of rain all day until this point. It wasn’t long before we were back at the truck and we headed home.

A short, but interesting day – this area deserves some more exploration, especially after the cuts. The mountain bikers have made quite a few trails in here and it would be good to scout them all out post logging.