Today’s hike was kind of a spur of the moment hike. Normally, the grandkids come over on Friday but we found out Friday morning they were sick and were not going to be coming. I had only done one hike this week and the weather looked really good, so I quickly looked for a hike to do. Old Baldy seemed like a good choice since it is pretty close and a beautiful hike. The snow didn’t seem like it should be a problem, so that was the plan for the day. I thought I’d hike from an access point on the trail up to Old Baldy and back. I estimated it would be about 7 miles round trip which turned out to be a pretty close estimate.

We headed out later than normal (since it was an unplanned trip) – we got to the trailhead about 10:30, suited up and headed out. We parked at an access point where the Eagle Creek Cutoff trail joins the Old Baldy Trail:

We headed west on the trail – even though there was a bit of snow where we parked, there was zero snow on the trail and it was in pretty good shape. Somehwere not too far from where we started, I took this picture – it is a beautiful old trail:

Just past this area, we went thru a small open area that had really the only snow of the day. It was maybe 6″ deep in the deepest areas. It will melt pretty soon I’m sure.

We continued along the trail, moving branches off the trail – there were a LOT of noble fir branches on the trail in places. Portions of this trail are an old Indian trail that follows the ridge so in those areas it goes pretty much straight up and straight down. This was an area of the “straight uphill” (it is hard to tell how steep it is in this photo but it was probably 60 degrees or so):

After we got up the steepest part of that uphill, I thought we could head uphill to the top of Githens Mountain. Other than the steepness, it was really easy walking – very few downed trees or brush.

It wasn’t too long before we got to the top of Githens Mountain – unfortunately, there was no view from up here. Too many trees and when looking east, there were just too many trees in the way. This is what it looked like on top:

While poking around on top, I found a flag – looking around a bit more I found what looked to be tread and I think I found a few blazes as well. Older maps show the trail more closely following the edge of the cliff that goes down to Eagle creek, but at some point the trail was re-routed around Githens Mountain – I’m assuming to reduce some of the elevation gain/loss. Here is a piece of what appears to be tread up along the cliff coming down the north side of Githens Mountain:

We continued following what appeared to be tread for a bit but it then kind of disappeared. At that point, I figured we’d just head back down to the trail and continue on. It was pretty easy to get back down to the trail since it was so open.

A short way after re-joining the trail, while looking for areas where we might have views along the cliff to Eagle Creek, I noticed this neat rock formation not too far from the trail:

We continued on the trail, doing some cleanup as we went. I was thinking we’d get to the top of Old Baldy about noon, but it took a bit longer than I expected (probably because I was doing some tread clearing as we went). We ended up getting on top about 12:40 and sat down to eat lunch.

After lunch, we packed up and before we headed down, I had to take a picture of the top of Old Baldy (which isn’t bald anymore!):

I brought my drone and was wondering if there might have been a big enough hole in the canopy to fly above it, but it was pretty tight – given some of my previous experiences I did not want to chance it. We headed down the hill.

As we headed down, I knew we were going to go a slightly different way back since we would be following the trail the whole way. On the way up we had skipped part of the trail to head to the top of Githens Mountain. Part of the area we skipped is where the White Iris trail joins and that particular area seems to get more snow so I was wondering if we might see some snow in there. Unfortunately, there was almost no snow in there at all. A few patches above and below the trail in a few spots but it was mostly bare ground.

We continued our trip down the trail. It was faster than the trip up, partly due to some of the work I had done, but also because it was more downhill than uphill. We got back to that small open area (which in retrospect I could probably have flown my drone from!) – this was the one area where we actually saw snow – Thor had to stop and do his “beaver” thing in it:

After the snow, it was not long before we were back at the truck. When we got in view of the truck, I saw a car parked next to my truck, so I leashed up Thor. I wasn’t expecting anyone else up here today but someone else had the same idea I did. They must have headed west on the trail as I did not see them.

We packed up and headed home. Another beautiful spring day on an absolutely gorgeous old trail.