Growing up in the Pacific Northwest has always afforded me the opportunity to spend plenty of time outdoors (being wet, but outdoors nonetheless). The natural climate is breathtaking within 2 hours in any direction. The Cascade mountains border the East, Olympic peninsula, Puget Sound the rainforest to the West, Canada to the North and Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens to the South.
I received a book from my beautiful daughter and son-in-law for my 43rd birthday. The book is titled "60 hikes within 60 miles". That is, if you drew a big circle around Seattle that had a circumference of 60 miles in any direction. The family has been talking about going hiking on a consistent basis so I thought this would be the perfect tool to get started, so off we went! (we being Heather, Eli and I)
Please keep in mind that we are novice hikers. I do not know much about different trees, vegetation or wildlife, but I do love the outdoors, breathing the clean air and seeing the majesty of God's work first hand.
The first hike we chose was a hike down to the bottom of Mud Mountain Dam. I chose this hike for a few reasons:
1. Only a 30 minute drive from home.
2. Relative ease of hike (300 ft elevations gain)
3. Chance to see a dam that was the largest of its kind in the world when it was built.
I scanned copies of all the pages out of the book to carry with me so we would not miss anything or get lost...like a said NOVICE HIKERS HERE!! LOL. My wife packed us a lunch and Eli filled up six bottles of water, two of them frozen. The hike is between 4-6 hours roundtrip if you plan on going all the way to the bottom of the dam, which we decided to do.
We arrived at the parking lot around 2pm on a Thursday. The trailhead starts on the north side of the parking lot that runs along a chain-link fence. The first 2 miles run underneath a canopy of trees that keeps the temperature very moderate, to which we were very thankful. After the two mile mark a forest service road runs down to the bottom of the dam. Some hikers with smaller children would use this as a turnaround point since the elevation drop is only slight at this point. We trucked on down the road which dropped about 300 feet quickly and before we knew it, we were standing on the footprint of Mud Mountain Lake. The lake only makes an appearance during a flood, which does not happen very often.
With open sun exposing us, we walked another mile to a clearing near the river. We all took off our shoes and boots and let the cold water soothe our feet and legs. Daisy (our dog) welcomed the cold water as she was panting pretty hard. After about 15 minutes we packed up and headed back for the trailhead. We found some blackberries and huckleberries along the way.
We arrived back at the car around 6:30pm, so round trip the hike took a little over 4 hours. It was just enough elevation gain to get our muscles working, without leaving us sore the next day. All in all a very pleasant hike and we found a very good trail guide...Eli!
I received a book from my beautiful daughter and son-in-law for my 43rd birthday. The book is titled "60 hikes within 60 miles". That is, if you drew a big circle around Seattle that had a circumference of 60 miles in any direction. The family has been talking about going hiking on a consistent basis so I thought this would be the perfect tool to get started, so off we went! (we being Heather, Eli and I)
Please keep in mind that we are novice hikers. I do not know much about different trees, vegetation or wildlife, but I do love the outdoors, breathing the clean air and seeing the majesty of God's work first hand.
The first hike we chose was a hike down to the bottom of Mud Mountain Dam. I chose this hike for a few reasons:
1. Only a 30 minute drive from home.
2. Relative ease of hike (300 ft elevations gain)
3. Chance to see a dam that was the largest of its kind in the world when it was built.
I scanned copies of all the pages out of the book to carry with me so we would not miss anything or get lost...like a said NOVICE HIKERS HERE!! LOL. My wife packed us a lunch and Eli filled up six bottles of water, two of them frozen. The hike is between 4-6 hours roundtrip if you plan on going all the way to the bottom of the dam, which we decided to do.
We arrived at the parking lot around 2pm on a Thursday. The trailhead starts on the north side of the parking lot that runs along a chain-link fence. The first 2 miles run underneath a canopy of trees that keeps the temperature very moderate, to which we were very thankful. After the two mile mark a forest service road runs down to the bottom of the dam. Some hikers with smaller children would use this as a turnaround point since the elevation drop is only slight at this point. We trucked on down the road which dropped about 300 feet quickly and before we knew it, we were standing on the footprint of Mud Mountain Lake. The lake only makes an appearance during a flood, which does not happen very often.
With open sun exposing us, we walked another mile to a clearing near the river. We all took off our shoes and boots and let the cold water soothe our feet and legs. Daisy (our dog) welcomed the cold water as she was panting pretty hard. After about 15 minutes we packed up and headed back for the trailhead. We found some blackberries and huckleberries along the way.
We arrived back at the car around 6:30pm, so round trip the hike took a little over 4 hours. It was just enough elevation gain to get our muscles working, without leaving us sore the next day. All in all a very pleasant hike and we found a very good trail guide...Eli!
