Photos from this trip can be found here.
More rain in the Cascades over the weekend, so naturally the pups and I escaped to Eastern Washington. Original plan was to hike Steamboat Rock, but given the late departure with a short stopover in Ellensburg, I decided to revisit Baldy.
No cars at the trailhead when we arrived, so I suspected we’d be the only ones on the mountain, ahem, hill. Shortly after we started, we saw a party of two getting off the mountain and heading back to their vehicle parked about 500 feet up the road from my car.
Temperature was just right, with occasional light breeze in the lower elevation. Already, there were lots of wildflower strewn across the hills and we’re only one day into spring. The breeze grew stronger and it became quite windy just before the trail gradually tapered off onto the first flat area. It continued to be windy from there all the way to the tower at the top. We proceeded to hike past the tower and down the east hill to get away from the wind and take our lunch break.
After spending about an hour enjoying the views of river bends and cloud formations, we slowly made our way down the mountain. On the way down we saw one hiker who decided that he wasn’t going to go all the way up because of the wind gusts. A group of three hikers were starting out just before we got back down to the foothills.
Patches of clouds in the sky, but it remained sunny the entire time we were out.
Access: TP Jim Trail (.2 mile west of Big Pines Campground entrance)
Gear: none