Dog Mountain Trailhead, Washington State, USA
Hello! Welcome to my next article in the series of 'Mountains we didn't get to the top of'.
You can see Part 1 - Table Mountain & Part 2 - Kings Mountain if you click on the links.
The day started as no Sunday has in the history of the universe... with my partner waking up and getting up ages before me. I was dog tired from a Ninja Comp the day before, but she was super pumped for our last chance training before our Grand Canyon trip this coming weekend.
I managed to awake in a state I can only describe as half-panicked, half-groggy, not in a mountainy mood. Dog mountain, however, waits for no man, and even Super Bowl Sunday wasn't going to hold back the crowds, so off we went.
We've been fine-tuning our kit the last two hikes and I was feeling pretty confident despite my legs feeling like 2 metric tonne inflamed sausages. We packed heavy to smash ourselves but both felt like our backpacks were pretty doable. Especially with my camera out my bag wasn't heavy at all, even with all the required stuff recommended by the GC tour guides.
It rained the entire drive... like hardcore torrential rain. The kind of rain that would make you turn back if it was any other weekend but last chance training weekend, so we arrived, got organized in the pouring rain and set off... and the rain immediately stopped. Great job Washington!
I've made the above image clickable so you can see that sign on tree has two options:
- Difficult
- More Difficult
Oh yeah, we're not just going to take a difficult hike like noobs. We're More Difficult and proud!
Like the other hikes we've been on in the Pacific Northwest, everything is so green... I'm not sure if the moss is trying to hug those trees or smother them, but either way.... so green.
By about this point we were an hour and a half in... it was really tough going and we had to stop and catch our breath a few times... okay, a lot of times. It just felt straight up for an hour. This is exactly what we were looking for though... everyone has told us the Grand Canyon is hard... that it's 3-4 hours of just straight down... and then later 3-4 hours of just straight up.
They also say there will be plenty of rest stops, but it's the conditioning I was worried about... if our legs aren't strong enough no amount of rest will fix that, it just extends the pain-time.
Anyway... the higher up we got, it suddenly turned ominously foggy. The green photo above was all sunny and nice, and then it just wasn't.
As we got closer to the top, it got real rocky and really bleak. The trees fall away completely and it's just a rocky trail and crazy hardcore winds. Everyone was turning back, but I was confident we could smash through, we went up a bit further and randomly bumped into some friends, but the rain was back, the wind was hardcore epic and we were getting pushed around.
We went probably a quarter mile further than I took this photo and it got bad. We were both wearing glasses and it was raining so hard were completely blinded, the wind was literally pushing us around on the craggy rocks, our hats gone blown off but I was determined to make it... we couldn't not get to the top of all 3 of our practice hikes!
Alas though, my wife was actually terrified... she couldn't see, couldn't find her footing and was getting pushed around... we had no idea how far the top was because of the fog... and even if we made it we wouldn't be able to see anything anyway.... Dog Mountain, you won this battle... but come summer/not-winter, we will hike you.
We came back down... it was still pretty scary until we got back amongst our friends, the trees, and we took the Difficult path down which was lovely. My other knee was super playing up in the last 10-20 minutes or so, not ideal, but again, was totally fine once we got to flat ground again.
We went across the Bridge of the Gods with is a famous stopping point for the Pacific Crest Trail. Found an awesome hipster brewery for lunch where they were telling us they're expecting all the little unknown Washington hiking trails to become waaaay popular in the summertime because all the Oregon trails are closed due to massive bushfires last summer. We saw the carnage on the way home but I didn't get a photo because responsible driving (not really, my camera was in the boot).
We know the Grand Canyon hike will be hard, but we feel as ready as we could get for a last minute-ish thing. Pretty excited though!
So... I didn't want to leave the story at an odd finishing point... so here is a photo I took while I was writing this post earlier... these gals say hi.
| Category | landscapephotography |
|---|---|
| Settings | ISO 320 24mm f/2.8 1/30 |
| Camera | Canon 6D |
| Lens | Sigma 24 mm 1.4 Art |
| Location | Dog Mountain, Washington, USA |
Thanks so much for reading!
All the photos in this post were taken by me with my new camera that I'm getting better at carrying and not tangling myself up in all the straps, jackets and bags.
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