Today, Glen and I hiked up Scout Mountain for the first time of the season. The road just opened yesterday.The first 2 pictures were taken on the way there as we drove up the mountain. It was a beautiful warm day.
We parked and headed up the trail. We were the very first hikers on the trail since the gate was opened yesterday. We did see another group, and by the end of our hike there were 3 other groups on the trail.
There were big snow patches alternating with damp to muddy trail.
We saw some interesting patterns in the ground, like mole trails. I think that might be what they were.
As we hiked up a little ways, there was more and more snow until we were hiking on deep snow. It was fairly firm, and we could walk on it without too much trouble. The air was very warm, even as we walked on the snow. I put some snow on top of my hat to keep my head cool! It was great until it started to melt and ran down my back!
There was a lot of water everywhere, flowing down the hillsides, and even water flowing under the snow. We sometimes broke through the snow to the water underneath.
In the summer there are a few little creeks, but today they were a lot bigger and the water was rushing along with a wonderful sound.
We saw some funny little gray balls on the snow. I wondered what they were until I looked up, they were little fuzzy seeds from the aspen trees.
Under some of the big pine trees it was clear of snow. We found a huge pine tree and stopped for lunch under it's spreading branches. The tree was probably a couple of hundred years old. We ate some sandwiches, granola bars, and apples.
The sky was bright bright blue through the branches of the trees. The air smelled fresh and sweet with the scent of pine, and water, and snow.
After eating lunch we headed up the mountain for a few more feet to the top of the pass. The ground was dry up there. We saw several butterflies, the only insects we saw on the whole trail.
Here is a picture of the view from the top. It was so beautiful up there, (the pictures don't do it justice) and it was so nice to be on a dry trail.The ground was covered with tiny flowers.
These are glacier lilies. They are about 5 or 6 inches tall. They come up as soon as the snow melts.
These tiny little white flowers are spring beauties. They have little pink veins leading to the center and are quite pretty.
The yellow flower is an anemone. There were thousands of them carpeting the ground.
We headed down the other side.
We could see the Arbon Valley with it's rolling wheat fields and mountains.
The trail was muddy, and got muddier as we got further down.
It was like ice skating because the mud was so slick.
The trail finally turned into a stream of water.
We decided to head back.
We went back over the pass then headed down the snowy trail.
The hot day (it was in the upper 80s) had softened the snow. It was a lot mushier than on the way up. We took big steps, digging our heels into the snow so we wouldn't slip, and using our outstretched arms to balance, we let gravity take us quickly down. It was fun! Most of the time we just sunk in a few inches, but in a few places I broke through and sunk in almost to my knees. There was water flowing under the snow. Very quickly we made it down to less snow covered trail, and finally to the trailhead.
We used the snow in the parking lot to clean the mud off our boots. We got in our car and drove down the mountain feeling very happy and satisfied by our snowy experience on Scout Mountain.
