Monday, July 13, 2009

The hike that wasn't

We took our first venture into hiking as a family on thursday. The trip fell somewhere in between planned and impromtu because, while I did check out a book of short hikes from the library, and read about the trail we planned to go on, and I even noted that the book was written in 2003, I didn't really understand just how useless an old book of hiking trails is.

The trip we planned was to Chenuis falls. Chenius falls is a beautiful watefall in Mt Rainier national park. I saw some pictures of it online and it looked very impressive especially (I hoped) to a three year old.

She was certianly extremely impressed with the idea of going hiking. The reality was a bit of a let down though. It turns out that the Carbon River Road, which used to run right up to the trailhead for Chenuis falls has been washed out since 2006. I guess now I understand the importance of picking up the phone and calling around to find out if the trail is still acessable. We did walk down to the Carbon River and explore it some, we saw some chimpmunks and some very impressive storm debris in the dry parts of the riverbed. We also walked across a big bridge.