Sunday, October 31, 2010

TITANIUM COWBOYS FIND THEMSELVES LOST

Saturday, Scott Young and I headed to the Chuckanuts and up the evil Burnout Road which has three (or four, or maybe even five) steep, seemingly vertical pitches. Above, Scott climbs the last one. (The two-dimensional camera doesn't do it justice; it's really steep.) At the top, we discovered that there's a whole lot of new logging going which ended up altering things dramatically.

Once there--elevation, 1,830 feet; we climbed over 1,600 feet in less than 4 miles to get there--we found the little-used trail off to the right, headed into the woods and started our steepish descent which we anticipated would lead to the Overlander Trail. (For those of you scoring at home, that's the one that leads from the Dictionary. Which, of course, isn't there any longer.) However, after about 300 yards the trail just disappeared, obliterated by a new logging road.) We looked for the trail on the other side of the road but after having no success finding it, we lifted our bikes up onto our shoulders and bushwhacked it in the direction of where we were just positive it had to be.

(This, after I had the daylights scared out of me by the one logger who was up there cutting and who let a tree fall scarily in my direction. It really didn't come close to hitting me but given than it's just about exactly a year since a tree did fall on me--read about it here --I was quite afeared.)
Thing is--and I'm still trying to figure this out--when we started bushwhacking, we had probably already crossed to the other side (the east side) of the Overlander Trail, and though we sure it was ahead of us, it was actually behind us. I'm wondering, does the new logging road follow the Overlander Trail? I'll have to go back up there and check this out. It's a damn shame if it does.

Luckily, after about 45 minutes of bike-carrying bushwhacking, we found the Lost Lake Trail, a few hundred yards east and below the post where the Dictionary used to sit. From there it was the fun-as-heck descent down into and out of the Lost Lake basin and then the Arenburg Forest straightaway on the North Lost Lake Trail.

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