Mount Townsend Hike

Last Saturday my buddy Will from work had a party over on Bainbridge Island. Wanting to take advantage of the nice weather we were having, my friend Grace and I went for a hike on the Olympic Peninsula. There are tons of hikes to choose from, but we chose Mount Townsend. We were planning on tackling the summit at 6280 feet and round-trip hike of 7 miles. After taking an early ferry over to the island, we drove the hour+ to the trailhead. To get there, we crossed the Hood Canal bridge which connects the mainland to the peninsula.

Pretty scenery on the way

Hood Canal Bridge

Driving along some backwood roads to the trailhead

We got to the trailhead and were off on our way. It started out pretty steep and before we knew it, we were +1000 ft in elevation on the way. It was around this point that we started to see a bit of snow on the trail and on the ground in the forest. We weren't too worried as they said there was going to be some snow on the trail at this time of year still. We continued on and it seemed the higher we went, the more and more snow was on the trail.

A little waterfall off to the side (and snow!)

After a while, the snow simply became too much for us. The snow was getting really deep and stepping into the slush usually ended with the snow being knee deep or in some cases just below waist deep. It was too hard for us to follow the trail and having never done the hike before, we decided to turn back. We stopped to have lunch by a big water fall and after eating our sandwiches, found a nice little rock to spread out and take a nap on. It was great, bright sunshine and rushing water along with a warm breeze made the nap spectacular.

Lunchtime PB&J

Cool halo around the sun

We headed back down, retracing our steps back down to our car. We headed back to the island and after drifting Grace's Honda Civic around some of the gravel roads (and scaring the shit out of her) we made it back to civilization (and Dairy Queen!)