Hears Different Drummer: South Fork, Ridley Creek hikes

Sunday, July 24, 2016

South Fork, Ridley Creek hikes

For our Spartan weekend training we decided to do 2 back to back hikes to help us with our endurance. We chose to do the South Fork trail again but go for the creek crossing and see how far we wanted to go. We did part of this hike previously on the 4th of July, you can see more photos and read more about that day's hike HERE. We were pleasantly surprised to find some back country horsemen doing trail work on the trail and they told us about a trail that forks off to the left after the creek crossing that leads up a hill & has a picnic table at the top. So inspired, we took off in search of new adventures. They were right we found the trail and the picnic table, we hiked on a bit more and then returned for lunch at the table before heading back.

Our total for Saturday's hike:

total miles hiked - 10

minimum altitude - 418 feet

maximum altitude - 1255 feet

total ascent - 1155 feet

total descent - 1109 feet

Today (Sunday) we chose to do the Ridley creek hike that I had done a couple of weeks ago with the Trailblazers, you can read about that day's hike HERE. On the Trailblazer hike we turned around at the first boggy tarn area about 1/2 mile short of the Mazama horse camp meadow. I was excited to get further up today as this would be the first time we'd been at the horse camp in 25 years!

A side note about my garmin watch. I had it set for "smart" gps tracking for the Trailblazer hike and it skipped some of the downhill switchbacks so the mileage wasn't the same on our return hike back as it was going in. The "smart" tracking is supposed to save battery life but only tracks every minute, which I found to not be great if walking quickly down switchbacks. This time I switched my tracking to every second and the distance was the same going as coming. Yay! I was much happier with the gps tracking on today's hike.

We did make it to the meadow and it was spectacular. We stayed for nearly an hour and enjoyed a leisurely lunch before heading back. A great weekend of back to back hikes!