Surprise Lake, July 29 2009

Stupidest. Hike. Ever.

So, for starters, I totally underestimated how long it would take to get to the trailhead. It was four and a half hours of driving. Each way.

I had two sets of driving directions to get to the trailhead. Both were wrong. One said to turn right on Clear Lake Road (FS Road 1200) from highway 12. The other said to turn right on South Fork Tieton Road (FS Road 1000) from highway 12.
1. There is no Clear Lake Road.
2. South Fork Tieton Road does not intersect with highway 12.

Also, one of them said to turn after Hause Campground, which also doesn’t exist, or there are just no signs for it.

After taking a few turns that turned out to be wrong, I gave up and decided to hunt for a different hike in the area. While driving up and down highway 12, I noticed that Tieton Road intersected highway 12 twice, so I turned right on it and decided to just follow it back to the other end and see if there was anything interesting along the way. First thing I saw was FS Road 1201. Thinking that maybe FS Road 1200 would be next, I continued on. The next road was FS Road 1202. Then 1203. I decided that I’d had enough of this crap and decided to just go home. It was getting a little late to start a hike in that heat anyway. Thirty seconds later (if it was even that long) I ran across South Fork Tieton Road. Hey, it turns out that Tieton Road IS FS Road 1200!

So I drove down the road to the parking area. Finally something was going right.

Then it got really fun.

The trailhead is not at the parking area. You have to walk up the road, go around a gate on the right, go left, cross two creeks, hang a right, and walk forever through a gigantic cattle-grazing area to a logging road. From there, the directions say to go left and take the first right. That’s supposed to be the trailhead.

I got to the logging road. I went left. I took the first right. No trailhead. I checked my GPS unit, which said I was pointed in the right direction, so I just kept following the road. It kept splitting. After one brief and disastrous foray off on a left-hand fork, I kept going right, going directly toward Surprise Lake, staying near the South Fork Tieton River, which we had crossed. Did I remember anything in the directions about crossing the river? No. But my memory sucks.

Then the logging road turned into a very nice little boot path. Ah, this I remember from the hiking book. I just thought my time on the logging road would be shorter. So all was well, right? Uh, no. Because the trail ended. I stood there, staring at the river. I had to cross it. I couldn’t see a trail on the other side. I was damn well not going back.

I crossed the river. No problem, it was reasonably shallow. Duncan waded and drank, I just plowed across without taking off my boots. (It was so hot, they dried out almost immediately.) Once on the other side, I pondered. I had been thinking the whole time that I was on the wrong side of the river. Now I was on the right side of the river. Right? So if I just kept heading off to the right, I’d cross the real trail, right?

Yep. It was about 50 yards away. So we were finally on the right trail, after 3 miles on the wrong trail. We followed the trail to the lake without incident other than the terrible bugs. Also, no views of anything. Just trees and dirt. Also, it is a horse trail, so I had that tasty, crunchy dust made of dehydrated horse shit and ash from Mt. Saint Helens.

The lake was pretty, but not fantasic. Just a little green lake surrounded by trees. No view of the mountains. Nothing. That was the 6.2 mile mark of the trail.

Hey, wait! The book said it was only an 8.5 mile round trip! I knew I couldn’t have added that much mileage on the logging roads, so it occurred to me that they were saying it was 8.5 miles only if you don’t count the mile and a half to and from the trailhead from the parking area.

So we turned around and headed back. What a waste.

Did I mention cattle grazing land? Yeah. Lots of cattle. Some skittish. Some bored. Some a little pushy. All hot, stinky, dusty, and chewing on stuff. Duncan behaved pretty well after he realized he was not there to herd them. One cow got a little stompy when Duncan startled a calf and I had to use a harsh tone to get her to back off, but other than that (and the creepy way they stare) there were no cattle issues.

We got back to the real trailhead, then back to the logging road. I saw a trail that I think I was supposed to have come out onto the logging road from on the way in. If I had come out on that trail, then the book’s directions would not have lead me wrong. However, there were so many trails across the cattle land that I took one that landed me on the logging road in the wrong place.

Since it was hot and dusty, I took Duncan back to the river to cool down, rest, and fill up on water. It was just a few yards down the road, so we didn’t have a lot of backtracking to do. Duncan waded and drank while I drank without wading. While we were resting, I noticed a cloud over on the horizon. It was the only cloud, big and puffy. I thought it looked a little odd, all by itself over there. So I took a picture.

After that, we got back on the trail with just 1.5 miles back to the car.

On the way back across the cattle land, I heard a noise I couldn’t identify. My first thought was farm equipment, or a really bad-sounding truck. We popped out of the trees into a big meadow and I glanced off to my right. Hey, look at that. A giant wildfire. That was totally not there on the way in that morning. (Another idiot hiker/camper/hunter strikes again. Or maybe lightning. Who knows. I prefer to blame idiots.) Flames twice as tall as the trees. Right there. I could walk right up to it if I had a death wish. That was the source of the odd cloud we’d seen earlier. Still further on, we ended up stopping to wait for the helicopter to get out of the way. They were using the cattle grazing land as a staging area to air-lift supplies to the firefighters.

Eventually, I made it back to my car. My GPS unit said we did 12.5 miles. That’s a bit longer than 8.5. Stupid hiking books.



Surprise Lake, July 29 2009