Still recovering from my knee injury, I decided to take a trail that went quickly downhill. Not really the greatest of ideas, but since last year they were doing work on the Cougar Dam and the road to the trailhead was closed, this is what I wanted to do now that it was finally open. I had Conrad to join me. The drive to the trailhead went fine. It was back up Aufderheide Road, but this time I turned at the dam and went across it. The road stayed paved for a time and then went uphill. It was about 8 miles up a dirt road when I got to the trailhead beside the road. There are two directions that you can travel from this point. Conrad and I went downhill. This is because going uphill would probably place us into snow pretty quickly.
As I was expecting the trail went down fairly quickly and it didn't take long for my knee to feel a little bit sore. I still powered through it knowing that some ice and elevation would relieve the pain that I was feeling on this day. Eventually the trail made it down to the East Fork. The trail was in very good condition at this point. The creek was really nice and the walking was enjoyable. Conrad and I were even talking about how you could run this trail. Then it got worse. The brush got thicker, the logs increased until about three and a half miles in we came to a mighty large log that was blocking the trail on a steep slope. We could probably figure out a way to cross it safely, but given the soreness in my knee and the constant fight we were putting up with the trail, we decided this was a good place to count our losses and head back to the trailhead. The hike back goes so quickly and I enjoyed the conversation. Still, the knee was pretty sore by the time we made it back to the car. I definitely glad I went for the hike though. The creek was really pretty and the hike was enjoyable. I was going to need to rest my knee though.
No comments:
Post a Comment