Heavy rain over the past couple of days inspired me to make the most of the drier but colder day of the weekend. Rain on Spring trails makes mud, and when you add hikers to that mix you end up with accelerated trail erosion, so I decided to keep to the old logging road that doubles as a winter cross country ski highway and a 3-season hiking trail.
Evergreens and mossy pools of standing water bring a flash of green to the soggy forest. Most of the snowpack has melted off, but the recent rain has made all the seeps and seasonally intermittent streams into energetic watercourses. Soon they will also bring the annual crop of blood sucking insects, but not yet (for which I am devoutly grateful!)
Although garden flowers are well established in the valley, it’s still early for wildflowers in the forest. Nonetheless, trout lilies have sprouted abundant patches of speckled leaves.
The last time I came up Livermore Trail, it was on the back of a snowmobile with a heavy pack as my search and rescue team was shuttled as far as this intersection. We set off on snowshoes from here to assist an injured hiker further up the mountain. It looked daunting then to head off along a snowy, untracked trail, but today the Avalanche Brook crossing is a different kind of daunting, swollen with Spring rain. Fortunately I wasn’t planning on going that way.
Even after the forest service road ends and Livermore Trail veers off along a logging road that’s no longer maintained, it never gets particularly steep. It does trend noticeably uphill, and as I climbed, the intermittent mist began to take on a much more solid character.
By the time I reached my turning point, I had walked a full season back in time, but once I returned to the valley floor, the sun was shining. I still wouldn’t exactly call it warm, though.
