We backpacked a loop, going up the jeep trail on top of Big Burn Canyon, hiking across Cleman Mtn, and finally coming down Hardy canyon.

This hike holds great views of the surrounding landscape. You'll also come across plentiful wildlife and wildflowers. We saw at least ten different types of desert wildflowers in bloom. We also saw an elk, two rattlesnakes, lizards and a dead rat. On Cleman Mountain, we saw large mountain lion tracks in the road. Yikes! We startled the elk while coming down Hardy Canyon and got a great view of the majestic creature. The desert landscape is also a refreshing change of pace from the typical experience for us Seattlites.

There are a few major things you should be aware of when considering this trip though.

First -- neither the roads nor trails are signed (except for the occasional "No unauthorized vehicles" sign) and even though we carefully followed the Big Burn Canyon directions found here and in the Best Desert Hikes Washington book, we could not locate the Big Burn Canyon trailhead. (The trail that goes down in the canyon). So we would recommend that if you come to visit this area, you purchase a topo map and be handy with orienteering. To add to the confusion, the roads that criss-cross the area are numerous and also unsigned. Thankfully it is a fairly open country and you can at least get a vague idea of where you came from and where you are going. It was in this way that we were able to locate the top of the Hardy Canyon trail from up on Cleman Mountain.

Second -- given that we couldn't find the Big Burn Canyon trail, we ended up hiking the jeep trail up to Cleman Mountain. Further, the 'trail'/road on Cleman Mountain is also a road with a green dot, meaning vehicles can drive there. We didn't see anyone driving it, but it sure took some fun out of backpacking to know that we could have driven the same route.

Third -- Hardy Canyon is very overgrown at this time, a mudhole in places, and a rockslide in others. A machete, sickel, or scythe would have been nice to get through it all. Due to the tall weeds/grass, we almost stepped on a baby rattlesnake since we could not see that well. He didn't have a rattler to warn us. Dangerous.

Fourth -- there are few reasonable places to camp. So although this promises to be a good route for a "mild backpacking trip" maybe it isn't after all. Definitely don't plan to camp down in Hardy Canyon right now, as it is quite overgrown.

In the end we decided we would probably not be coming back here, but we made the most of it and had an enjoyable time anyway. If we come back to the area we'll probably attempt something different like the Yakima Skyline trail.

Flickr: http://bit.ly/hardy-canyon

This was a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment hike. We did a hike to Iron Peak on Friday, although none of us seemed to feel all that tired afterward. Sitting at home and debating whether or not to get some cardio in at the gym, I decided to take our cardio workout outside. The weather forecast was pretty sketchy for the entire Cascades region and westward, so once again I looked to the east for some hiking options. Going through dessert hikes in the Ellensburg area and saw that the Hardy Canyon had the most elevation gain and enough mileage to get us a good workout for the day.

Having spent four years living in Ellensburg and attending school, I had absolutely no idea there were canyons other than the famous Columbia River gorge in that part of the state. My idea of of a canyon has always been on a grander scale, so the tiny ones in the Oak Creek State Wildlife Area southwest of Ellensburg perked my curiosity and I needed to see them for myself. The drive to the trailhead took us a while, since we opted for less mileage by entering from the north and spent a good amount of time on the unpaved, bumpy portion of Umptanum Road. There was virtually no traffic on this road since most people would probably take the I-82 route and enter the trailhead from the southeast.

The directions on the WTA site was fairly accurate. The trailhead was easy to spot, just 500 feet past Black Canyon trailhead on the south side of Wenas Road. Although when we got there, there was a "Detour" sign posted on the locked gate so we couldn't enter from there. We turned the car around, past Black Canyon trailhead by about half a mile before making a stop at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on the south side of the road. We entered through the gate and traversed east to reconnect with the Hardy Canyon trail.

It was warm when we got on the trail a little after 1. The dogs spent some time playing in the grass before we started to head up the canyon. The stream runs along side of the trail and the dogs would occasionally jump in to get a drink of water. No wildlife sighting or anything exciting in the canyon, we reached the first switchback and then went straight up the hill onto the ridge. Nice view all-around and with no end in sight, although the weather was getting a little gloomy by the time we were on the ridge. We continued to hike northwestward along the ridge for about a mile until we were able to see the Yakima Valley. We made that our stopping point.

On the way down, rather than going back through the canon again, we walked down the ridge line to take advantage of the awesome, expansive view of the other canyons in the area. We encountered three elk sightings along the way and I was able to get some pictures before they noticed the dogs and walked away. We got back to the car a little after 7 and then another two and a half hour drive back to Seattle.

We did a loop - going up Hardy Canyon to Cleman Ridge, and coming down Big-Burn canyon. Total of 13.5 miles, 3050 feet elevation gain. The Hardy Canyon trail head on Wenas road is closed due to washout - no access by foot or car. So we drove in through the Big-Burn access road about a mile West of the Hardy Canyon trail head (that's where the big wildlife sign is near the barn and silo). We drove through two gates and through Wenas creek about half a mile in and parked our cars. You can start walking from Wenas road, but then you'll have to cross Wenas creek by foot. There is no bridge. Water was about a foot deep when we were there. That was no problem for my Subaru Outback.

We did not have good weather (it was raining and cold most of the day), but still we enjoyed the views and the many flowers. We saw a snake and some Deer. This is great time to do this hike.

Darren

Pictures: http://www.meetup.com/[…]/?photoAlbumId=1565221

We were camped at the BLM Lmuma Recreation area along the Yakima River so reached the TH by driving the North Wenas Road about 18.5 miles from Selah to a large Wenas Wildlife Area sign and parked at a pullout near the gate. (This is actually the entrance to Big Burn Canyon described in Bauer and Nelson's "Desert Hikes Washington. A Detour sign leading to this gate is posted at the gate described in their book for Hardy Canyon. The 2 gates are less than 1/2 mile apart!) At .5 miles from the TH we came to a junction and turned left to reach Hardy Canyon. The right goes to Big Burn Canyon.We have a Fish and Wildlife Permit so discovered we could have driven another 1.6 miles as this road has a green dot. However if we had driven, we would have parked at the Hardy Canyon Road about.9 miles from the TH. This way you can hike past the many bluebird houses. We saw one pair of Western Bluebirds near one of the houses. About 1.5 miles from where we parked there is a sign and small turn around area as vehicles can go no farther. Large rocks block the road. For the next 2 miles there are frequent deep drainage ditches to prevent sediment from the road/trail going into the creek which runs beside the road. This makes for difficult walking! We knew we didn't have time to go to the top of Cleman Mt. so at a little over 3 miles we climbed a game trail to the right to the top of a ridge where we had lunch at 3600 ft. As we started up the game trail we heard a rattlesnake. It was small and curled up under some brush. From our lunch spot we could look up into Black Canyon and down at Wenas Lake to the right. Elk and deer sign and tracks were everywhere on the ridge, but we saw only a group of 10 deer. On descending the ridge to return to the TH, we discovered we had walked farther east on the ridge than we had thought so had crossed above a canyon east of Hardy Canyon so had to use a steep elk trail to cross above this canyon to the next ridge. This trail eventually took us down to the junction for Hardy and Burn Canyon. The flowers on the ridge walk were much more profuse than on the road walk where the lupine and balsamroot were just beginning to bloom along with a few larkspur, bluebells, purple desert parsley, serviceberry, ball-headed waterleaf, and prairie star. As we gained elevation on the road the ridge flowers began showing more bloom. On the ridge there were large areas of sagebrush violets, yellow desert parsley, lupine, Thompson's paint brush, larkspur, purple desert parsley,and fading shooting stars to name a few. This was a very enjoyable hike in a mix of sun and clouds. The rain started about 1/2 mile from our truck.