Knowing the weather wasn't going to be super great on Sunday, we set out for an easy-going, low expectations day hike. The rhodies are still not in bloom along this trail, although there were quite a few blooming along the road up. There is a section of the trail that feels like a rhody tunnel, that would be amazing to see in bloom.
Not much to report about the trail, it's really pleasant and mostly flat until you take the turnoff for Tull Canyon. The crash site is basically at the entrance of the canyon. In looking at old photos of the B-17 site, it does seem like there is less debris around, whether that's because of looters or souvenir hunters or people just dragging pieces around, I can't really say. We saw quite a few large campsites to the west of the debris.
We went on past the crash site as our main destination was Hawk Peak. Beyond the crash site and towards the end of the official trail, we hit patches of snow. We came out of the treeline just under the west slope of Hawk Peak. We traversed further south across some very loose rock until we hit a snowfield. The snow was solid enough to kick step our way up with just poles. We attained the ridge pretty easily, going on and off snow. There was a faint trail that would appear and disappear, I'm sure without the snow patches this trail would be pretty obvious. Small flowers were beginning to bloom; we tried to be careful with our steps. At this point we were in the clouds, it was drizzly wet the whole time. We pressed on and made it up to the peak. I'm sure on a clear day, the views would be fantastic.
On the way down, we wanted to avoid the loose rock that we initially traversed so we went we down a slightly different route. We were really glad we did that because we heard some rock fall from the west facing slope of Hawk Peak. We felt lucky to have already been off the slopes and within the tree line.
We brought snowshoes, ice axes, and microspikes but never felt the need to use any of that.
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