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Trip Report

Selah Butte — Saturday, Mar. 20, 2021

Central Washington > Yakima

Birb and I noticed this hike when poking around looking at maps on CalTopo/Gaia. There's a huge disclaimer on the guide about this being on private land, but given the maps I looked at (Kittitas County Parcel Viewer, CalTopo public lands filter), I wasn't worried about venturing on to the land.

This hike is probably the steepest hike of the Yakima Canyon area and also likely the "most treacherous" due to the amount of steep, loose pebbles on the trail (pretty close to ball bearing quality). Still, if you're game for scrambling up and down some hard class 1 trail, it's worth the effort.

One thing to be mindful of is that the top of the trail doesn't technically reach the high point. The high point is occupied by radio towers on land which is leased out to a non-BLM party. Out of respect for the landowners, Birb and I stopped short of the actual high point.

The way up and down the trail was pretty crazy/awesome. It hailed a bit, which caught us off-guard. Sadly, we saw no rainbows from our vantage though :( (what can I say? we're stereotypical gay folks that like rainbows :D..).

As far as wildflowers go, some balsamroot, desert parsley, and violets, were starting to bloom on the trail (yay Spring!!). More flowers might start blooming in the next couple weeks, time and conditions permitting (it was pretty cold at night: around 32 degrees).

Balsamroot!
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