Teanaway Community Forest - Split Rock — Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024

Split Rock  with  golden larches

    

We went to the east side of the Cascades for a cold but sunny hiking day (cloudy with sprinkles at home) .   And visited an amazing sandstone feature,  Split Rock.     We hiked in the Teanaway Community Forest,  50,000 acres of forest, low mountain ridges and river valleys, purchased by the state of Washington in 2013 to protect part of the watershed of the Yakima River.   Split Rock is one of many monolithic sandstone slabs and giant sculptures found in this forest.  There is little hiking information about most of this area.    I used some WTA trip reports and a poor state agency produced map to create an overlay on a Green Trails map.   This custom map worked great .

Split Rock had been mentioned by several trip reporters.  With my custom map we found it easily.  As of yet there are no trail signs at all in this forest.  With signage the route would have been obvious. Part of it is on old logging roads and part on nice single track trail.

Split Rock is an amazing monolith.  It sits on the top of the ridgeline hiding in the forest.  Mushroom or funny face rock (our names) is only 100 feet away.  How did it get here?  How was it formed?

Golden Larches were scattered everywhere in the forest.  Larches, ponderosa pine, and fir were the dominant trees with some smaller maples and shrubs underneath.  

We hiked 5 miles with 500 feet of gain which is a moderate to strenuous trip for us.  The weather was good: 42 degrees in the morning, rising to a balmy 53 in the afternoon.  Sunny with 50+ mile visibility.    We met 2 mountain bikers with 2 dogs and saw no one else all day.   The trailhead has a newish outhouse that was very clean and well stocked.  There is a paved road all the way to the trailhead.  So access is easy but very few people know about this uncrowded place.  It is 102 miles from our Seattle home with a drive time of a little over 2 hours.

We had a fun day in the Teanaway.

    

   

Bob & Laurie

80+ hikers