Lake Sylvia State Park - Brownie Trail — Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025

The trailhead for this trail is located in Lake Sylvia State Park in Montesano, WA.  The trail starts a couple hundred yards from a Day Use parking area.  A Discover Pass is required.  The trail is 2.7 mi RT and took a little over an hour to complete.  The trail surface was a fairly narrow and well worn foot path with lots of exposed roots.  It is also used as a bike trail.  There were some flat stretches, but you were either going up or down a grade most of the time.  What I enjoyed most about the hike was the variety of the ages of the trees passed along the way, from fairly mature growth trees at the start, to very young plantations toward the end.  But what was really cool was the presence of randomly situated large stumps from previously harvested trees, many of which notches for past loggers' springboards were visible.  The sight of these decaying stumps harkens the days of loggers with axes and crosscut saws laboring to drop these giants to the ground.  As a result of this hike I ordered a couple of books from Amazon regarding PNW logging history.