Beacon Rock State Park - Hamilton Mountain — Friday, Sep. 1, 2023

Hello Hikers, if you done the Hamilton Mountain trail before and gone past Rodney Falls on your way to that first spectacular viewpoint you probably encounter the rugged steep switchbacks that are just shy of a fourth class scramble.

It turns out that is a very common place for Hikers to get injured and have to be carried out by volunteer search and rescue.

I visited a location with a couple SAR volunteers and they said the common denominator is shoes with smooth tread, like street runners. Of course, anybody wearing even the best equipment and hiking poles can get unlucky and break an ankle up there or even on the sidewalk if your luck is bad enough!

But it’s good to stack the odds in your favor. Tell your friends and take it easy and slow if you’re hiking that section.

Also noticed that you can volunteer for Silver Star search rescue or help them out by purchasing some of the stuff that they’re moving sale in a couple weeks.

At WTA, we have worked with State Park staff and applied twice unsuccessfully for grant funds to reroute the stacked switchback section to make it a lot safer, but still visit the best views. We’ve been up there doing a lot of maintenance work over the years, but there’s so many tree roots and bedrock that there’s just no easy options to rebench the tread short of helicoptering in treated lumber or other types of materials to shore up the decaying switch back corners.