The evening weather was 60s and partly sunny, mild enough to put me in the mood for a quick after-work hike. This is just a fairly short one off the Sultan Basin Road in Sultan... I've left the details in previous reports. The trailhead is at the end of a narrow road with homes nearby, so if spurred on to find it please park responsibly. It's just a 3.4 mi RT gated road walk through an old clearcut, climbing 310 ft to the top of a small bump in the Earth overlooking the town of Startup, hence its unofficial name.
I usually come here early in the season when the vegetation is fresh or wildflowers are starting to pop out. Unfortunately today it looked a little depressing with everything having turned brown and/or died off. Shriveled corpses of foxglove stems were everywhere. Naturally the blackberries are still thriving, and most were full of ripe berries along with large barbed tentacles ready to scratch up my sexy hairy legs.
The skies were not hazy for a change, but the weather system that rolled through today was still active in the mountains, as the dark clouds obscuring much of the Highway 2 corridor to Stevens Pass demonstrated. I didn't see a single human, but there were dozens of sparrows circling overhead. In recent years I've learned how to identify various kinds of wildflowers, but it seems that now I need to work on my crap ID as well. I walked past piles of light crap, dark crap, wet crap, dry crap, crap full of seeds, pretty much all kinds of crap. The wild animals can't help it but I wish folks walking their dogs would remember that this is still a trail used by others.
Anyway, it was just 30 minutes up, 30 minutes down, and 30 minutes screwing around. Not the most exciting hike to be had but still a good way to get outside and unwind after another long day at work.
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