Dog Mountain — Monday, Jun. 11, 2012

Southwest Washington > Columbia River Gorge - WA

Hit the trailhead at 0530. First car. NW Forest Pass required. Yeah, Goldman Sachs can blow up the economy and they get taxpayer money. I gotta pay twice to take a walk. Took the very steepest route up. 50 deg., clear, and somewhat windy at the flower fields. Balsamroot past its prime (but still some nice specimens), larkspur the same, paintbrush lovely, lupine just coming on. Took Augspurger down. Still some muddy stretches in that first .2 mile or so, which seems weird to me because the trail is on a little knife-edge ridge and I woulda thought it'd drain off better. Dog trails were clear of trees. Aug had a few trees down that didn't block the trail completely but impeded traffic a little bit. Roughly 30 cars at the trailhead when we came out about 11:30.