Umtanum Creek Canyon — Saturday, Jun. 6, 2015

Central Washington > Yakima

We took the scouts over to Umtanum Creek to give them a chance to experience a more desert like hike while still staying a place where we'd have access to water - this short hike was the perfect place for that. The hiking for the first few miles is pretty straightforward. There are a number of small branchings of the trail but as long as you keep your face pointed up canyon and the creek nearby you'll have no problems heading the right direction. We encountered a number of good places to set up camp including one about two miles in that was a great place to stop for lunch. As we continued up canyon the trail became less easy to navigate. The brush along the sides becomes very overgrown. There are a few spots at about the three mile mark where the creek has cut into the trail making for a bit of a tricky hike as you skirt the small cliff while having a rock wall hard on your left. Eventually, we realized that we had reached about as far as we could reasonably make with our packs and we'd not found a decent stopping place to set up camp so we turned back around at just shy of four miles. We made our way all the way back to where we'd had lunch. There were a number of good places to set up camp, with wider meadows out in the open, but we preferred to be in the cooler parts under the trees. The scouts set up their camp and the adults set there's up. We'd brought a number of water filtration devices and after we'd cleared out the dead garter snake from the creek we got the boys started on filtering water. It was dry and hot out and all of us went through a lot of water. We encountered two rattlesnakes on our hike which we gave a wide birth to as well as a number of other small birds, mice and a live garter snake which was green hued with soft yellow stripes. There were no other hikers on the trail that day through we did meet up with a few on our way out the next day. The boys had a great time and learned a lot. We look forward to going back the next year.

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