I took a lovely sunny day to head up Black Canyon. This is a moderately difficult hike recommended in Tami Asar's guide book, "Day Hiking Mount Adams and Goat Rock." (Difficulty due to rapid elevation gain in the first mile going straight up.)
This is a very easy trail to find being right off a main road out of the town of Selah, WA.
As many have mentioned, the mile long road leading up to the trail head is not recommended for low clearance vehicles. After the severe winter we had I would even further discourage this as there are two places in particular that are very tricky to negotiate. I chose to park at the bottom lot adjacent to the road and just include the mile as part of my hike. It was a beautiful walk along the creek with birdsong and the early morning smell of desert sage accompanying me.
Once you reach the trail head the path is just basically straight up for about 2.5 miles. The trail was wet with easily negotiable run-off at the bottom. Cold enough still to have ice formations on some of the erun off. The trail is rocky but I did fine in more substantial trail runners.
About 3/4 of a mile up the sage scrub gives way to quaking aspens, birches and red twig willows. The contrast of stark colors was amazing! Another quarter mile and you will find the old homestead that is still standing. The meadow there was very boggy with snow melt and run-off so I wasn't inclined to go down and look at it up close.
In another quarter mile from the homestead you will see a junction with one path leading off to the NW and crossing the creek, whilst the other heads NE into a lovely alpine forest of Ponderosas. I chose to head off NE, but be warned that this part of the trail was still almost entirely covered in snow. And it was sloshy, sloggy snow for the most part. I hiked over the snow for a mile until the only way forward was to drop straight down the 5 foot embankment of snow directly into the deepish, fast running creek, then try to scramble up the 4 feet of snow on the other side with no hand holds. I passed and just turned around, even though I only had about another half mile to my destination. That is for another day!
Looking on the topo map the path at the junction that led NW may have been completely cleared as it appears to be open with almost no vegetation. It follows the ridge when you get there and you can effectively do a loop trail taking either path and looping around to the come down via the other.
Only saw elk and deer scat up there....lots of both. :-)
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