A couple days off meant the first backpacking trip of the year. Friday weather was warmer than forecast. Just 3 vehicles at the trailhead when I arrived about 1pm. Ran into some women and their dog, then a couple guys much later, other than that a quiet trail.
Stopped at Comfort Camp for a snack on my way to hopefully finding Church Creek Shelter or Laney Camp as a place to put up my hammock. About 6 miles in ran into the previously mentioned gentlemen, they warned me that they're turned around before there because of blow downs on the trail. About a mile later I started encountering a few, but nothing that you couldn't get by easily. At about 8.4 by my GPS, I came across what turned out to be be two trees, both 10-12ft diameter down across the trail... pretty much obliterating it.
There was no real suitable place to try and set up camp so I spent about 15 minutes scrambling up the till to get around these trees (see photo), and shortly after that the trail just seemed to end. I tried getting through, thinking it was just obscured, but no luck. Then I spotted a clearing sort of between myself and the river, so I decided to try and pitch camp there. Turns out it was an established camping area with a couple fire rings and bit of a path to the river for getting water.
I found the only two suitable trees for pitching my hammock, got set up, made dinner and read a bit before crashing. Got up the next morning and after a bit of more exploring, I found where the trail to the camp did meet up where I first thought the trail stopped... because of the way some tree roots that would have been to my left grew, they obscured the switchback that would have led me right to the camp area earlier. This area may have been the Laney Camp area, but it was a bit confusing as there was also a sign that indicated it was only 8mi back to the trailhead. My GPS both in and out put it at closer to 8.4.
I typically work weekends, so hiking on a Saturday is not something I have done in awhile, and the trail was much more traveled on my way out, including a couple of families with younger kids within the first 3 miles of the trail. Seeing so many people (even though it was maybe 20 in total over the span of about 5 miles of hiking) was kind of weird.
The trail is nice.. mostly gentle rolling with a couple of small "climbs" (see elevation profile for my trip out in photos). It hadn't rained much lately, so only a couple of muddy spots from water run-off. The crossings were all very easy. Beyond about 7 miles though, be prepared for a lot of blow downs. Most of it looked fairly old, so it's not just a matter of getting a crew in to do a bit of cleaning.
The trillium and salmon berry bushes were blooming, and found some nice mushroom patches, and of course lots of new fern growth. Overall, a really nice trek for first overnight of the year.
I wouldn't really recommend this for hammock camping though, the trees just are very good for it. I got lucky with the two trees I managed to end up using.
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