Gold Creek - Devils Slide — Saturday, Jun. 3, 2023

Ethan, Karen, Brenda, & I hiked up the Gold Creek Trail to the Bald Mtn Road on this sunny, warm day.  When we got to the stretch below the top of Devil's Slide we climbed up to the top of the slide.  We climbed up too soon for the best views, however, so we bushwhacked through the dense sagebrush along the  top of the slide to the east end where the best views are.  This turned out to be quite tiring for me and I was dragging for the rest of the hike.  We dropped back down to the trail and continued on up to the Bald Mtn Road.  All the meadows up here were filled with spring beauty.  Once here we walked  south about 1/2 mile and found a nice lunch spot overlooking the headwaters of the Lefthand Fork of Rock Creek to Mt Cleman.  After lunch the others continued out the road toward Bald Mtn to the nice views of the Goad Rocks, Nelson Ridge, Mt Rainier, and the Stuarts.  Afterwards we made our way back the way we had come.  We saw a number of ATVs on the Bald Mtn Rd and one on the 2-track portion of the Gold Creek Trail.  We didn't see any wildlife, but people in one of the ATVs told us they had seen a lot of elk and we saw lots of mountain goat sign at the top of Devil's Slide.  The wildflowers were nice, especially the glacier lilies and spring beauty, but we were a little early for the best flower show.