Little Quilcene River, Mount Townsend — Tuesday, Sep. 17, 2002

Olympic Peninsula > Hood Canal

This hike to the top of Mount Townsend from the backside is an interesting hike in its own right. You take the Little Quilcene River Trail from Road 9820, four miles from its intersection with #98. We were suprised to find three other cars at the trailhead and that led us to believe that we would see lots of people at the top who would have come up on the main trail. The trail starts out in a clearcut that is gradually beginning to look a bit better as more plants are springing up. The trail continues up steeply until Little River Summit at .9 mile and then traverses with ups and downs until it reaches the junction with the Mount Townsend trail at 1.9 miles. The trail passes through lovely forest which includes Lodgepole pines and the views open up of the Silver Creek drainage and Buckhorn Mountain, Iron Mountain, etc. Since it was cloudy, the tops of the higher peaks were obscurred. We went first to the north summit of Mt. Townsend, but it had become so windy that we decided to try to South summit in case it might calm down a bit while we were walking. It's about a half mile to the South summit. We had seen two parties on their way down and saw no-one at the top. We seemed to be the only people on Mount Townsend! After eating lunch huddled against the wind on the South summit, we headed back down. This is a shorter trip than the main trail--about 7 miles round-trip including the two summits, and only 2000 feet of elevation gain.