Mount Townsend — Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005

Olympic Peninsula > Hood Canal

Mount Townsend was relatively uncrowded on this sunny Friday, and it wasn't too hot either. The trail is in excellent shape, with good tread and reasonably steep switchbacks. There are still flowers, although some are pretty ragged, but the ones that remain make the ascent very pleasant indeed. We've been up this trail many times and still get enormous pleasure from it. After we finished lunch on the first summit, we started to head back down the trail but felt we hadn't had enough and it was still early in the day. We decided to explore a faint trail we had seen that takes off from the point where the Mt. Towsend trail reaches the saddle before climbing towards the summits. The ""trail"" is really only a faint path, that starts and then stops as it disappears under overgrown folliage, but if you look carefully and don't mind a bit of scrambling, eventually starts to descend the ridge south of the saddle. This was a particularly beautiful spot, with great views down to the Silver Creek basin and across to numerous peaks above it. The path got steeper and we had to use our hands quite a bit to descend the rocks, but we could see below us what we believed to be (and hoped we were right!)the Silver Lakes trail. We intended to take that back to where it splits off from the Mt. Townsend trail. We didn't quite relish the climb back up if we had miscalculated. We had descended about 300 feet from the saddle. Luckily, it was the Silver Lakes Trail and we we just about at the point where it reaches a saddle at 5700 feet. We took it down, making a couple of switchbacks and then turning north until it intersected the Townsend Trail. The return to the car then was quick and easy. It was a great day!