Gold Creek - Devils Slide — Wednesday, Jun. 27, 2007

Central Washington > Yakima

I hiked the Gold Creek trail today for wildflowers & some exercise. This is one of those nice transition zone trails with both sagebrush & mountain wildflowers. It is open to motorbikes & is rocky in places, but not especially rutted. It also crosses a couple of logging spurs & skirts some old clear-cuts (which are now nice green meadows). The resident mountain goat heard at Devil's Slide was bedded down in the sand at the bottom of the far end of the cliffs. The wildflowers were very nice: lots of lupine & larkspur bottom to top; scarlet gilia, desert buckwheat, & thompson's paintbrush on the bottom; and glacier lilies, spring beauty, & both varieties of pygmy lewisia on top. I had nice views out to Nelson Ridge & Mt Aix and to Fife's Peak, but Mt Adams, Mt Rainier, & the Goat Rocks were socked in.