NOTE: The road to the Mt. Townsend trailheads will be closed as of 6/8 for maintenance. Call the Quilcene/ONF RS before you go!! Now, on to the report. Our plan was to hike to Silver Lakes, spend the night, hike back to where the trail splits from the Mt. Townsend trail, drop our packs, summit Townsend, retrieve packs, zip back to the car. What we really did was slog all the way to the ""summit""of ""Mount"" (we don't call a hill a Mountain in the Cascades, 'scuze me!) Townsend with our packs, slog back down to the hard-to-see split in the trail (my altimeter was LYING yesterday due to variable weather) slog through lots of snow-soup to 3/4 miles past Silver Pass, give up and turn around, and sleep at Silver Pass. We're sure from what we saw that Silver Lakes are still under snow. We did two things we've never done before: Turn back due to snow (and man, was it nasty!) and sleep, literally, on the trail. We were sure that what we had been through was going to preclude anyone else coming up the trail before we broke camp. No problem there. Trail conditions are as follows: Some snow on the Townsend trail around Windy Camp (which is totally under snow, are there small lakes there'), then no more once you're out of the trees. People hiking in tennis shoes looked unhappy. No ice axe needed. The Silver Lakes trail is still impassable. Lots of wildflowers at Townsend, and lots of LARGE groups of hikers. This/these hikes not recommended as an overnight hike due to the pretty grueling grade. Or maybe we're just really out of shape after a long winter...

Mt. Townsend is a good start of the season hike to find out what kind of condition you are in. The road leading up to the upper trailhead is in excellent shape, so go there unless you want to hike the extra 1-1/2 miles from the lower trail head. From the upper trailhead to approximately 5000' the trail is clear of snow. There is one tree 8"" in diameter across the trail you have to climb over. Just before you get to the Last Water Camp, the trail starts to disappear under the snow. From this point till about 5600' elevation, finding the trail is tough. There are alot of footprints going many places looking for the path. Don't follow mine, I got off track too. Once you reach 5600 feet, the snow disappears for the most part and the trail is obvious. The last 1/2 mile to the top has no snow at all. The view of the inside of the cloud at the top was the same the last time I went up Mt Townsend. We were blessed with about 10 minutes of sunshine during our stay on top, but no view due to the cloud. By the time we returned to our car, the rain came. Say Hi next time you see me on the trail!

Mt. Townsand March 20 I'm not sure of the road # but we decited to reach Townsand by its north trail (#835). I drove on the road toward the trailhead till my truck threatened to slide off the road. Bon Jon Pass is free of snow but you can't drive any further just before the road takes it's south bend to the trail. Hiking up the road 2 miles only took an hour so Townsend is definitely accessable. The trail register only had a few visitors over the winter. We headed up the trail following some old snowshoe tracks. There is several feet of snow on the trail but it's easy to follow. After about a mile the trail wraps around the mountain to it's west side. Once it started doing this, we put on the snowshoes and climbed strait up the Northeast ridge. The ridge wasn't too steep and snowshoeing up was a breese. At the top of the ridge, we gradually continued the ridge walk to the summit. One big cliff was avoided by dropping to the west side of the ridge till past it. To get to the top took just over 3 hours, fairly quick for parking a bit away. Nice views. Could see every volcano from St. Hellens and Adams to Garibaldi in Canada.

Mt. Townsend Date: 11/02/97 Starting Elevation: 2850ft Summit Elevation: ~6290ft The time was 7:30am. Supposedly the two others, who were to go on the hike with me, would arrive at 7:00am. They didn’t arrive at all! I therefore left, deciding to solo the hike anyway. The weather was looking good, clear while not too cool. After a 1 hour and 45 minute drive to the trailhead (~15 miles up Penny Road just south of Quilicene Ranger Station) and get ready to leave. The sky was clear with few clouds visible, not a bad change from the heavy rain earlier in the week! Anyway, the well maintained, good condition trail starts climbing through evergreen forests, up and seldom changes until the summit. At about ¾ mile and 300ft vertical, there is a good condition shelter, a surprise this close to the trailhead(s). Another ¾ mile and 300ft vertical and surprise, there is another trailhead! Oh well, think of it as 3 extra miles(round trip) of conditioning!!! From this trailhead, the trail continues climbing, but a bit steeper, through a mature (second growth') forest. A few miles further, the trail gives way to shorter alpine firs and meadows, an indication of the gain in altitude. Near the camp, called windy camp, melting snow became prevalent. Time for the gaiters… The snow became denser where it was out of direct sunlight, but had all melted where the sun directly shined on the trail. The trees became less dense until arrival at the saddle, elevation ~6100ft. Mt. Townsend has two summits, the south summit and the north summit. The south summit is approximately 30 ft higher. The wind was fairly brisk in the ridge and summit, more clothes, but the views were spectacular. Looking east, one could see the whole of the Puget Sound and a lot of the Cascades (through some haze). Looking to the west the rugged Olympics with clouds seemingly being split by them. The clouds actually appeared to be shifting north and south! Could this be the edge of the Puget Sound convergent zone''' The weather on the summit was holding, so I had lunch just below the ridge looking east toward Seattle, etc.. Oh, there was around a foot of snow on the summit ridge, not enough to be a problem, but enough to make gaiters useful. After a leisurely lunch, it was time to head back down. The trip back down was uneventful with the exception that about halfway down, I passed a deer, seemingly unafraid, with horns! I have seen lots of deer in this area over the years, but few with horns this time of year! I took some pictures and continued down, while the deer slowly wandered of into the trees. Back to the trail, more down, past the upper trailhead, past the shelter and back to the lower trailhead. Total hiking time: 5 hours including 1 hour eating and gawking on the top. The book says allow 6 hours, which is not unreasonable. In summary, the weather was great, the trail is in excellent shape and the views are spectacular! Well worth the effort required to get to the top! I can imagine what this would have looked like during the flowering season…

hope the skies would be clear and be dazzled at Mt. Baker, or head to the Olympics and climb Mt. Townsend. We opted for a drive around the sound to compensate for a possible lack of views (ugly clouds day before). Arrived at trailhead late again, and found 5 cars ahead of us. The trail is in great shape, and after the brutality of Headlee Pass last week, it was a dream. The first summit was very crowded, so we strolled over to the other summit and had it to ourselves for an hour. Some slob left fried chicken parts all over the summit...wilderness it was not. However, views turned out to be amazing, including Baker (after all), Glacier, Raineer, Seattle, Juan de Fuca, and the San Juans.