Today's hike was also a work party on lovely trail 130 on Mount Spokane. We shuttled to the saddle junction to start our hike to the work site, and spent our day brushing the trail, ending the day by making a loop with trail 160. The hike is much more open now.

After the trail crew headed home, I hiked back through our now lovely work site, along trail 132 to 130, up 130 to 131 and down 131 past a few berry pickers to complete a loop of almost 2 miles with a nice hill in the middle. It was enough for me after sawing limbs all day.

With a forecast high of triple digits on the first day of the Hike a Thon, I headed for higher elevations for my first hike. As Mount Spokane beaconed, I parked just inside the park entrance by the pit toilet by the trailheads for trail 110, 121 and 121, reasoning that I would rather hike down than up at the end of the day.

I started  up trail 110 which was single track initially, then followed an abandoned road before dropping back to single track when it crossed the Kit Carson Loop. I climbed about 5 miles to the saddle junction, accounting for almost all of my nearly 2000 feet of elevation gain. I took a snack break there, then headed up Trail 130 which runs along the Kit Carson Loop at that point. Near the CCC cabin, I turned onto single track and hiked toward the Bald Knob picnic area and campground. After a brief pit stop and water refill there, I continued on Trail 130 to 132, turning left to follow it downhill to the snowmobile parking area which needs a summer name. Trail 132 was overgrown in places. I crossed the parking area to pick up Trail 120 by the pit toilet and headed downhill. I followed 120 down an old logging road to Trail 121. While the last bit was only a mile, I had to bypass 4 downed trees in that mile. Two were easy to step over. Two others had fallen together, and hikers had started creating a very steep bypass over the root ball. Even if they were limbed, I am not certain I could climb over those two.

Over all, I had a great day hiking in much cooler weather than what I found when I returned home.

Another evening out with the Spokane Mountaineers, tonight we hiked to Day Mountain, which is more the edge of a ridge than a dramatic summit. We started at the Bald Knob picnic area parking lot, following trail 130 uphill to where it joins the Mount Kit Carson Loop road near the CCC cabin. We turned left on the Loop road, following it to the saddle junction, where we again chose the single track of trail 130. I hiked on to the view from Day Mountain, while some of the group fell into the berry patches along the way and never made it that far. I returned to my car as dusk was turning to dark after enjoying a smoky sunset and a setting crescent moon hanging over the trees.

My friend, my dog and I parked at the upper Kit Carson Loop lot on the road to the Summit. We hiked down the Kit Carson Loop road to the saddle junction, up Trail 130 to the summit, back down on Trail 160 and 30 to the saddle junction, then crossed the road to upper Trail 140 to return to the car for about a 4 mile loop.