Big weekend out hiking/camping in Yakima with Ngie! They wrote separate trip reports for each hike but... I'm lazy...

General report for the area: the snow is all gone, and the flowers are juuust starting. In about 1-3 weeks they're going to be popping out there. Lots of opportunities for hiking and camping in the area, and lots of people out taking advantage of the good weather. 

We started Saturday with Rattlesnake Dance Ridge, which is a fun, short & steep little conditioner with nice views of the river. We went past the summit to the end of the trail where there's a "lost spring" in an old tire. Also found a whole elk skeleton, which was awesome. (pics below, don't scroll to the end if you're squeamish.) On the way down we met Burt the dog, who was the CUTEST. 

We then drove by Umtanum, but the construction of the parking lot/bridge has started and according to signage it will be out of commission until end of May. 

Next stop was finding a campsite... There's a big campground across from the Baldy Mountain trailhead (Big Pines Campground) but it was PACKED so we drove over to Roza Recreation Site which only has 6 camp sites.. Unfortunately there was a group there doing their darnedest to make a whole campground's worth of noise. I remembered why I kind of hate front country camping.. lol. People blasting music and doing donuts in the parking lot until after 10. UGGH. 

Sorry, I just can't help being a cranky old man.

Anyway, after picking a campsite we drove over to Selah Butte, which is another short and steep one. It has a small parking area so it's pretty quiet compared to other hikes in the area. We got sun, rain, hail, then more sun... Nice views at the top, but I still maintain that Baldy has the best views in the canyon. 

We had a little time to kill before going back to the campground so we wandered around Selah Cliffs Natural Area Preserve, a short and easy interpretive trail.

Sunday morning, I overcame my crankiness about other campers and we drove over to Wenas Wildlife Area to hit up Gracie Point. You can also access Gracie Point from the regular Yakima Skyline Trailhead.. Either way is a bit long, we just chose this way because we did Yakima Skyline recently and I wanted to hit up more side trails. It was cloudy and windy so not the best conditions for comfort or views, but still we had fun. Nice views of the canyon, it was fun seeing the dam, and all the peaks we had hit up on the other side of the canyon. On the other side there's a nice view of Yakima and we could just barely see hints of Adams and Rainier in the distance. I bet it's stunning on a clear day.

Overall, this is a great area to hit up early in the season when the weather is bad in the passes... I think Yakima Canyon is especially beautiful when there's snow, but also it's going to be stunning soon when the flowers really pop!

This is just a road report.

Birb and I saw that the Umtanum Rec Area parking lot is officially closed. There's big machinery in the parking lot; we're unsure if the bridge itself is passible, but it's likely closed, given the signage (even though some folks appear to have ignored the closure sign and walked into the rec area).

Ethan, Brenda, Jonah, & Karen helped me celebrate my 76th birthday by taking a walk up Umtanum Canyon today.  The canyon is still open, but there was a piece of heavy machinery and construction material by the parking lot, so it probably won't be open much longer.  We walked up the canyon as far as the second stream crossing, but the crossing looked a little dicy for some members of the party (I had no problem), so we turned around and climbed up to our usual lunch spot on the buttress on the north side of the canyon.  It was breezy and cold up here, so we decided to sit against the cliffs in the lee of the buttress for lunch.  For dessert I passed out pieces of sweet almond cake that my wife had made.  Karen had a couple of candles for the occasion and, being full of hot air, I had little trouble blowing them both out.  After lounging in the sun for a while, all of us but Karen climbed up to the pillar a couple of hundred yards above the buttress.  There was lots of petrified wood scattered about the hillside here.  After an hour and a half or so we headed back the way we had come.  It was sunny and cool when we started, but warmed up nicely even though it clouded up some in the afternoon.  There was snow on the trail, but it wasn't compact or icy & I did fine without traction devices.  It was getting sloppy on the way back.  We saw one other hiker in the canyon while we were having lunch and no wildlife, but we did hear a canyon wren and saw buttercups in bloom.  Is spring on its way??!!  Anyway, if you've got to get older, this was the perfect way to mark the occasion!  

Ethan, Brenda, Jonah, Karen, & I decided to hike the Umtanum Canyon area one more time before it closes for the rest of the winter & spring.  We crossed the suspension bridge and climbed the trail up the ravine on the south side of the mouth of the canyon as if we were going to the Umtanum Ridgecrest.  When we got to the grove of aspens, however, we went left and followed the 2-track up to the bench at about 2000' that runs above both Umtanum & the Yakima Canyons.  For lack of a better name, I call this Umtanum Bench.  We walked south above the Yakima Canyon for a couple of miles or so until we came to a big side-canyon where we left the 2-track and walked east along a ridge-top to a nice lunch spot overlooking the Red's Fly Shop complex with views up and down the canyon.  We had a little sun when we started, but by 12:30 there was heavy overcast and it was quite a bit cooler.  We stayed about 45 min and then headed back.  Thanks to the Evans Canyon Fire in Sept, this whole area is a wasteland.  It will be green in the spring, but today it looked like a desert.  Along the way we heard a canyon wren and saw a couple of small groups of deer and met one other hiker ascending the ravine as we were going down.

We came back to Umtanum Creek for second time in a week.

Wildfires from the summer left much of the landscape barren. For the most time the air smelled like chimney. Fortunately, some pockets in the canyon were untouched, and that’s when the air was filled with familiar fragrance from sagebrushes.

With the view freed of bushes, we could clearly see animal tracks snaking on the cliffs... tracks used by mountain goats and the likes.

As we walked through a former homestead, we saw more apple trees, and pears. I plucked a low-hanging apple and took a bite. Not knowing what to expect, it actually tasted sweet! And I began to wonder, who would have lived here? And how was their lives back in the days? 

After the hike, we returned to the parking lot, cooked some meals before kiddos went off playing pretend-fishing at the creek.

It was a good day indeed. This is how life should be.