Dar and I headed out for the first car camp of the season, and decided to check out Notch Pass after reading Karen Syke's lastest trail report in the Seattle P.I. mentioning it. Good thing we knew the way to Lower Biq Quilcene trailhead - some of the road signs are missing. The way used to be well marked. About a mile south of Quilcene, turn onto Penny Creek Road, bear left at the first major junction and bear right at the next two (first unsigned, second is to Tunnel). The spur to the small parking area is marked. It was warm and a bit humid as we set off on the Lower Biq Quilcene trailhead, only meeting two bikers with dog. The trail, a road in its earlier life, is quite gentle walking. About 2 1/2 miles up pass Camp Bark Shanty, signed, and continue a short ways beyond and cross the river to the marked Notch Pass trail. The trail climbs, steeply at times, then abruptly descends to a tributory creek. This stretch is perhaps half a mile long. We speculated that perhaps at one time you crossed the river at the camp, but the trail was detoured to cross the river on the main trail's bridge. The trail follows the north side of the stream at a nearly level grade, before crossing on a downed log, where it begins to climb. Rhododendrons line the entire way, with buds ranging from less than 1/4"" to almost 1/2"". This will be quite pretty in perhaps a month. The trail hits an overgrown logging spur and follows it to - a paved road! It appears to deadend here, but follow the road south a tiny bit and flagging shows where the trail continues. The trail is again reasonably flat, then begins to climb. It sidehills a dim gully, filled with blowdown, then crosses a short, hot talus slope where it crosses the gully to climb in a steep traverse across another talus slope. A minute or two later you step out onto - another road! Gravel, this time. The trail continues, only it starts to drop, drop and looks like it'll drop right back down to Quilcene. DAR and I decided not to check out how far the trail dropped. We decided that the road must be the pass and finished lunch on the grassy verge. A van came by, and I'm sure they wondered what hikers where doing sitting on the side of the road. We dropped back to the first road, and decided to follow it back, figuring correctly it was the main Big Quilcene road. We met hikers the next day at Mt. Zion, who confirmed the road was indeed the pass, and that they had hiked there on the trail we had started descending before calling it quits. If you want rhodies, some creeks, and to check out something different, do Notch Pass. It's not a bad spring hike, when most other hikes are still snowed in. If you don't want to end up on a road, skip this one. By the way, the mosquitoes were out, but they weren't a nuisance and were moving slowly enough to smack.

I had seen this trail listed in the WTA work party lists for a while and wondered about it. I finally picked up a description from the ranger station and decided to try it on a day when I wanted only a short hike as it's listed as only 2.1 miles each way. Since we had a late start yesterday it seemed a good time to try it. The trailhead is accessible by driving from the Quilcene Ranger Station one mile to Penny Creek Road, another 1.4 miles to the ""Y"" at the two gravel roads where you take the left fork, then another .9 mile to an unmarked road (which has a small sign when you're on it ""010"". This infrequently used forest road will take you to the trailhead in 1.4 miles. When we got to the trailhead we were suprised to see two other cars parked and wondered how we were to squeeze the jeep alongside the very narrow road. Fortunately, the hikers from the other cars were just then returning, and one of them graciously moved his car to let us park. If this trail becomes more popular, the parking will really be a problem. It was lucky to run into these people for another reason. We were told that the trail continued beyond the end at road 100, as specified in the forest service flyer. In fact, one can take it all the way to the Lower Big Quilcene trail near Bark Shanty. The Notch Pass trail was built originally in the 1930s by the CCC and had fallen into dis-use for many years. Evidently it's an historical route, used by Native Americans for hundreds of years before that. WTA has done an amazing job at restoring the trail. I loved seeing the little bench (at about the half-mile mark) with WTA carved into it. The trail is steep, switchbacks up the east side of the Quilcene Range to Notch Pass at 2500 feet. (That's about a 2000 feet elevation gain in 2.1 miles.) Following the directions from the other hikers (one of whom had worked on the trail), we crossed the road and found the trail continuing, now downhill losing about 400 feet until it reached the paved road that leads up to Mount Townsend. Turning right on the paved road for a short distance we spied a ribbon and the continuation of the trail downwards. We found ourselves in a beautiful forest, moving high above a creek, passing ""Mosquito Rock"", Allen Creek, and finally stopped at Townsend Creek for lunch. We had dropped another 600 feet from the paved road. Since it was getting late and we hadn't planned on such a long hike, we turned back there. Of course we had to regain 1000 feet of elevation before we could do our descent to the car. I think we probably did about 7 miles altogether. It was great fun to explore an area we had never seen before, on a trail still in process (much more work is planned; many ribbons indicating work to be done).