Hiking Esmerelda Basin

So on Sunday, August 13th, we woke up at a reasonable time and decided that we should go hiking. Earlier that week there was a local hiking special on Channel 7, showing the top 10 hikes in the Northwest. Dave had seen one out by Cle Elum that he thought we should try, so we got ourselves together and headed out there.

After travelling approximately 90 miles east to Cle Elum, we managed to find a good Green Map (showing the forest service roads) and meandered our way up to the trailhead (another 30 minute journey) and arrived at 1:30 pm...it took us almost 20 minutes to eat, potty Fiona, get all geared up and be ready to hit the trail. When we were finally ready, we approached the beginning of the trail only to find out that Jezebelle was not welcome where we wanted to go.

Pause, frown. What? That's right. We drove 2 hours to a trail where dogs were prohibited.

It barely phased us though. We regularly go to Clark Lake where dogs have to be on-leash and we let her off-leash and so does everyone else who brings their dogs there, so...we are used to breaking the dog laws. Besides, we're up here in the middle of nowhere, what's the chance of running into an actual forest ranger, right?

Yeah, so we get up to the turn off for the trail we wanted to take to Lake Ingalls and honestly, if we got 150 feet up the trail, I would be surprised, and here comes the forest ranger. Blink, blink. Excuse me?

He explained that dogs aren't allowed at the lake and that we should really just turn around right now (cuz apparently we could have hiked up to the summit with Jezebelle, about another 2 miles, but not all the way to the lake - which was about 5 miles). So we reluctantly headed back down to the trail to Esmerelda Basin and hiked that way for about an hour.

It was a pretty hike. Hot in some sections because there was sparse tree coverage, but it was nice terrain and there were some good views of mountain meadows and mountains, so it wasn't a total loss - besides, we thought it was a 3 1/2 mile hike to the lake, but it turned out that it was a 5 1/2 mile hike and starting at 2:00 pm, we never would have made it that far anyway. Turns out, in the end, we hiked for 2 1/2 hours (or so) and only covered 2.1 miles total, so...we coulda gone to Green Lake in Seattle and travelled further (if we walked all the way around it's about 3 miles), but...it's the adventure and the possibility of new sites and all that makes it worth hauling that much crap around in the woods, right?

Fiona did great on the way over there and she seemed happy during the hike. She broke my heart as we broke up our "picnic" at the "top" of our hike by crying "ma ma, ma ma" over and over as we loaded her back into her seat for the journey down the mountain. It was the first time I've ever heard her say "Ma ma" so clearly, it was tough to hear it said in such obvious distress. Once we got on our way though, she was immediately soothed by the sites and sounds and motion of her dad carrying her through the woods.

By the time we got home, we were all pretty pooped...and speaking of poop, Fiona lost about half her body weight round about Renton (about 10 minutes north of home) when her new solid food constipation broke up...I've never seen so much pooh come out of my little human. Wow. We had quite a mess when we got home, but we all needed a bath/shower anyway, so it wasn't too tragic.