Hike report 9/8/14: Maynard Burn Trail

I've already fallen over a week behind with the updates I had planned for my weekly hike, but let's just try to catch up.  Perhaps I can.  Usually (except this time?) I won't go into a huge amount of detail here, but just put my notes up here and some highlights (if any--this week's hike certainly had fewer).  As long as I'm doing introductory stuff, I'll mention that I'd like to also post trail reports on the WTA site--a great resource--but I think I'll only do that in instances where I actually get to the end of the trail.

There's a bit of a backstory concerning this particular hike, though.  Ever since we moved to Sequim, we have had a view of the Olympic Mountains.  In particular, a mountain - actually a ridge of mountains - directly to our south has been particularly alluring: lofty, bare, and frequently covered in snow, I tend to think the summit in this ridge called "Baldy" must have inspired the name of a road in our neighborhood, Silberhorn Road.

(As an aside: is "Baldy" a stupid name for a mountain or what?  Who came up with that?  Reading online, I find that "locals" are the ones who call it that, but it may also be called Mt. O'Neill.  I much prefer to call it Mt. O'Neill.  Or we could get really smart and call it "Badly" but that doesn't even make sense, because it is a fine mountain.)

So anyway, ever since moving to Sequim I have had in the back of my mind that I want to climb up this mountain.  We can see other mountains from our house, but this peak is the most prominent and generally impressive.  (Anyway you can practically drive to the top of Blue Mountain, so it doesn't count.)  But I never felt like I have had time to attempt this climb.  In recent years I have discovered I am in a lot worse shape than I used to be.  But on the plus side, I eventually came to find out (I'm not sure why it took so long) that there is a trail of sorts.  Not a great trail, but more of a really steep track created by scramblers.  I wish it had been a well designed trail, since I am out of shape and that would make the ascent much easier.  But hey, it is what it is.  At least the trail, for being unofficial and unmaintained, is very easy to follow.

So I went an hour up this trail, and when I came back to look at my map, I realized, wow, I got a lot farther than I realized.  I achieved half the elevation gain in just over an hour!  Maybe I actually can make it to the top, I thought.  So that was encouraging.  But I'm still putting it off another year, because I will enjoy it a lot more if I am in better shape.  This time around it just about killed me.  If I can't get in better shape by this time next year, well then I will just go for it, remembering to take my time and bring a lot of water.  It seems that a loop is available (the Tyler Peak "trail") alleviating the steepest part, which I went up this time.

So here's my report.  I'm going to try to keep a meticulous (digital) hiking 'journal' just for fun.

Here's a map showing my approximate route, and how far I got in an hour (and five minutes), and most of the ridgeline that is my future destination.  Yeah, I didn't get very far, but that is a lot of little lines and I had to hop over each one of them.

 Highlights of the trip pretty much involved our native hairy manzanita (Arctostaphylos columbiana).  I knew it grew up here, having seen it along the Dungeness River Road as high as 3,200', but I had no idea there were so many fine specimens to be found in the area.  This is where the trail crosses the abandoned road at 3,600'.

At 4,300', this is the highest I have ever seen hairy manzanita in the Olympic Mts--in the whole state for that matter.  Prior to this the highest I knew of it was about 3,950' along Deer Park Road (though I didn't finish exploring higher up along a ridge there to see where it ended).

Then we have this HUGE open glade of ancient and very impressive manzanita plants along the road to the trailhead - WOW!

This concludes my report.