November 25, 2007
After a long hike yesterday to Mount Isolation, I decided to try something light today. This is my 2nd time attempt to climb this mountain. I tried it once with Lynn several years ago. We ended up on the wrong trail. I tried a different trail today, and it seemed to go much better. There is no sign at the trailhead, and the trail is marked with a mixture of oranges ribbons, blue ribbons, cairns . . .
. . . and these plywood arrows.
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Maddie was with me. She had fun slipping around on this ice.
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There has been lots of logging activity on this mountain, making it tough to follow the trail.
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I came to some semi-open ledges where I got a nice view.
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Maddie near the top.
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I then saw another cairn across the way. That spot must be a little higher.
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Sometimes it is tough to tell whether you are at the top of a mountain or not. I brought my GPS to help out, but had forgotten to download the topo map into it. As a result, I still was unsure if I was at the top or not. I looked around for more cairns or a place where the trail continues, but couldn't find anything. There was an inch or so of snow which made it tough to find the trail. I couldn't remember the exact elevation of the mountain, but knew it was a little over 2000'. I was at 2050', so I guess I'm at the top.
Well, when I got home I just had to download my GPS track to my computer to compare it against the topo map. Looks like this is strike 2 for getting to the top of this mountain. Here's the track.
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Fortunately, this mountain is close to home, so I'll give it another try.
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