Memorial day '10

I finally got away from being trapped in the city with Alison on Memorial day weekend. Weather was supposed to be miserable all over the area so we chose to go close to Yakima just to try to get some vitamin D and whatever exercise we could. The hike didn't matter. We left Sat morning and arrived at Hardy Canyon after a long drive. The hike up was uneventful and unspectacular, but it was only partly cloudy and we were out hiking and that's all that mattered. Since a few friends had fruitful mushrooming trips recently, we decided to entertain ourselves by looking for some of our own. Low and behold, we ended up finding several morels. No huge bounty but hey, I was excited to find anything!

a baby morel that we didn't pick...

The canyon gave way to some rolling hill tops - not my normal type of hiking out here, so it was an entertaining change of pace. We hiked around for a bit on 4 wheel ATV roads before descending a different route.

After emerging from Hardy canyon

Picking our way back down, we ended up amongst several ATVs buzzing around us, which is not how the hike would have ideally ended, but not that bad and we had reasonable weather.

From there, we headed up the Teanaway River road and made camp at a forest service campground just before Dark. Hung out around the fire until it died and turned in. The casual weekend continued with a late start at the esmeralda trailhead. I was pretty surprised to find mostly snow just past the trailhead at ~3800'. It gave me some hope for this climbing season! Instead of taking DeRoux creek to Esmeralda we took the first turnoff and headed towards the pass between Koppen and DeRoux peaks. After a nice little climb we decided to head back to drier grounds, and relax at camp.

From the pass. View of the head of the middle fork teanaway river

Esmeralda. Looks more enticing now than when I climbed it.

The eve was nice and always fun to hear the rain pounding on your tent overnight while you're safely cozy inside. We got up and headed back to seattle to prep for Alison's lab going away bbq. All in all a fun, relaxing trip.