5.5 miles of Meadow Mountain
Description of hike courtesy of www.vtrail.com
Topographical Map generated with my GPS and MapSource
This hike was an exercise in getting lost. What started out as a 4 mile hike to Crystal Lake ended with a wrong turn and an 11 mile \ nature walk.
I don't want to say that Meadow Mountain is a bad trail, I do want to say that it is not for me. I go hiking for 2 primary reasons: For the exercise and for the Pacific Northwest Scenery. Well, I got the first, but I really did not get the second.
The trail started off for the first mile and a half or so as a complete nature hike . The brush and what not made it impossible for Dan and I to see anything. The trail could have been anywhere in the country.
When we came to a fork in the trail, we took the wrong path. Instead of taking the path to Crystal Lake, we took the path to Meadow Mountain. Actually Dan and I made a bet on which path was the correct one. I picked the right path and Dan picked the path that ended up being wrong. We followed my choice for a few hundred yards but when it seemed to not be maintained, I decided that Dan was probably right and back up to the other path.
We trudged on for 5.5 miles total before we decided that we were not going to hit the lake. It is a good thing we stopped when we did. The path had 12 more miles to the end if we had continued.
We stopped for 20 minutes and poor Isis was quite thirsty. We packed back put and headed out. The way back was slightly faster but by mile 8 I ran out of water. I had slight swelling in my had which was probably from dehydrations, so I drank more water around that time. I am sure this is what lead to my water shortcoming.
We made it make it back to the car and I cracked open the cooler and had a large drink. I felt a lot better at that point.
While the trail was fairly boring and we missed the sight we were heading for, we did travel the farthest hike ever which makes it an accomplishment in itself. I am pretty happy about the hike as a whole.
