Mt Stukel

To start off the long weekend we made plans to hike up Mt Stukel with our friends Mike and Laura.  Stukel is not as challenging of a hike as Hogsback, but it's much longer!  It's about 2.5 miles to the first summit and then down a little and back up to the second and tallest summit.  The temps were much higher today - in the 40s - but there was still lots of snow (very wet snow) on the ground.  Of course we took our faithful hiking partner Alee with us and tried to convince her not to eat all the deer poo!

Starting out there was dense fog so we couldn't see too much in front of us.

The beginning of the trail was an old mining road that's still used so it was fairly easy...

By 20 minutes into the hike, we all started taking our jackets off - it was getting warm!

About 1/4 of the way into the hike, the fog started to clear and we left the old road to hike up the mountain.  The trail was "hit or miss" - not well defined - especially with the snow!

 Stopping for a quick Alee photo break!

 Ed...amazed at how warm it is!

Some of the "trail"

 Ed and Mike found an old beer can on the trail - "Schlitz" - anyone remember that?  The can said it was brewed in Portland.

 Mike was super thirsty...but no luck - it was empty.

 Alee was love running around in the warm snow! 

 Our doctor friend Laura said this looked like a large cat, but there was no skull to be sure. 

 An old structure at the top of the first peak - maybe a fire look out?

Once we got to the first peak, we looked toward the second peak and saw dark clouds moving in.  Ed's phone told us to expect rain soon, so we turned around to head back.  By this point, we had been hiking in lots of deep wet snow so we all had cold wet feet and cold wet pants!  After a quick lunch we headed back down to find that many of our snow foot prints had already melted!  Needless to say it was a slippery hike down.

 

 Mike and Laura coming down from the peak.

 Ed heading down.

View of Upper Klamath Lake from the Mountain.