5/21/11 Maple Flat Hike

So the week after the hiking adventure on my previous post, I did another hike, much more modest and low-key. I decided I wanted to hike up to Maple Flat, which is a big meadow on Maple Mountain, the mountain directly south of Y Mountain:

Click to enlarge so you can see my awesome map-marking skills

Once again I was unable to muster up anybody to come hiking with me. This time I actually tried, but either people couldn't go or they didn't answer. So I went by myself again, which people continued to chastise me for. But hey nobody will go with me, so what can I do? I'm not going to let the fact that I'm going alone keep me from going at all. I just go with my iPod, some fresh blackberries, and water and Gatorade. And enjoy nature.

Hiking the Y is just the first stage of getting to Maple Flat. You can see on the map the steep switchbacks that lead to the Y. From the Y the hike actually gets cool, leading into Slide Canyon which cuts between Y Mountain and Maple Mountain. Actually, my goal in hiking Maple Flat was to see how much snow there was up there. I still want to backpack up there and do an overnighter before the end of spring term... wow that leaves me with barely a week and a half. Well hopefully I'll be able to round some people up for it next week.

Anyway, I got past Bunny Rock and started into Slide Canyon. The weather was amazing. It had rained earlier that day, leaving everything looking wet, green, and fresh. But pretty soon, before I even made it to Bear Flat (which I'll mark on the map of the next post I do) the snow started appearing and I figured that finding the trail to Maple Flat wouldn't be very fun. In fact, it was pretty hard. See, I've never done the Maple Flat hike and I couldn't even remember where the trail was supposed to start. I mean, I had the vague idea that it started from the big boulder in Bear Flat and led south-southwest up into the trees, but I'd never taken a very good look. So when I got there, I spent a frustrating fifteen minutes looking for the trail. I think I found it at one point, but it was covered with a pretty impressive snow drift, at least three to four feet tall that I didn't want to sink my running shoes and cotton ankle socks into. I turned around and tried to find a different route, but eventually called Jeff my brother to ask him where he remembered the Maple Flat trail being. He couldn't give me much better advice than what I had sort of imagined, so I just went back for one more try. When I got to that big snow drift, I looked closely at it and I saw what I thought were some very old snowshoe tracks. And it turned out that as I followed those tracks, the snow was pretty well packed and I didn't sink like two feet in. And after a little while I found where the trail actually was! Although big snow drifts covered most of it, I was able to follow basically where the trail went, making my own tracks so I'd know how to come back down.

After I while I reached a point where the trail died, but I could see what looked like a clearing above me, so I went up the steep incline and came out in what I thought was Maple Flat! Of course the whole place was covered in snow, at least a foot.

If you look at the map, you'll see that my blue path doesn't quite make it to the red X that is the Maple Flat. The Maple Flat is a meadow with no trees, no bushes, and is easily big enough to play Ultimate Frisbee on. By the way, lots of people call the whole area up there Maple Flats. I think I like Maple Flats in the plural better than Maple Flat... cuz I kinda feel like there is more than one Flat up there. Anyway. I didn't want to tramp around too much in the snow, so I never made it over to the big field that I would see on my next excursion to the Flats, which was last Saturday (epic blog post coming). Instead, I just went to the north-northwest edge of that ridge jutting over over the valley and took some lame pictures on my brick cellphone. Argh I'm an idiot for not bringing my camera...

But around then the storm clouds started rolling in. I decided that I didn't want to be caught in a bad rainstorm up there, so I turned around without doing too much exploration and started hightailing it down the mountain. Sure enough, fat drops started hitting me and I beat a hasty retreat down the snow drift-covered trail back to Bear Flat. Coming out of there and out of Slide Canyon, I looked up and the clouds cleared over in the west to let the sun rays come into the valley while the rain kept coming down on me. I love that mix of setting sun and falling rain. It always makes me appreciate how beautiful the world can be.

Stay tuned later for my next exciting (i.e. long, wordy, and pictureless) blog post about my hike to the top of Maple Mountain and Y Mountain last Saturday!