Buckhorn Wilderness

 Olympic National Forest

July 2002

This summer my 'big' hike was with brother-in-law Doug Davis and a friend of his Ben Risk.

We had planned on going four days 32 miles buy actually finished the trip in three days.

The main things we wanted to see on our trip were the two fully restored CCC storm shelters in the area, two mine shafts from the early 1900's and the remains of a B-17 that crashed in 1948.

Here is a picture or Ben and I at the parking lot of the Dungeness Trailhead.

  9 Miles from the the starting point and 3500 feet higher in elevation 1500 to 5000 we made camp at the second CCC Shelter called Boulder Shelter.  A large avalanche had swept through the area during that winter and all the trees around the shoulder were snapped in half about 20 feet from the ground.  The shelter gets its name from all the large boulder near it.

This is me sitting relaxing in camp after dinner. We spotted a bear just before reaching camp and it was pretty funny watching us try and throw the rope for the bear bag over a high limb.

After it got dark we went for an evening hike to view the snow covered peaks by moon light. at 5000' even during July it was near freezing.

This is me drinking hot chocolate in the morning.  This was only the second time I had used my REI Half Dome tent. It is a great two man tent.  Doug's Kelty tent is on the foreground. The Half Dome is light for a two man tent. I carried the whole thing myself and didn't feel burdened.

We ended up having cross three snow fields to get over Marmot Pass.  We were one very slight slip away from falling 3000' down a steep slope. We were told afterwards that it is very foolish to cross snowfields without crampons.

This picture was taken by be from within the Tubal Cain Mine looking back out. We went in about 500 meters. But the mine shaft goes much further back.

Here we are having dinner the second night. There was an old water tank left over from the mining in the 1920's lying in the campground that we used as a back rest.

The morning of the third day we tried to wash up in the Copper Creek (Copper is what they mined) but the water was very icy and I didn't do much more that get my hair wet.

This is me taken from below by Doug.  This was near the end of the hike crossing a bridge over the Copper Creek.

Here is us at the end of the hike.  We set the camera on the car to take this shot since no one else was around.  The car had a flat tire when we got back. Nice welcome to civilization.

Here is a list of the gear I carried on the trip:

Gregory Whitney Pack

REI Half Dome Tent (tent, rain fly, ground sheet, stakes poles)

MSR Superfly Stove plus two canisters MSR Pro fuel

1.5 liter cook pot with lid

kitchen bag (spoon, pot holder, sugar, salt, camp suds, cloth)

first aid kit

gear repair kit

two REI dry touch shirts

North Face fleece sweatshirt

REI medium weight thermal underwear

Eddie Bauer Fleece ski cap

Patagonia midweight gloves

Food bag - three mountain house freeze dried dinners, hot coco etc