Boulder River 11-5-11

On Saturday, Dave and I took Cedar out for a hike on the Boulder River Trail.  This 8+ mile round-trip hike is a lowland hike, so it's pretty good year round and has very little elevation gain.  For those who aren't up for that long of a hike the 1st waterfall is about a mile in.
It has been getting colder, darker and wetter as it usually does here in the northwest over the winter, but this day was glorious.  Last time I did the Boulder River trail it was in the spring with patches of snow, huge fallen trees completely blocking the trail and it was just me and Cedar.  I was happy to have the trail all to myself, but a bit nervous when I thought I saw a cougar track.  This time I had terrific company and sunshine was beaming down all over us.

The river was full and cloudy with rain run-off. 

The waterfalls were full too and so pretty as they cascaded continuously down the cliff’s contours.  We would like to go back and scramble up to see where they come from. 

Despite the warm sunshine, winter was not far off.  In the shade of the trees it was quite cold and we could see the snow line on the frosted hilltops above.

I was pleased to see some fun fungi along the way too.  The purple is violet cort, the orange is sulfur shelf (also called chicken of the woods) and the coral-looking ones are corals.  I saw another that I should have taken a picture of that was very jelly-like.  I thought it had just gone bad, but was actually an excellent sample of toothed jelly fungus.

What a wonderful hike in every way!

Favorite picture of the day.  J