Every now and then you embark on a hike that you know it’s going to be an interesting adventure and then you get surprised by it when you realize you underestimated it. Luckily the small group I had for this hike was up to the challenge and, although it took a long day, made it in good spirits to the end. While planning this trip, I knew it was a long hike and I knew we had to cross the Siouxon Creek a couple of times. This was not supposed to be a major obstacle as this river doesn’t carry a lot of water. What I wasn’t expecting was to find a lot of snow at higher elevations. The other thing I was hoping for, was to have two cars so we could do a short car shuttle between two possible entry points and shave 3 miles from this hike (without the car shuttle, the loop is about 15 miles). When we met, early on Sunday morning, it seemed for a while that it was not going to happen until Adam showed up. By then it was 5 of us so we had two cars and three miles less to hike. Getting to the trail was fairly easy although we started noticing a bit of snow on the road which wasn’t a very good sign. After leaving the cars in the respective parking lots, we headed on a short and nice trail down to the Siouxon River where we found our first challenge of the day. Upon seeing the river we took our shoes off and without hesitation crossed the creek. You’ll notice in the pictures that we were wearing sweaters and jackets and gloves… it was cold, just imagine how cold the water was. After that exhilarating wakeup call and getting dry and dressed again, we continued our route to the peak. The trail, from that point on, was a steady, relentless hill offering very limited views of nearby, snow dusted mountains and ridges. Despite the not so good weather, it almost felt like walking inside a cake towards the frosting. As we were gaining elevation, we started getting into deep some deep snow. This was completely unexpected as I thought we would only find a couple of inches at the highest point of the hike. The surprise was to find about a foot or more of fresh powder in most of the upper section. At some point we started wishing we had snowshoes with us. With all the snow, the trail became a bit obscure but Jocelyn who kept in front most of the time did an excellent job at finding it. At some point we came to an open slope that gave us the views we were looking for. We had, for a very short time, A wonderful, first row view of Mt St Helens. Shortly after that, we veered up for the last portion of the trail and found the unmarked summit of Huffman Peak. We were still in deep snow and not well equipped to make a stop for lunch right there so after regrouping, we started hiking down or a very steep ridge. As soon as we got out of the snow and found a sheltered area, we made a quick stop for lunch to then continue our trip down. As we were hiking, we started hearing a big waterfall nearby which I didn’t know we were going to see. At some point the mountain just opened in front of us giving us an incredible view of the Wildcat falls from the top. I wasn’t aware that this waterfall was a couple hundred feet tall so it was quite the surprise. The trail circled around a couple of times and eventually brought us to the base of the waterfall before heading back to the lower valley of the Siouxon Creek. As we were losing light, we crossed a small tributary to the Siouxon Creek and continued on what we thought would be a trail to a bridge that we never found. After about a mile of detour and realizing it was getting late and dark, we back tracked and crossed the river one more time knowing that a short bushwhack up would put us back on the main trail. Once there, it was only about three more miles to one of the cars. When we got there I realized that it had been a very good idea to have two cars as we came out of the forest in the dark.
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