Warm weather, completely unseasonable warm weather for this time of year. It had been so warm that we decided to start doing spring hikes even though it’s still the middle of the winter. Seeing that the weekend was going to be nice, I decided to tackle again the section between Jones Creek and King’s Mountain trail in the Tillamook Forest. As some might remember, I did this hike, or at least planned to do this hike back in November. That time we were not able to do the whole thing because it was rainy and cloudy and also because we didn’t have enough cars for the car shuttle required. This time we had sun, clear skies and a very nice group of people. Rather than do it like I planned the previous time, this time I opted for going up from the King’s Mountain trailhead and follow the Wilson River trail all the way to Jones Creek. To that, I was adding the trail we discovered the first time, The Coronary Ridge. As it happens in a lot of my hikes, we added something more but I’ll get to that in a minute. The other new thing is that I finally took my brand new hiking kilt for a spin. I think the only word I can use to describe the experience is bliss. So after the short drive and leaving cars at both ends of our journey, we started on the King’s Mountain trail and soon veered off on the Wilson River trail. The climb was not as bad as I had expected. I guess that we were a lot closer to the trailhead the first time we did this. In any case, it didn’t take us long to reach the ridge and easily find the Coronary Ridge trail. At that point I had warned my fellow hikers about this section so much that they were all in the right mind set. So we climbed and got to the viewpoint where we turned around the first time. Only this time we actually got a view, a very nice view. From the map I had, I noticed that there was the possibility of connecting the Coronary Ridge trail with the Kings Mountain Trail. Looking around, I noticed a faint foot path and after talking the group into it, we started bushwhacking our way. It took us about an hour of steep ups and downs until we got to the Kings Mountain trail. At that point, it only made sense hike the extra mile and climb the extra 1000’ to the summit so we did that. The views up there were fantastic. I think this was the first time that I was able to see Mt Hood from Kings. After signing the log book at the top, we found a spot for lunch under the warm sun and beautiful views and then we headed back. We took the same connector trail thru Coronary Ridge back to the Wilson River trailhead. At that point, we still had more than a couple of miles to go to Jones Creek so without hesitation, we turned right and started hiking downhill. The rest of the hike was pretty much what I remembered from the first time, deep forests, fern covered slopes and beautiful scenery. After s long hike we finally made it to the bridge and then the last mile from Diamond Mill to Jones where our cars were waiting for us.
You can check the pictures
here
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