16 miles of hiking • 4000' elevation gain •
After Mississippi Head on Sunday, I drove out to the north side of Hood and made camp at the Elk Cove Trailhead. Super nice campsite with easy stream access. However, the next morning as I set out at 8am on foot up the road to the Pinnacle Ridge TH, I quickly realized a camp up there would have had a stellar view of Hood bathed in sunset and sunrise glow directly through the tent mesh. Aw well, next time. So I started my hike from Pinnacle Ridge, up through the cool but eerie burn area (and by cool I mean HOTTT...I thought I was going to drink through all my water in the first hour!), and up to Wy'east Basin, looped around Cairn Basin, headed back and on to Elk Cove and descended the Elk Cove trail where my car was patiently waiting. I definitely was not making record-breaking time because the FLOWERS ARE OUTSTANDING RIGHT NOW!! And I was also trying to keep an eye out for the Dollar Lake trail, which I still missed, so that ate up time. I had hoped to do an all-encompassing northern tour with Dollar Lake and Barrett Spur to the black knoll...but not meant to be this time around. Got back to my car by 3:30pm.
