Where Curiosity Takes Me: Mount Townsend via Dirty Face Ridge

View West during hike

What a gorgeous weekend for Washington! We were in the high 70’s and even into the 80’s! We’ve been so lucky with our weather the past week. *knock on wood* What do I do with a day off and nice weather? HIKE, of course! One of my favorite day hikes I’ve done since I’ve gotten into hiking is Mount Townsend. Only about 1.5 hours from home it’s a challenging hike with some of the most beautiful views I’ve experienced. I hiked to the summit once before two years ago via the Little Quilcene Trail and oh boy was it hard, but sooo worth it…I never want to do those 20something switchbacks again in my life. This time we took the Dirty Face Ridge Trail on the other side of the mountain.

Half of our group departed by 5 am Sunday morning and the other half of us headed out of Bremerton by 6:30. It was a great idea for us to bring walkie talkies so we could find out where each other were…good thing the trail really only goes one way because we got confused on which channels to use!

Up on the peak

The Dirty Face Ridge Trail is a little shorter and a little steeper than the trail I had previously hiked. This first half of this trail was brutal, I trudged along and stopped probably every 5 mins because it was so steep. Thankfully Stephen made me a nice walking stick, he was probably tired of hearing me complain. It is 2.2 miles from the TH to the ridge, this is where we met up with the other half of our group. I couldn’t even report the time it took us to get up there because I was so hot and tired I didn’t even pay attention. We took a nice little break together on top of the ridge, took some pictures and climbed some rocks. This trail definitely had better views than the other side, we determined the names of peaks out in the distance and pointed out where other trails we had each hiked were. It’s something else to look over at a mountain/ridge/pass/valley and be able to say "I’ve hiked there". It makes me feel accomplished.

Entering into the Buckhorn Wilderness

The rest of the hike to the summit we pretty much stayed together. We moseyed on up taking time for photo opts and geocaching. There are 1.4 miles left from the ridge to the summit and this half of the hike was much easier. It was also more enjoyable with the great company we "ran into" for the rest of the hike! ;)

SOOOO many people out hiking today! We only saw a couple people on the first half of the hike and a few more groups once we got to the junction where there is yet another trail you can take. Once we got to the summit…goodness it was like there was a party going on up there! Everyone and their neighbor were enjoying the sunshine and beautiful views! Along Dirty Face Ridge we could see west and had beautiful views of the Olympics the entire time so we snagged a great spot below the rocks on the east side so we could look out over a new landscape. As sunny as it was it was still a little smoggy. We could still spot Mt Rainier and Mt Baker and a few other peaks I’m no so familiar with along with the Puget Sound.

We treated ourselves to a well deserved break for almost 2 hours up on the summit. It was nice to get our shoes off and be barefoot (well REAL barefoot). We found the geocache hidden up there also! We later learned that our friend Emily had ended up hiking up to Townsend today also! We didn’t know until we were already headed home and had phones turned back on…Em you should have come and said hi!!

It was difficult headed back down the mountain as well. There was a lot of lose rock to slip through and once we got back to the beginning half it was brutal on the knees. Back at the car we followed Lance’s brilliant idea and walked down a few hundred feet of the Tubal Cain Mine Trail (where the parking lot is) and soaked our feet in the super cold Dungeness River. A very long day of hiking with great friends, just the way I love spending my free time! I will definitely take this trail again when I want to go up to Mt Townsend in the future, can’t beat the views!