About an hour up Highway 2 is the turn off for Beckler Road. The road follows along the Beckler River which is a fairly decent sized river, and makes up a good percentage of the Skykomish River where it runs in. There are a fair number of unofficial campsites along the river, and on this Wednesday, most of them were open. However, there were more people up here than one would have thought. Beckler Road is NF-65, and Jared drove up that way until he came across NF-6550, and then decided to take that road. The reason was that 6550 follows the stream whereas 65 goes up along the hillside. Both are shown to meet up again further up the canyon. HOWEVER, 6550 only goes a short distance and then comes to an end. Jared did find a few nice camp spots along the stream on this road though!
Knowing that this area may be a bit busy, Jared intended to follow NF-65 up to the summit and then down the other side into the North Fork Skykomish drainage. It was a good road all the way over, and after crossing the Skykomish River, he turned left, and drove up along the river.
Here's some shots where Jared and Indy stopped to look at the river tumbling down a rocky canyon.
Indy was starting to get totally stir crazy at this point, so Jared had to get her out of the truck and up a trail as soon as possible. They decided to take the West Cady Ridge Trail. It only took a little ways to find an amazing bridge crossing a narrow rocky canyon with a white water creek tumbling through below. Indy was pulling on her leash like a mad bull! Too much energy!
Some nice flowers growing on a mossy rock...
Indy stopping only because Jared told her to...
After Jared was pulled around for a while on the trail, it was time for lunch! They hopped in the truck and went back down the road to where the bridge crossed the North Fork Skykomish River. It was a beautiful day in the mid-80's, even up here in the mountains.
After lunch, it was time to head back over to Highway 2. At his point, it was about time to go home, but Jared decided to check out a few more spots for reference on future trips. We had all turned off at Money Creek Campground before, usually to head up to Lake Dorothy, but Jared decided to stay on the old highway and park where the road now ends (the bridge washed out a few years ago). They then hiked down the road to where the bridge washed out and found a nice doggy swimming hole!
That pretty much concluded this trip! There will assuredly be more in the near future.
