Southern Gifford Pinchot sight seeing

Yesterday, with Whitney's stepdad riding shotgun I set out to find another route to the south side Yale Reservoir. We started in chelatchie prairy. After numerous closed roads we started on one that had a washout that I wasn't willing to attempt by myself.



We wound up back on nf 54 we took that to the 57 to the 5704 to the 58. The 58 was new to me, it was overgrown but the brush gave way to a great view of mt St. Helens and mt Rainer peaking out around a hill.




And a small pond



The 58 turned into the 64 and we took that to wind river road. We took wind river road up till it became fs 30. There we gained a ton if elevation and into huckleberry country after turning onto fs 24 we started backtracking the back country discovery route. We took our time and did a lot more sight seeing then we did on the discovery trip.
Here's some pics

Mt Adams from the surprise lakes












This is south prairy it is drained by a lave tube. Every spring it floods because the lava tube freezes shut. Once the lava tube thaws it drains. The forest trees can't sustain the seasonal flooding that's why it's there.





This is part of the big lava flow it is 12 miles long and 5 miles across.

hells yeah ben, looks like a good day!

Bronze.

Thanks for sharing Ben! This is inspiration for me to get my heep fixed up.

Nice trip report Ben

Thanks for the pictures. My wife has been begging me to go find some huckleberries, we might just have to go for a drive.