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Valerie and myself had originally planned to do the entire Tongue Mountain Range as a day hike, but after I developed an ear ache this weekend and saw that it would be over 16 miles (spotting cars for a loop from 9N to the point to Clay Meadows) we decided mid-hike to just climb Five Mile Mt and head down to Clay Meadows from there.
It started as a gray and chilly morning. Trails were wet and muddy from Saturday's rains. We were slow to make the ridge, passing only a small group at the first lean-to. We managed to take in some decent views despite the cloud cover. As the day wore on, as we were descending the col to Clay Meadows the skies turned blue and temps warmed nicely. Along the trail down you follow a brook that has these nice cascading waterfalls (see picture below). It was a treat as every 1/4 mile you were greeted by another small falls. Also through this stretch there was an abundance of birdlife.
Clay Meadows was unique with tall pines and lots of ferns. The forest literally went from dead leaves to vibrant green in a matter of inches. Across the street from the parking area there's a series of rapids and water falls, which I recorded with my digital camera to give you an idea of their intensity. Looked like there were a few camping areas near these rapids, but with an active road being so close I'm not sure it would interest me to ever camp there.
We recorded our tracks for the hike which I've attached as a TPO (Topo) file and as a text file contaiing waypoint data.
Valerie and myself had originally planned to do the entire Tongue Mountain Range as a day hike, but after I developed an ear ache this weekend and saw that it would be over 16 miles (spotting cars for a loop from 9N to the point to Clay Meadows) we decided mid-hike to just climb Five Mile Mt and head down to Clay Meadows from there.
It started as a gray and chilly morning. Trails were wet and muddy from Saturday's rains. We were slow to make the ridge, passing only a small group at the first lean-to. We managed to take in some decent views despite the cloud cover. As the day wore on, as we were descending the col to Clay Meadows the skies turned blue and temps warmed nicely. Along the trail down you follow a brook that has these nice cascading waterfalls (see picture below). It was a treat as every 1/4 mile you were greeted by another small falls. Also through this stretch there was an abundance of birdlife.
Clay Meadows was unique with tall pines and lots of ferns. The forest literally went from dead leaves to vibrant green in a matter of inches. Across the street from the parking area there's a series of rapids and water falls, which I recorded with my digital camera to give you an idea of their intensity. Looked like there were a few camping areas near these rapids, but with an active road being so close I'm not sure it would interest me to ever camp there.
We recorded our tracks for the hike which I've attached as a TPO (Topo) file and as a text file contaiing waypoint data.
(they say class IV, but it's moving pretty fast and has some logs jammed up in the first falls).
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