[DuckDuckGoose]

Start Time: 0645 Peak Time: 1115 Finish Time: 1545 Everyone's favorite buoyant waterfowl got an early start as promised. The start was promising enough, as the lower sections of the trail up to the fire road are in good shape. Once you cross over the fire road, the quality of the trail takes a marked dip. While not horrible, it definitely needs some work. The initial switchbacks are typical, but once you get past that, there are some pretty muddy spots that make footing (even for slow DDG) a bit tricky. Obviouly, it's in the works to get this done as there are lots of stakes and forest service (I assume) tape with recommendations for improvement written on them. Not too many bugs to my taste (literally). Mainly on the backside of the butte and around the small tarn. Mostly the inoffensive gnats. But a lot of folks and woofers ran into some rather aggressive and territorial bees/ yellow jackets around the 3900 foot mark, with a hive either on the trail or just off of it. Either I had good karma with them or they feared the wily waterfowl as I got away without seeing them. Myself and a very fit & fast couple were the first one's to the top. Cloudy and limited views initially, but it cleared up nicely. No appreciable wind at the peak. I hung around for about an hour soaking it all in. About 20 other folks on the trail as I headed down. Saw a totally unprepared group of hikers, between the six of them they maybe had 2 liters of water, no food and all looked pretty miserable when I told them how much further they had to go. It took me as long to get down as to get up as I socialized with most of the folks that I came upon. My only concern people wise (other than the unprepared ones) was someone was shooting like crazy for a while down on the fire road . Just a little unnerving as the volume of gunfire was a little high, and thanks to DDG's previous service in the Airborne Goose Troopers (of course), knew that the aim was going to be a bit off at that rate. All in all an excellent day and DDG got a good snooze at his nest for 4 hours before reporting to work! Hope everyone had a great weekend as well! DuckDuckGoose

The spike at the top!