Route to Whiskey Dick (right) and West summit (left). We took a cross country route back.
Parking spot a little ways past the gate. Richard knew that you could take the chains off and drive in. But we didn't drive farther because it was a muddy and rutted road and we wanted the exercise.
Walking up the rutted road
Yellow lichen on a rock outcrop
West summit across the valley from the ridge we walked up.
Whiskey Dick summit is up there somewhere -- it's a very vauge summit area
Final stretch to Whiskey Dick summit
I guess fence posts are hard to place in the rocks so they are built this way
Lots more windmills to the northeast
Small constructed wind break on what we considered to be the summit
Along the fence line there were occasional heavy duty rock cribs to anchor the barb wire. But the fence is not being maintained anymore.
On the way to West summit from Whiskey Dick
West summit only has about 180' of prominence which is all from this pass. It's too bad there's not more, but it's a pretty cool summit anyway.
On West summit
West summit benchmark and register / geocache
West summit register. It was too wet to sign.
West summit geocache
From West summit we continued west to a couple more minor bumps
We finished by going cross country back to our car. This required dipping through a couple drainages, each of which had a small dam
The small dam in the first valley
Cool looking moss or something that is growing on the basalt rocks. The mice must like this too because the is a lot of mouse scat here too.
The second drainage dam. This one had a little bit of ponded water.
The second dam either had a blowout at one time or someone deliberately breached the dam.
White bones of what was probably a deer
Final bit back to the car, visible on the right near a pickup
Lower down we saw a lot of mouse runs