[williswall]

My daughter Cassie came home for her annual hike(s) with dear old dad. With an iffy weather forecast we decided to do the WSR as a day hike and hit Gobblers Knob to help fulfill my endeavor to hike all the trails in MRNP. As we were preparing to leave, a car pulled up with a couple of bikes on the rack and as they got out I tongue in cheek told them we were going to take their bikes for our return trip. Their reply: "Would you really....please, take them back." Turns out Mark and Dan were biking the WSR to Klapatche Point, then running the Wonderland back to Longmire. They were going to have to return to retrieve their bikes. Don't ask me about these weird logistics, as Cassie and I were wondering why they didn't just run the WSR to begin with, then their logistics man could just meet them at Longmire and that would be that. Either way they were going to have to foot it on the WSR. Whatever, we said "what the hell" we weren't planning on going to Klapatche Point but sure, we'd go pick up their bikes and leave them locked up at the parking spot. They didn't catch up to us until Round Pass...either we were hiking fast or they were biking slow, probably the later. We continued on, picked up their bikes, and biked back to Round Pass to hike the trail to Lake George and Gobblers Knob. The mist that had started became steady rain by the time we hit Lake George, finding that some douchebag(s) had left a smouldering fire in front of the shelter during a burn ban in a "camp stove" only National Park. Effing idiots. They had left a shovel with the handle almost in the fire, probably taken from behind the ranger cabin, so I piled dirt on the embers to put out the fire and dispersed the kindling and sticks they had collected that were not part of the fire. The next day I emailed someone I knew on the trail crews with the details and the photo, who passed it on to the rangers. Maybe they can identify the culprit(s) from a registration for the previous night (Saturday)? We continued up the trail towards Gobblers Knob and came to an intersection for the trail to Goat Lake, which lies outside the park boundary (.6 miles to the boundary). Cassie says, "Dad, if you really want to hike all the trails in the park don't you think you should hike this trail to the boundary?" Thanks a lot sweet daughter, but she was right so I ran down (losing some hundreds of feet of elevation) the trail to the boundary, getting absolutely soaked from the sodden brush, and ran back with squishy shoes and wetted legs to continue sprinting up to Gobblers Knob to catch up to her. There she was, finding the one dry spot under the catwalk, all snug in her layers and Dad's rain skirt. We chuckled at the description of 360 degree views from this lookout, in our case all white, and departed shortly in now a steady rain. We regained the bikes at Round Pass and coasted back to the vehicle with maybe 10 strokes of the pedals. Locked 'em up for Mark and Dan, changed and cranked the blessed heat in my car, calling it good. My daughter's quote of the day...."That was fun." TBC Stats: 24 miles/5100'

WSR washout area

Stone wall deterioration

More moisture is a comin'

Approaching St Andrews Creek

Clean up work at St Andrews

Horizontal orientation

Vertical orientation

A misty Lake George

Abandoned smouldering illegal campfire at Lake George

Bike pickup at Klapatche Point

Cassie taking shelter from the rain at Gobblers Knob

Gobblers Knob view

Mark and Dan at Round Pass

Lake George patrol cabin

[Ski]

excellent. was anticipating this one.

[Bryan K]

I got the same views a few days ago, expect I stayed dry. What douchebags who left an illegal campfire. I saw the remnants of it when I stopped by the shelter.