| Date: August 25, 2002 | | Location Battle Ax Hike | | Where: Bull of the Woods Wilderness | This was a Chemeketan hike led by Alma Wells to Battle Ax. Jeanette and I invited our friends Tom & Kathleen to hike with us. The difficult part of hiking Battle Ax is putting up with the terrible road to get to the start of the hike. Alma elected to park at the junction of the Gold Butte Road, which saved us two miles of bad road. This also added two miles each way to our hike, but we were glad to be out of the cars and soon we were hiking along, busy chatting and identifying wild flowers. We hiked past Elk Lake and on up the abandoned road to Beachie Saddle where the official trail to Battle Ax begins. Once on the trail the vegetation opens up and great views are available of the Elk Lake area.
|  | | Elk Lake as seen from the trail up Battle Ax Battle Ax is a former fire look-out site, and at 5558 ft elevation has a commanding view of the Detroit area of the Willamette National Forest to the south and the Bull of the Woods Wilderness to the North. On clear days most of the snow-capped peaks of the Cascades are in view.
Although I lagged behind Alma, she has the advantage of 20 years more than me to get in shape!
|  | | Tom, Dan, Jim, and Alma on the summit Alma, ever the ambitious one talked us all into picking up litter and cans along the road on our hike back to the cars. Our hike had been listed as a 6 mile hike, and when I informed Alma it was actually a 10 mile hike she volunteered to buy me a root-beer float at KC's in Detroit. Statistics for the day: distance 10 miles, time 6 hours, cumulative climb 2010 feet.
|  | | hiking and clean-up crew |
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