Took the scenic Canyon Road (WA-821) along Yakima River to Big Pines Campground. It's also the TH to Baldy Mountain (marked as TP Jim trail on Google Map. Many cars parked along the road. Many anglers on the river.
Quite a few people on the trail. Some small white lomatium all along the lower half, violet after the first butte, yellow lichen on sage brush. Some balsomroot buds. Should have more bloom in a month. Dry trail, a bit slippery at times due to loose surface.
Open vista after the first butte. A bit cloudy today, otherwise, can see the Cascade Range. Today, just the wind turbines.
The summit has fenced cell towers, and gravel road beyond. It's rather flat, so couldn't see the river. Few minute below the summit offers much better view. Breezy at times, so didn't stay long.
Going down the same way. Slipped and got a bloody knuckle and elbow. Clouds moved in, and it hailed for at least half an hour. Hikers were still going up, despite of the dark clouds and hail. Found my lost glove by the lower trail.
Next, we went to Cleman Mountain - Waterworks Canyon loop, hoping to see big horn sheep. In cold winters, there is a feeding station nearby. This is part of Oak Creek Wildlife area, so Discovery Pass needed. A small parking lot, about 4 other cars (~3:30pm).
Open the gate, we headed up right along a steep ridge. Made slippery by the dry loose surface. Flowers are much better here. Daggerpods in lower elevation, purple lomatium Columbiana higher elevation, lots of yellow lomatium (Greyi?). Met two ladies coming down at the first butte. I don't want to go down here: too slippery. So, we are in for the loop. But later, we saw a group of 4 coming down here.
As we went higher, more balsalt rocks, better view of the Naches River. The grade eased a bit. The trail is faint. Need to keep to the ridge. At some point, compared with my GPS map, I realized that we were on some elk trail. Had to scramble up fairly steep slope to regain the ridge. View gets better and better.
Point 3582 has a summit registry. A bit windy here, so we didn't stop. Then the trail goes down to a saddle. You can continue up to Clement Mountain. We took the left fork going down to Waterworks Canyon. This trail is quite obvious. At the junction at the bottom, we took a snack break.
Hiking out along the canyon is easy. Quite scenic. There was water at times (not on trail), no wonder sheep and elks frequent here.
Saw this dead elk. A lot of elk/sheep droppings. About 10-15 minute before TH, we saw a herd of sheep on top of one hill west of the canyon. We hurried down to the car to fetch binocular.
At the parking lot, saw my books on the ground, a guy on the phone. Took us a couple of minutes to register that our window was smashed, all our stuff was stolen (even a half-used wet-wipe box). A heavy loss. The guy (Edwin) was on the 911 call. Their Jeep suffered the same fate. His girl, Candy, asked to use our cell phone. Signal wasn't good. She only got txt through. Her wallet was taken, so she asked her mom to cancel everything. We were told to call 911 separately. Deputy Sheriff Nicholas Ward came quite shortly afterwards. He logged two cases. Ours is 21C04416. We were told to call the office with details, because he has a police dog which he has to deliver to another place. He was courteous. The buglar, Gene, lost his phone in the jeep. They handed it to Deputy Ward. When waiting for the deputy, Candy lend us her binocular, so we saw the sheep better. They were moving down the hill.
We drove home despondantly. Had to stop fairly early on to put on all our clothes, it was cold with a window gone. Then, rain. At least not heavy rain.
I tried to call on Sunday. The Yakima County Sheriff office is only open 10-5 M-F. Called a couple of times on Monday, finally talked to detective Casey. He gave me Deputy Ward's email address, so I emailed him a list of lost items, photo of the broken window. Spent most of time shopping for replacement.
