What’s worse than forgetting your camera?
Forgetting the memory card AND bringing the camera. Such is the reality I dealt myself this weekend as I arrived at the trail to Cougar Divide. More on that later..
This trail lies at the end of Wells Creek Road at about 5,000 feet and is only accessible for 4 short months of the year. I use the term accessible loosely because the road receives little to no maintenance (particularly after the bridge over Wells Creek). Still, as of this writing, the trailhead is still accessible with only one stretch of road that could unnerve the average driver or someone in a full size pickup.
Only one other car at the trailhead but TONS of mosquitos which should have been my first omen. I had sunscreen but no bug juice. Somewhat annoying but how bad could it be? Uh, BAD. Just 15 minutes in on the trail brings you to a viewpoint which would make any other hike worth it:
In this open subalpine forest, there are many interesting geological features:
After a brief open stretch the trail plunges back into forest before reaching meadows. On this particular day, however, my journey ended here in the woods:
Taking that three photo panorama resulted in my legs being devoured by mosquitos. Given the fact that I couldn’t use my primary camera, I decided to turn around and save the rest of this hike for an upcomming weekend. So what do you do when you can’t use your camera? In my case, I decided to press on and use my iPhone 3GS so every photo from this blog post is an iPhone photo. I thought it didn’t do that bad a job, though I did lighten the photos up in Photoshop. Live and learn!..
