Since the forecast for Wednesday called for full-on monsoon weather, we moved the trip to Tuesday. We started at the logging bridge, which crosses the creek along North Gowlland road, and hiked up Marlow’s Climb. We followed a short, flagged route from the logging road to the official North Gowlland hiking trail and followed that down to the creek and the road. After walking up the Missing Link logging road we joined the Silk Stocking mountain bike trail to a small lake and from there we followed Little Black Dress. After a short dipsy-doodle on Back Door and other trails we took Cash Only and Lady Lumps to return to the vehicles.

This walk combines a lot of trail sections into a very nice hiking loop. Although there are no big views along the way, the hike includes trails along and over mossy bluffs, an old open copper mine, wetlands and creeks, and always interesting trails. We had all the trails to ourselves with the moss and mushrooms. The rain held off until afternoon, so we had only a light sprinkle. 9.1km; 3 hours.

If you know what the mushrooms are, please let us know.

Debbie

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Hike – North Gowlland Bike Loop – 2 Nov 2016

We left from the Morte Lake parking lot thinking that we would follow George’s flagged route up the hill to the bluff south of Chinese Mountain. However, we found that the mountain bike trail, Breakfast Beer, had been completed, so we followed that instead. It’s a steep climb up to good views, at least the views are good if the weather cooperates.

We continued on mountain bike trails, following Ridge Trail, Seven Sins and Nirvana, for more views, and to join up with the official maintained trail around Morte Lake. We took that trail clockwise around the Lake.  We stopped for lunch at the picnic table at the northwest corner of the lake and the water level in the lake is so high it nearly reached the table. We continued along the north bluff and the access trail, turning off on the Dead Fish bike trail to return to the parking lot. These are great trails through beautiful, often open forest. The views, the lake and the fungi were wonderful. We only had occasional light rain during the hike, but it rained hard by the time we returned to Heriot Bay. 10.9 km; 4 hours.

Debbie

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Hike – Alternate Morte Lake Loop – 26 Oct 2016