PEAK PUTTERS

The group met up at the West Richland Maverik at 0730, with the Millers providing scrumptious breakfast burritos for all attendees. Due to various other commitments, the turnout was rather light for this trip but that didn’t stop the rest of us from having a fantastic day. The blustery morning winds kept us awake as we hit the highway Westbound, and as usual they subsided around the Grandview area and it was calm the rest of the trip:



We usually try to hit the mountains on the weekend of the Great Prosser Balloon Rally because, well, they are cool to see floating up with the sunrise. However, the aforementioned winds kept them grounded as we cruised by this year:



Ample parking was found at the Ahtanum snowmobile parking lot, although the gravel is extremely rutted out thanks to scores of SxS’s and UTV’s blasting around and doing donuts… Miles and miles of trails and they have to screw up a perfectly good parking lot … Anyhoodles, with the Wilcox fleet offloaded and everyone aired down, we headed up the Middle Fork and took an immediate right onto the White’s Ridge trail:



We took the trail as far West as it goes, terminating at a nice overlook that has you staring directly at the Superbowl and Darland across the canyon. Lunch was served and BS was dished out at a high rate of speed, but soon enough we decided to press on:








The quick trip back down to the Middle Fork was followed by a hard right, up to the summit of Darland for a nice view of Rainier and points beyond:







From there we plodded down the other side and in to Blue Lake for the ubiquitous group shot before finally calling it a day and cruising down the North Fork back to the parking lot:



Overall it had been a fantastic, albeit dusty, day on the trails and I cannot wait for some rain to come in and make it even better

Jim to Dan. . .Nice wheels a-hole.

Mountains look like northern Rockies - looks like Banff area to me but I know Glacier area looks similar. You got some sweet wheels and i love the beautiful scenes. Make sure you inform me when you go out again on those dusty Rhodes it looks like much fun.