Day 17: Into the Russians + conifers seen so far

[Emily]:

From Idlewild, we became a three lady hiking group as Gabrielle joined us for the Russians and Trinities. After a delicious breakfast we said goodbye to Barbara and Elly and headed up the South Russian Creek drainage.

Heading where the arrow points.

First we had a 5.5 mile road walk then another 5.5 trail hike up to Waterdog Lake. While the PCT stays near the crest and ridges, the Bigfoot Trail allows you to experience more elevation changes and associated diversity in plant communities. I was thankful for this as the South Russian Creek trail traverses gorgeous forest through mixed-severity burn from 2014. The trail was in remarkably good shape through the burn and had had recent maintenance.

Today we also saw two conifer species we were pretty certain we would only see in the Russians - Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir. These two sights got us up to 25 conifers on the hike so far. Conifers seen so far in order of observation: redwood, Western Red Cedar, western hemlock, Sitka spruce, Jeffrey pine, knobcone pine, Port Orford Cedar, Douglas-fir, common juniper, sugar pine, incense cedar, yew, grand fir, white fir, Brewer spruce, noble fir, Shasta red fir, western white pine, lodgepole pine, mountain hemlock, foxtail pine, whitebark pine, Ponderosa pine, Engelmann spruce and subalpine fir.

Erin posing with a subalpine fir and contemplating the conifer diversity of the Russian Wilderness. 

We kept hiking up through several meadows and eventually some snow patches to get back into the high country.

After a good hiking day we reached lovely Waterdog Lake at around 7200 feet surround by snow and below Russian Peak. We had climbed a significant elevation while a cold front had also moved in.

Lovely Waterdog Lake, though I did not see any namesake newts. 

The three of us put on all our clothes we had and explored the ridges above Waterdog Lake for glorious views back down the South Russian Creek drainage.

We were down in the valley - note the PCT 2/3 up the ridge.

Total miles: 11