When Jane was born, I took two weeks of paternity leave and by the end of it Sara and I were itching for an adventure. After clearing it with Angela, we headed off to the peninsula for a short backpacking trip. This was only Sara’s 4th trip carrying her own stuff and she upped the ante this time by carrying some of her own food. She loved it.
2025-08-11
We drove out to the Dosewallips Road Trailhead - which is less of a trailhead and more of a dead end road. The cool part about this hike is that it used to be a road - but in 2002, it was washed out and never repaired. At this point, there are a couple of dozen washouts and rockfalls that make the “road” impassible, so it’s unlikely it will ever return. We were backpacking, but this would be an awesome trail for bikepacking as well - where you could bike to the main camp and then hike from there.
The trail was almost all flat and we made short work of the 6.5 mile hike in. As I said, there were numberous washouts along the way but we were able to navigate them without to much trouble. At one point, the entire route along a river had slid and the road was unrecognizable.
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Right at the very end of the road, right before we got to camp, we passed by the Dosewallips Falls. The pictures don’t do it justice - this was a really big waterfall…
All along the trail, we saw remenance of the old road - road signs pointing us in different directions and culverts to divert water. Right before camp we saw a really cool one - a speed limit sign that was almost overtaken by vegetation. I don’t think we need to worry too much about us backpacking faster than 25 mph!
We got to camp, found a spot, and setup our tent. Then we walked around the campsite, found a better campsite and packed up our stuff and moved. I really need to do the walk around first…
We had a lovely time playing for a few hours before it was time to start dinner. Sara did some creek exploring and “fishing” with a piece of 550 cord she found. I started making dinner and by the time dinner was almost ready, Sara had slipped on a rock - hurting her back a little but mostly soaking her shorts and shirt. She was inconsolable, but I got her into some dry clothes and into her sleeping bag which seemed to help. Once she had her dinner, all was good again.
Oakley, meanwhile, had found just about every seeded plant in the area and gotten them all into her fur. This was one dirty dog! She had to sleep in the tent tonight, so we did our best but things were not clean in the morning…
2025-08-12
The following morning, we packed up our stuff and got ready to make way. Sara wasn’t excited about the hike out, but it was to be slightly downhill the whole way and I managed to get her a little excited about that.
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About 3/4 of the way back, we made a detour to the 1972 bridge - probably named as such because it was built in 1972, but I found no evidence to support that. It was about as you would expect, a working bridge but starting to be absorbed by vegetation and falling leaves. It will be really interesting to see what it looks like in another 25 years.
We hiked the rest of the way out without issue, although the last 1-2 miles of any trip are the toughest for Sara. She needs constant encouragement and wants to look at the map every 2-3 min. We started to pass people hiking in and everyone was telling us about a fire that had occurred on the road to the trailhead - sounds like it was under control now, but the road was impassible all the way into the late morning and many people’s camping permits had been revoked. Scarry!
We got back to the car, loaded up, and were on our way. We did see the fire crews doing the last cleanup and brush cutting around the fire site. It was very eery to see. After we passed the fire, we drove back home - stopping at DQ on the way. There are a bunch of hikes in this same area, so I think we will be back. For now though, we checked off another adventure and were feeling proud!
