Wildcat Lake to Gold Creek Through Hike

Today we did our first shuttle hike, parking one car at the trail head at Gold Creek on Green Mountain and then driving around to start our hike at the Wildcat trail head.    We followed Wildcat trail to the Green Mountain Horse Camp and then turned on the Beaver Pond trail to the gold Creek trail junction.   We did not GPS track this route, but our best estimates are about 6 - 7 miles.   Today was a crazy weather day,  with lightning and thunder in the morning that deterred most people from heading out.   We only crossed one other hiker on the trail all day.

The Beaver Pond is not much to see, but the area surrounding that part of the trail is the best.  There are less visible signs of logging and more wildlife.   It was in this area that we saw 2 owls!  We surprised one on the trail that flew up into the trees where we watched each other for a while.  When we decided we had disturbed it long enough we hiked another 20 feet or so and surprised another one, probably its mate.   This made our day!!

Not long after we hit the edge of the forest that has been clear cut fairly recently.   We ventured up into the area off the main trail to see if there were views, and sure enough - there were.

We sat on a couple stumps and ate our snack,  the sun came out and gave us a nice view of the Sound and the mountains.  Later on the trail we got a nice view of the Seattle skyline:



We saw some great wildflowers and a friendly frog on the way too:

It was a good hiking day despite the thunder booms! Our first shuttle hike was a great success.