April Bowl to Government Peak Traverse

Such a beautiful day finally. Bright sunshine and blue skies. Along with a large group of the Valley Wanderers, I hiked the traverse from Summit Lake to Hatch Peak across the ridges to Government Peak, then down the Blueberry Knoll Trail back to the parking lot at Government Peak Recreation Area. It's a long hike but not terribly difficult. The first part up to Hatch Peak is on a well developed trail. From there, it's a ridge walk, but the ridge has a lot of small rocky peaks that need to be climbed to reach our destination. There is a bit of a trail in many of the frequently walked places, but once into the rocky spots, it involves a lot of guesswork. It's really nice to have good weather on this traverse because the best way to find the correct route is to keep the eye on the weather station on top of Government Peak. If the fog rolls in, it might be easy to get confused. We did have patches of fog and clouds that moved around us but never to the point of obscuring the view. I've done this trek a few times and had forgotten how challenging it can be sometimes. Lots of little rock climbing adventures as we climbed the ridge. We've had so much rain recently that the hills were all a brilliant green. Most of the snow is now gone, but there are still a few small patches. We took a long lunch break at the summit of Government Peak, then started to long trek down the Blueberry Knoll Trail. It's not a difficult trail but it was a bit slippery in places. Several of us fell. I had one bad fall on a slippery rock. Skinned my arm, but nothing serious. My Apple Watch detected it and beeped me asking if I had fallen and if I was OK. That was very nice of it. I assured it they didn't need to call emergency services and that I was just fine. It didn't have an 'I'm just embarrassed' button to click however. Once below tree line the trail was quite overgrown by tall vegetation from the recent rains. It was nice to get down to the main Blueberry Knoll Trail which was much wider. But it has the disadvantage of thousands of big tree roots that seem to try to trip us all the way down. It was slippery from the rain but only muddy in a couple of places. We were all quite ready to get down and off of our feet. I drove several of the group back up the mountain to our starting point at the April Bowl Trail. I love this traverse and I'm sure I will do it many more times.