Rae-Wallace Trail

 Today turned out to be a nice sunny day so I went hiking with my friend Pam and our dogs. I still wanted to try the Rae-Wallace Trail but from a different starting point that yesterday. I remembered a dry trail farther up the road, and we started up on that one. That trail is likely the best one to use if your destination is Microdot, a sharp peak that rises from Gold Cord Lake. If you stay on it as high as possible, then a cross-country trek to the left would take you up the ridge that leads to Microdot. But our destination was still Rae-Wallace, so we stayed on the trail itself. It started to disappear into little streams, so we ended up following our dogs, who seemed to find the best passage, that lead us to the main Rae-Wallace Trail. This trail leads to Rae-Wallace Peak high on the ridge above us. We kept following it up onto a couple of little hills until it seemed to simply disappear into a boulder field. The map shows the trail ending about where we decided to stop. It looks like the best route up to the peak might be across a small snowfield then a steep hike up a grassy tundra covered slope to the ridge. I would love to do that one day. But Pam doesn't like scrambling on rocks, so we decided against that today. I'd be comfortable coming back and doing it myself another day. It was delightful sitting in the tundra vegetation enjoying the sunshine un one of the hills where we turned back. We had a snack break while the dogs ran up and down to the creek below. I had only been up this trail once before and had turned back at approximately the same place due to a huge snowfield. But today I got a better look at the trail and can see where it actually goes. It was beautiful and green everywhere with a noisy gurgling stream flowing nearby. The dogs lead us back down by following the Rae-Wallace Trail all the way back to the stream crossing where I fell yesterday. We found a nicer place to cross it today. I love this trai and will for sure do it again. All the way to the peak or maybe to Microdot next time. I now have an Aorkuler GPS tracker on Bella so will be able to find her if she decides to wander out of sight. I did some practicing with it today and found it works quite well and is independent of my phone, using only a satellite tracker.