Purple Hill

I took the dogs to Dollar Hill today. It was very purple! These purple flowers are blooming EVERYWHERE, they took over the whole place. I didn't have the "good' camera with me but I'll try to go back again soon and take some better pictures.

Juneau stayed on-leash for about half of the climbing part of the hike. She still needs a ton of work on her leash (and trail) manners.

Conker's recall is getting lax. I need to work on that as well.

GP

The purple flowers.

Mountain Valley View

A view of GP from somewhere on Dollar Hill (Mountain). This hike was a lot harder than I remember, I was practically crawling up the mountain. I must not be as physically fit as I thought I was. Conker on the other hand was flying up the trail, something he rarely does. I usually have to encourage him to climb, not tell him to stop and wait for me.

The "Access Road" at Dollar Hill is NOT an access road

I was told, some time ago by another hiker, that the "access road" on the backside of Dollar Hill could be used as an alternate route to get down if you didn't want to slide off the incredibly steep inclines on the way back to the trailhead. Yesterday I finally decided to see where this "road" came out, since the other hiker told me you'd have to walk on the road a bit to get back to the trailhead.
So once we'd rested at the lookout rock then made out way to the cell tower on the top, Conker and I set off to explore the backside of Dollar Hill.

The Cellular Phone tower atop Dollar Hill

Bad idea.

This "road" looked like your typical jagged gravel road for the first 1 1/2 mile. It was wide, cut right through the side of the mountain, had very little if any tree cover, but wasn't too overly steep. Then, it gradually shrank, the trees got closer, bushes began to hang over the gravel, and it looked more and more like a private residential road. I hadn't seen any signs indicating private property, or city property for that matter, anywhere along the road. Until I came to the 2 mile mark.
Yep, private property, no trespassing.
WELL. Apparently this "accsess road" is NOT what the other hiker said it was.

See, I have this thing about trespassing. I don't do it. Period. And up until that point, there were no signs to indicate otherwise, but I'd had a feeling that the road I was on was no longer city property. Yay. So happy about that.

So Conker and I turned around and trudged back up to the top of Dollar Hill. I was fuming. I did NOT want to go back up that damn hill, and I wanted to strangle that other hiker who lied about this road not going onto private property. (Which I asked about.) We added an unnecessary and unwanted additional 4 miles to our hike in the middle of the day BEFORE the damn storms hit, so it was still bloody hot outside despite the forecast of clouds and a temperature of about 77 degrees.

Anyways, I generally don't listen to the "advice" of other people, but now I know to just not do it at all.

Conker and I stopped at the lookout rock and watched the storms blow in from the Siskiyou mountains.  I wanted them to start raining while we were still on Dollar Hill, but that didn't happen. We just got blasted by a lot of wind, so we slid down the hill and walked back home.

Speaking of sliding...
The trail at Dollar Hill has really degraded a lot in the recent weeks. It's rather sad, since it's not almost impossible to go up it without slipping, and going down? Yeah, staying upright is damn near impossible. I had to hunker down and slide most of the way down the steepest slope. Conker didn't have much problem, but I don't want him going too fast down that hill due to his knees, and he always seems to think the correct plan of action is to rocket down as fast as possible.

I said I'd probably make the 6 mile walk/hike more of a regular thing, but if the trail continues to get worse, that's just not gonna happen. To top all this retardation off, the extra exercise did not help increase Conker's appetite at all. I was hoping it would. That has not worked yet.

Yesterday was just a generally stupid day.

Sunday Dollar Hike

I don't usually hike on the weekend. It's always too crowded, there are never parking spots, and the people seem to be of the "stupid" type. Like tourists.
Yesterday I took my chances with Dollar hill.
It was warm, around 85 or so, which is "hot" for the vast majority of GP residents. Perfect weather for a hike in my opinion, so I harnessed up Conker, grabbed my Camelbak and filled it with water, tossed in a few things I always take on hikes, an headed off for Dollar Hill.

Oh, I forgot to mention, we walked to Dollar Hill rather than drove. I was too lazy to move Mom's and my Grandparent's cars out of my Jeeps' way so we left the Jeep at home and walked the two miles to the trailhead.

Conker waits for me as I rest in the shade in the "parking lot" across from the trailhead. He explored the area a bit then impatiently began to whine at me and glance at the trailhead.

Since I did not have a good enough camera in the spring for flower pictures, here is a residual flower I found along the trail. It's bright purple hue really stuck out amongst the dry browns that covered the ground.

Conker, at first, seemed happy to be on a trail. He haven't hiked in a while. He did a lot of running on the first flat section of the trail. (I did not get any pictures of that.)

The first of several very steep climbs was a breeze for Conker. He usually powers up this one then lags behind on all the others.

Barely visible in this picture is the small cowbell I bought for Conker. He wears it so I can tell where he is without having to look all over for him. It also serves as an early warning if he takes off after an animal that I did not see first, and provides me with his rough location so I can find him.

Another residual flower. This one wasn't as bright as the first, and the camera failed to capture it's correct hue, but it was very beautiful.

Around the second steep incline is where Conker begins to get annoyed. He does not like Dollar Hill anywhere near as much as Cathedral Hills. But he puts up with it.

The summer view of GP is pretty cool, but I get annoyed with all the buildings after about two seconds and wish that none of them existed.

It helps when your dog is a goofball and starts to slide off the rock after he lays down.

Overall it wasn't a bad walk/hike. I think we'll do it again soon, and leave the Jeep at home again. Walking turns Dollar Hill, which is otherwise a 2 mile hike, into a 6 mile walk/hike. That's a much better workout and doesn't use any gas (money) in the process.

We went hiking on Dollar Hill today

Not the usual day to hike, but since Mom and her BF went to the coast with no warning and messed up my plans, I had to rearange things so I took the dogs hiking today instead of tomorrow.
I took all three dogs, something I don't normally do.
Anyways, it was relatively uneventful.  Juneau was being her normal excited-about-everything-and-pulling-like-crazy self, Sasha was pretty meh and Conker was... regular.  They all enjoyed it though.  My favorite part about the hike was this:

It was somewhat overcast in GP but above it was beautiful.  I was not expecting this view at all and while untangling myself from a mass of dog leashes, legs and tails, I spotted this out of the corner of my eye and turned to have a look.

Conker being stupid and going off the trail.

Conker didn't seem impressed. Not pictured on his face is the TICK I swatted off a moment later.  I thoroughly searched all dogs for ticks after the hike and thankfully didn't find any more.
(DayPack review is in the works.)

The view of GP from the top of the hill was equally awesome.  I really like the clouds that hang over it when seen from above, it reminds me of being in a plane.

The pictures of Juneau and Sasha are largely unimpressive, thanks to the Fuji's retardism.  I did however snap this shot which I later edited to look like an out-of-focus black and white film image.

Derp Dog is super cute, even when out of focus.

Dollar Hill Three Months Later

We haven't been to Dollar Hill in three months!  Gosh, I didn't know it had been that long.  Anyways, I didn't feel like going on a long hike but did want to go on a strenuous one, so Conker and I hopped into the Jeep and drove up to Dollar Hill.

I was hoping to be able to see the snow on the mountains surrounding GP.

Where's Conker?

Normally (in the past) it's taken about an hour or so, usually a little more, to get to the cell tower on top of Dollar Hill.  Well today it took less than 40 minutes... for the entire hike.  About 30 for the way up and 5 for the way down!  And that's including rest breaks!  I think I need to start walking instead of driving to this place since it's only a couple miles away.

No snow visible.

Unfortunately the clouds were so low that the snowy mountains weren't visible.  Yesterday would have been a better day for snow-spotting since the clouds weren't hugging the valley like they were today.

We ran, like usual, down the hill.  We did have to slow down in some spots since there was a thick layer of leaves over most of the trail, wet leaves, which were quite slick. Conker was not happy when I made him stick by my side down the hill but I didn't want him to screw up one of his knees on the run down.

Not all of Dollar hill's trail is steep.

It was a nice quick hike and I am probably going to make it the thing to do on Sundays since Cathedral Hills is usually packed on the weekend and parking is hard to find.  There was nobody here today, and there normally isn't, so it will be a good addition to the exercise agenda. 

For comparison shots of what Dollar Hill looked like a couple months ago, visit this post.

Dollar Hill Hike

Haven't been to the Hill in a while and today was unusually cloudy so I grabbed Conker and went hiking.  The poison oak rash is just a mass of flaky itch now and doesn't bug me enough to prevent me from hiking anymore.
I am again out of shape and have decided I'm going to kick myself if I don't get out and hike or walk for at least five miles every day.

Anyways, we ran into something I haven't seen on Dollar hill before.  Mountain bikers!  The trail strikes me as immensely steep and gouged for that (very washed out in a lot of places) but these guys looked like they knew what they were doing.
The first one was on the rockstop just below the top of the hill.  Conker saw him first and went all beserk on him, standing stiffly and baying at him.  Since I didn't know he was up there Conker was unleashed but he didn't move after he saw the guy so I was able to get him and leash up as we passed.  The second biker passed us on the way down.  He was polite enough to announce his presence so I could grab Conker and step off the trail for him.  I've had a lot of bikers just blast by without a warning.  Conker didn't bark at this guy but wanted to chase him so I had to leash him for a couple minutes until he didn't want to chase anymore.

It was supposedly 84 degrees when we went hiking but the slight cloud cover and wind dropped it down enough that it wasn't too hot for either of us.  


Conker is turning out to be very reliable off-leash.  Sometimes he will stop to sniff and I'll keep going and he will catch right up again.  He is also learning to stop and look back to see where I am or wait for me to catch up.  I am also starting to feel more comfortable with letting him get out of sight since every time he has stopped and waited or come back to find me.  He hasn't run off after any of the critters we've seen and when there are people he barks instead of running.

We went hiking today

Conker was like this the whole way up.

I don't wanna climb the stupid hill!

Today is scheduled to have "scattered thunderstorms" but that really means just rain here and there with possibly one thunder boom if that.  It doesn't thunder here, maybe once a year and we already had that.

But it was a nice day, in the mid 70's with a pleasantly cool breeze, so I grabbed conker and headed up to Dollar Hill.  I'm still badly out of shape and it took a short while to get to the cell tower.  We didn't stay there long and instead headed down to some neat-o rocks to take a break.

Conker sniffed around on the rocks for a bit then decided he wanted to keep going.  But I made him get a drink first then told him NO, you CANNOT chase the freakin rabbit that just ran in front of you. He was good and didn't.  So we headed down the hill at a faster clip than last time.  Okay, not fast but really fast.  I was basically running like a dumbass down the hill with my backpack flopping everywhere, my camera threatening to fly down the hill and my shoes (which were attached to the backpack) hitting me in the butt.  My guess was they wanted me to go faster.

Conker thought this was the best part of the hike!  He took off at full speed down the hill when he could, mouth open, tongue hanging out and tail streaked out behind him.  When he's having a lot of fun he runs like that but also throws in a couple bounces every few steps.  He's not running in the picture above since I never had my digital out when he was (too busy trying not to die) but it's close enough.

Oh, also, did you notice something in the two pictures of Conker where you can see his whole body?  Something's missing, I'll give you 100 internet points if you can tell me what it is.

Anyways, it was a fun little hike that went a lot faster than normal since we  RAN down the dang hill.  Except in one spot where it's killer steep.  Conker decided to do a run-by attempt at knocking me on my ass and waited until I was about 10 feet in front of him then bolted down the hill and slammed into my knee.  Luckily for him I've got good balance even on super steep grades and didn't fall backwards onto his stupidness.  The worst he did was send himself spinning into a tree.  

Lookit Grant's Pass.  It's surrounded by awesome mountains.  And rain.

Oh yeah it's my sister's 16th birthday today.  And on our way home from the hike I saw these three girls walking down the street so I freaked them out by honking at them.  They yelled then realized who it was and yelled some more then chased me and demanded a ride home.  I was nice and picked them up.

Conker, since he was such a good boy today, was given one of his birthday trachea chews.  I normally like to cut them up into smaller pieces but he was good enough to have earned 2/3rds of one instead of 1/3rd.  He made a nasty mess on my bed though, but did a okayish job at cleaning it up.

Dollar Hill

I'm pretty sure it's actually called Dollar Mountain, but it was more like a really big steep hill to me.


Anyways, I FINALLY got myself up before noon (at noon...), grabbed Conker and headed out to Dollar Hill.  It's about a ten minute drive from my house up on some hill thing with lots of turns and whatnot.  Parking is on the side of the road and the trail on the other side.
There was no sign with rules so I grabbed the 30-foot lead and strapped it to my pack, grabbed Conker and began to hike.

It was relatively easy at first with a few inclines that were so-so.  But after a short while we came upon a huge incline that was really steep. (it would do that, be easy then super steep, rinse and repeat)  Conker did just fine but me, being horribly out of shape, had to stop every fifteen feet or so for a break.  Sad really, since back when I was 13 I would be able to run up this little mountain in about ten minutes.  Took me an hour to walk up it slowly today.

Conker wasn't fond of people on the trail.  People on walks he's "okay" with and won't bark at them.  But people on trails... STAY AWAY I DON'T WANT YOU HERE!  We need to work on that.
There was something to look forwards to at the top of the mountain.  I'd somewhat forgotten what it was and figured it might be a rock or an outhouse or something dumb like that.

Nah, it was a radio tower.  The thing hummed loudly and Conker didn't like it at first, but when a kid and his father came up all thoughts of the humming things behind a big chain-link fence with barbed wire at the top vanished.  Grr, people on my mountain, LEAVE!

Conker posed in front of the tower and stuff, then we headed down.  I decided to be weird and took off my somewhat uncomfortable hiking boots and strapped them to my pack and went down barefoot.  No pictures of my hobbit feet, so don't worry about that.
Conker, since he was good on the way up, was allowed to roam on the 30-foot lead.  He was a dork though and decided he wanted to RUN down the hill so I had to keep telling him to slow down, stop or come back.  No off-leash for him.

Conker liked the downhill.  I always do, except for the real steep parts.  I let him range out when it was semi or mostly flat, but on those steep declines I didn't want to risk anything happening to his knees so the lead was kept short and I had him stay beside me.
Overall it was a fun hike.  I got Conker to sit quietly (for the most part) by having him lick at a salmon treat as two high-school girls walked past us on the way down.  I don't know what his beef is about people on trails, but I'm, gonna fix it.


Speaking of beef...

Beef is what Conker got today after our hike.  It was nice, after he ate his food he laid down and took a digestive nap.  I usually have to keep him confined to my room for 30 minutes so he doesn't go rampaging around the house and potentially barf up his freshly consumed meats.  I guess the hike was just enough to make him tired enough to sleep after eating.