Getting There
The Augspurger and Dog Mountain Trails share the same trailhead parking lot off Hwy 14.
I took WA-14 eastbound from Vancouver, WA. It's 54 miles from Vancouver and 6.2 miles from the Carson turnoff/round-about. For a midweek work party, there were more cars in the parking lot at 8:00am than I expected.
I got my gear on and was ready for the safety talk at 8:30am.
The Hike
Elevation Gain: 1,610 feet
Maximum Elevation: 1,712 feet
I'd been wanting to hike this trail for a while. I'd seen the connection point near the Dog Mountain summit and remember meeting some hikers that had made it a loop. I've been up the longer ("Difficult") route up the Dog Mountain trail and had hiked down the shorter ("More Difficult") route but never the Augspurger Trail. Also, I've seen photos from the Augspurger Mountain "summit".
This trip was a work party. It was marked as a "high mileage" outing. Compared to other work sites, this one was still relatively close to the parking lot (2.75 miles), albeit with some decent elevation gain, 1610 feet. Also, we were carrying tools: green grubber, handsaw, loppers.
In the couple of weeks leading up to this work party, I'd been getting a lot of nose bleeds and had received a couple acupuncture treatments. I was a bit on-edge about having another one.
Just 4 days before on my Hamilton Mountain hike, I had a bad nose bleed on the trail after a strenuous ascent to Rodney Falls. More of an inconvenience but disconcerting. I didn't want to alarm other hikers either.
I was a bit sluggish but still faster than a couple of the older folks. This was not my first rodeo for hiking fatigue, I tried to eat some snacks and hydrate. It seemed to help a bit but it wasn't until I tried some SaltStick tablets from Mike. I loved them. Easier than powder packets and "contaminating" my water bottle. I pushed on and helped on some bigger tasks for widening and benching the trail at spots.
I was overdressed from the cold morning and I was wary of the poison ivy or oak on the trail that we were warned about. A fellow green-hat showed me what to look for. I didn't want to put my bag down in the middle of a patch.
We completed all of the repairs on the list but we didn't do a loop. We turned back about 1.75 miles from the Dog Mountain summit with another 1,000 feet of elevation gain. I want to come back this spring or early summer, probably midweek due to parking permit requirements during the weekend.
