Hiking time: 390 minutes, or 6 hours and 30 minutes. This hike is famous for its display of balsam root (little sunflowers). It's a little late for the balsam root at its peak, but it peaked late this year and the display was still spectacular, although it was a week or so past its peak. Still, utterly stunning. Took 137 photos, all hand-held, and 78 made the cut. Trekking poles absolutely essential on this difficult hike, so no tripod.

Elevation gain: 2,800 feet; distance round trip: 7.2 miles. Took the Augspurger Trail to the summit and the "old" Dog Mountain Trail back to the car. It was not my intention to climb to the summit of Dog Mountain when I started this hike. I planned an out and back 5 mile round trip hike on the Augspurger Trail, because I didn't feel I was up to the full Dog Mountain hike. Indeed, the direction I took (clockwise) is the opposite of what most hikers take: the more difficult ascent, the Dog Mountain Trail, up, and the "easier" decent (still very steep most of the way), the Augspurger Trail back to the parking lot. But reports on the way up were telling me that the flower show was definitely not over but was spectacular, so before I even came to the junction with the (absurdly steep) connector trail to the Dog Mountain trail, I decided to climb to the summit for the wonderful flower show, the best in the Gorge, which typically peaks in the middle of May. Back in my heyday, I used to do this hike as a yearly May ritual.

This is one of the toughest short hikes in the Gorge. Removing all the sections of the trails that were more or less level, we have about 2.5 miles of climbing 2,800 feet, or descending 2,800 feet, which is more than 1,000 feet per mile. This is steep and a killer on feet and knees if you go too fast.

The return trail, the "old" (original) Dog Mountain Trail, was taken inadvertently, without thinking about what I was doing. The new trail is supposedly much more scenic and not as treacherous. Most of the way down, the trail is full of gravel and it's like walking on marbles, often at a 30° angle!

The "problem" that caused me to choose the old rather than the new trail is that just as I started down from the summit, I ran into a 62 year old "super" hiker who does everything and got into a very animated and enjoyable conversation with him all the way back to the car and we were hardly paying attention to the route we took back, and in fact were hiking much too fast for the quality and grading of the trail.

We kept losing our footing and once I lost my balance so severely that I fell backwards and landed fully prone on my back, fortunately into soft brush, and I was none the worse for wear. On this insanely quick descent, I actually developed a large and painful blister on my right heel that fortunately did not break and the pain was gone when I woke up the next morning.

After my fall, we realized that we were hiking much too fast downhill and slowed down drastically, to a very careful and deliberate crawl, and experienced no more mishaps. But we had a great conversation and I gave him my email address when we got back to the parking lot. Have I made a new friend? Probably not, but here's hoping.