The Salmon River Trail (the first 2.5 miles of it is call the Old Salmon River Trail and is mostly level ( average elevation 1,600 feet)) runs through superb, low elevation old growth forest (mainly Douglas Firs (up to 10 feet in diameter), Western Red Cedars (up to 12 feet in diameter) and Hemlocks). This is one of the glories of the Pacific Northwest.

Hiking time: 7 hours, 53 minutes, and 3.96 seconds. Started at Old Salmon River Trailhead, walked to its end where it meets up with the Salmon River Trailhead. There I met a new friend (Stephanie Kaplan) and we hiked the Salmon River Trail together until it started climbing, then we encountered a blow-down that would have required squirming under it on our bellies, so we turned around. There were blow-downs all along the trail, thanks to the highest winds in the northwest we've had in a couple decades (hurricane force winds at the coast, 60 mph gusts inland).

On our way back at the Salmon River Trailhead, Stephanie drove me back to my car because it was so late I would have had to retrace my steps on the Old Salmon River Trail in the dark.

Took an obscene number of photos: 300, of which a high percentage 188 made the cut. 223 were taken on the Old Salmon River Trail, and 77 were taken on the Salmon River Trail.

Although it was mostly sunny and dry in east Portland, Oregon where I live, it rained most of the day on my hike. But I was wearing two layers of polypropylene shirts and on top of that a short-sleeved silk shirt, and the wicking properties of these materials actually kept me dry! My camera, however, got soaked, but it is properly water-resistant as was the main lens I used, my 12-40mm f/2.8 micro 4/3 lens. I also used the full frame fisheye I have for a few whimsical shots, and also the 40-150mm, which got wet, but not too wet, which is a good thing since it is not water resistant.

It was also quite dark in the forest and all my shots were hand-held, and so I was shooting mostly at ISO 1600 with shutter speeds as long as 1/4 of a second. This caused me to reject too many otherwise good shots because of motion blur, especially close-ups. Even so, I kept quite a few shots that do have motion blur. Another problem was that once in a while the sun would come out for a few minutes, giving everything in shadows a blue cast, which needed to be corrected in Adobe Lightroom 5.7.