Avalanche Creek

Big rigs, this is your line. Over twenty-one feet long or eight feet wide, bumpers and mirrors counted, you can't go past here, so this is your turnaround, and the limit runs all the way to Rising Sun. Everyone else, Avalanche Creek's main lots are coming up on your left, across the oncoming lane. For Trail of the Cedars, follow the signs, because its lot and the campground are on the other side. These lots begin filling early and stay busy most of the day. If they're full, don't wait in the road and don't park on the plants. Just move on. If you pulled in, turn left for the Garden Wall. If you're rolling on instead, watch for Red Rock Point about a mile on, pull-offs on your left, across the oncoming lane, where McDonald Creek runs turquoise over tilted red ledges, with ripple marks and mud cracks in the rock. If you only take one walk on this side of the park, make it Trail of the Cedars. It's a flat boardwalk loop, under a mile and wheelchair accessible, and it puts you among trees that look more at home on the coast of Washington or Oregon. They grow here, at the easternmost reach of that forest, because clouds trapped by the Divide drop their rain on this valley. The big ones date to around the year fifteen seventeen, about five hundred years old, and their canopies take nearly all the direct sun. Step under them on a hot day and feel the difference, and listen for American dippers along the creek. The boardwalk reaches Avalanche Gorge, and the gorge is young, cut after the glaciers left. Sand and gravel whirling in the current drilled round potholes into the streambed, some only six to ten feet across and twenty or more feet deep. Come in late September or early October, and black cottonwoods add yellow along this road, with western larch turning bright yellow on the ridges above. From the boardwalk, the trail to Avalanche Lake climbs two point three miles each way, four point six round trip, with seven hundred forty-one feet of gain. It's a moderate walk and among the park's top hikes. Carry bear spray and keep it where you can reach it. It goes in the face of an oncoming bear. Spraying it on your gear does the opposite of what you want. Scientists counted this park's bears without seeing them. Barbed wire snags collected hair, and thirty-four thousand samples later, the estimate came to around three hundred grizzlies and six hundred black bears. That lake was nearly somebody's property. In eighteen ninety-five, Doctor Lyman Sperry, who spent years selling the world on these mountains, wrote to a man named Frank Geduhn. He asked him to locate two of the most desirable fronts on Avalanche Lake, and to take a third in his own name, just in case. The park's great publicist wanted a lakefront lot.