The good news is that all the snow is gone. The bad news is that it's been replaced by brush. A lot of brush.
There were 40 cars in the Dog parking lot when we left at 9:30am. We went up the Augspurger trail to the junction on the NW side of Dog.
View of the powerline road up to the first Augspurger ridge, seen from the Augspurger junction.
We turned left and immmediately the trail became over grown. We popped out onto a little hill with some small wildflowers.
The trail goes down into a gully and then uphill slightly to intersect with a powerline road. We turned right at the (fading) pink ribbons and headed uphill.
(Picture taken to show the junction - you're coming from the trail, and you turn right on this road and head in the direction the sticks are pointing, up the hill.)
Soon we came to a big multi-junction in a clearing. Our road continued straight through.
After this, the road goes straight uphill for a bit, then jacknifes sharp left. There are some pink ribbons in the right-hand corner of the road, and a very faint trail. This was all desolate and easy to see two months ago when I was last here.
After some steepness, we popped out on the powerline ridge. This is an excellent snack spot and the views are fantastic.
Looking down the Gorge.
Hood, Defiance, and an Indian pit? (Or maybe just a fire pit.)
We continued along the ridge and into some open areas. The foliage went from a nice backdrop...
...to a sea we had to wade through.
After this we were on the blunted ridge that leads up to the shoulder to the west of Augspurger. Around this spot last time I hit snow and followed a bunch of tracks straight uphill in the open part of the ridge. It turns out the trail goes to the right through the forest. This whole section was much shorter this time than I recalled, maybe because of the lack of snow.
Going up to the shoulder.
I'd turned around on the shoulder last time, but the summit is only about 1/4 mile away and we were there in a flash. Unfortunately, Augspurger's summit is like Devil's Rest - just a high point in the trees. However, the trail continues off to the left downhill and after descending a little, you pop out onto a ridge with great views.
We decided to continue down the ridge to the highpoint visible at the end. This involved the most brushwhacking of the hike. This time it was of the scratchy variety.
There's a trail in here somewhere...
The high point was a little brushy, but right after it we popped out into the open. It doesn't seem to be named on any map, and I guess it's really just the NW ridge of Augspurger, but I started calling it Consolation Point.
Looking back to the summit with Consolation Point in the foreground.
Map of Augspurger. The trail goes up to the little shoulder to the left of Augspurger, then up to the summit and down the northwest ridge. Dog Mountain is off the map to the south. Note that Augspurger is mis-labeled on USGS maps (and on Google). The green arrow above is the actual summit.
There were excellent views down the Gorge.
To the west, I could see what I think is Silver Star, with some odd point to its left. Any ideas?
There's a nice lunch spot at the end...
...and little flowers everywhere.
We retraced our steps and back at the junction with Dog, I turned left and ran up to the summit and went down the normal Dog trail. Plenty of people still up there - there had been nary a soul on Augspurger. It was a nice hot day and both David and I managed to run out of water before we got back to the car - and we each started with 3L!
Augspurger is a great hike for solitude and a little more adventure than you normally get in the Gorge, but it may not be really hikeable due to brush after this (unless you bring a machete? I'm not kidding), at least until fall or whenever all that foliage dies off. Our hike was around 17.5 miles and 5500 ft gain including Dog at the end.
