After the quick visit at Lightning Ridge Trailhead our foray moves to the Thompson Trail. We have been here years ago but are surprised at the beauty of the area, we should return sometime just to hike along the creek. But the foray will not be using the trail, we are going to climb up the hill in an area where our guide has found some boletes prior.
It is quite a difficult climb with a few people giving up and the other ones moaning and barely moving around. We are happy when we find a forest road nearby that other people are missing, there seem to be the same amount of mushroom on and off road.
We have climbed quite a bit and luckily we even found quite a few good mushroom, especially Ruby Porcinis, a choice mushroom.
After returning to the parking and saying our good byes to the rest of the foray group it is time to try hiking along the Thompson Trail. We will try to go as far as we can before the rain clouds catch up with us, it doesn’t really look good when we look behind us.
The trail is really nice and level and following the creek, we understand why the trail is considered one of the most scenic in the White Mountains. And it is quite popular usually, not so much when the rain is coming.
We do not see lots of birds but we do see a Fremont Squirrel, a relatively localized species of squirrels that seems really lazy from our two observations. It prefers to shout at us instead of moving until we get too close for comfort.
We pass a dam and then at around half a mile a gate. At that point it starts to rain and we try to decide if it is a passing shower or a serious rain, the guess is serious rain so back to the car we go to return back without being soaking wet as yesterday. It is a nice trail however and it would be worth to hike it in the future when it is not raining.
