Two men say a chance encounter on Mount St. Helens has given them a renewed perspective about the healing power of hitting the trails.

Scott Brown made a post on a hiking Facebook page Friday hoping to return someone’s hat. The post said, “did you or your friend get hurt on Helens on Thanksgiving? I found your hat!!”

Brown had no idea how special the hat was when he wrote the post. He could not have known what it means to John Wood and his son Tristan, who was wearing it when they left for their hike before dawn that day.

Wood and Brown didn’t actually come face-to-face on the trail. Wood had an unplanned face-to-face encounter with the ice on the trail when he slipped and fell.

His son, Tristan watched as his dad slipped and fell about 30-40 feet. “It was definitely scarier for me watching him slide down. It was a good thing we were close to the end of the icefall, so he just kind of leveled out very quickly,” he said.

Brown happened to be hiking with a friend up the hill and yelled down to see if they needed help, but Wood gave the thumbs up and said despite being a little banged up, he was ok. Brown watched to make sure the pair could get down ok and saw one of their hats blow away in the commotion.

“On the way down I found the hat, and it had a unique logo, Footprints of Fight I think it said, so it seemed like something significant, so I thought I would post it, see if we would find the owner,” he said.

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Hummocks is not a river trail, not a meadow trail and not a deep forest trail. But the terrain it passes through in its 2.55 miles definitely is worth a look.

“It’s among the most diverse and interesting landscapes at Mount St. Helens,’’ said Peter Frenzen, monument scientist at the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument. “That area on the pumice plain and in the hummocks is a natural lab at the volcano.’’

When the volcano erupted in 1980, much of the guts of the mountain were scattered. The hummocks are a jumble of sharp ridges, steep faces and several water-filled depressions. Streams run through the hilly terrain. With every hard rain storm and pond break, the hummocks change a little.

Hummocks trail No. 229 loops through the area, where willows, alder, Douglas fir, mountain hemlock and Indian paintbrush are reestablishing. The ponds are home for mallards and mergansers. Beavers have dammed a pond.

The trail swings close to the upper North Fork of the Toutle River, but never quite goes to the water’s edge. The loop can be hiked in either direction.

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Since last year, trail volunteers have been building the milelong trail, which takes hikers up to a viewpoint from the Ape Cave headquarters/visitor center, on the south side of the mountain.

Monument officials expect the new trail will alleviate the long lines to the Ape Cave — with 60,000 visitors annually — since hikers now have another trail to explore if the main attraction is overcrowded. A one-mile trail isn’t a destination hike, but combined with other trails nearby it should make for an attractive family-friendly day trip.

All those complaints from young and first-time hikers: The trail is too long. It’s too hot. It’s boring hiking in the woods. If your kids checked all the above, the Ape Cave is for you. Ape Cave, billed as the longest lava tube in the continental United States, makes this area the second-most-visited in the national monument, after Johnston Ridge Observatory.

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