Tue, Jun 12, 2018
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Etymology |
Story | Photos / Slideshow | Maps: 1 2 3 4 | GPXs: 1 2 3 4 | Profiles: 1 2 |
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On the second of a four-day trip I had planned a hike in the western part of the Trinity Alps Wilderness out of the Grizzly Camp TH north of SR299. My plan was to tag Trinity Mtn and Trinity Summit, two peaks described in Wayne Moss's Trinity Alps Companion. It's a long drive into the TH, thankfully much of it paved, making things a little faster and a little less dusty. I had driven more than half the road the night before, stopping to camp on an unsigned spur road that leads to the Happy Camp Campground. This was not far from Lone Pine Ridge, a short hike to a P1K that I planned to do first thing in the morning before driving to Grizzly Camp TH for the longer hike in the Wilderness area. Later in the day I drove back out to the highway and to the small town of Willow Creek at the SR299/SR96 junction for a few more peaks in the afternoon.
I continued north on the trail, as it traverse along the west side of the
crest, climbing and descending in modest gradients as it makes its way in and
out of several side creeks that form the Horse Linto Creek drainage. Some
sections of the forest had been spared from the fire and these were
quite scenic,
the trail easy to follow here. In other places the brush has grown over
head level and one needs to keep their arms up high in front as they walk
through the narrow path to push the brush aside. After about 4mi I neared
the location on the map marked as Lipps Camp. Here, the trail reaches
up to the
crest where it goes through a low saddle and turns northwest to climb up to
Trinity Summit atop Horse Trail Ridge. This area had burned in the 2009 Corral
Complex Fire with nine years of robust brush growth since then. The trail
more or less disappeared near the creek, only a handful of
ducks
marking the
route for a few hundred yards, then these, too, gave out and I was left looking
at
a sea of brush.
I spent probably 45min probing about the brush from various
angles, trying to locate the trail as depicted on my GPSr (which so far I had
been following quite nicely). I found some hopeful signs of trail through the
heavy brush but these all seemed to eventually lead to dead ends. I had hoped
to follow the trail up to Trinity Summit but that was still almost two miles
away and I had no appetite for such a daunting bushwhack up the overgrown
slope before me. I turned back. Perhaps I would have to explore an approach
from the west another time.
The return was easy enough, about two hours to get me back
to the Grizzly Camp
TH by 12:30p. I had planned to be out much longer so with my early return I
would need to find more to do for the afternoon.
The road turns out to have been abandoned probably a few decades ago. Though
still useable on foot, there were several significant washouts
that the Jeep would have been unable to negotiate. One of these even had some
old
grow buckets
that had been abandoned. Seems everyone around these parts takes a
crack at pot farming at some time or another. Just past the buckets at the
second washout, the road reached a junction with
a decent road
that while still
serviceable, sees little traffic. I followed this uphill to a much
better road
that had evidence of recent and regular use. How one gets to this road is a bit
of a mystery, as not all the roads are depicted on the maps or visible in the
satellite views. This road led up past a couple of
water tanks on private property, then back onto Forest Service lands, then again
on private lands. It was all somewhat confusing which at least helped with my
plausible deniability should someone drive by and ask what I was doing. After
an hour's time I reached
the last junction
with a road leading up towards the
top, now only about a quarter mile away. The topo map shows the road
veering north away from the peak so at its nearest approach I left the road to
wander uphill through dense forest understory in search of the summit. My
meandering eventually led me close to the summit where I found what appears to
be another
abandoned grow site.
It seems to have been poorly planned and
executed and nothing serious seems to have come of it. Just past this I caught
sight of a building or trailer through the trees just off the summit, with
a truck parked nearby. This was
getting a bit spooky and I was worried that a dog would catch wind of me and
start barking to draw attention.
The summit
was a disappointment, deep in the
woods and rather flattish with little to denote any sort of actual summit. I
called it good and headed back down, figuring I'd already pressed my luck
enough this afternoon.
I was happy to have no encounters with anyone during the uneventful return,
finally finishing
the day around 5:15p. I drove back down to Willow Creek where
I refueled and started making plans for the next day. I was ahead of schedule
with only a day's worth of summits and two days remaining on the trip, so I
started considering what it would take for another crack at Trinity Summit and
a couple of CC-listed peaks near it. In the end I decided to give it another
try via the Mill Creek Lake Trailhead and headed out of Willow Creek around 7p
for what I expected to be several hours of driving to reach the trailhead - good
thing I now had a full tank of gas...
Continued...
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