Today's adventure brought me to the western edge of the Trinity Alps Wilderness
in the
Six Rivers National Forest. There were a couple of summits on the CC-list and
a few found in Wayne Moss's Trinity Alps Companion, a couple of lists
I've been working on in no particular hurry. I had tried a day earlier to reach
Trinity Summit from the south via the Grizzly Camp TH, but had lost the trail
in a dense section of brush a few miles from my goal and had to turn back.
Fires in 2009 and 2013 had 
burned
large portions of the Wilderness, a boon for
buckthorn and other brushy plants. Adding to the difficulties, the trails in
this part of the forest seem to get irregular maintenance, sometimes none at
all. My plan today
was an ambitious one, covering more than 18mi, with more than four
miles of cross-country to and from Tish Tang Point and unknown conditions on
the trailed sections. I was happy to manage all of it in less than 9hrs.
Getting to the Mill Creek Lake
TH at the edge of the Wilderness is a bit of a chore,
something like 30mi of winding mountain roads from Orleans on SR96, though most
of it is paved. I was 37mi south of Orleans in the town of Willow Creek late
in the afternoon when I decided to do this hike the next day, and was expecting
to take several hours of driving into 
the evening
to get there. I was happy to
find there is a far shorter route from the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation just
west of the Wilderness and north of Willow Creek. The excellently graded
Big Hill Rd goes east from the Trinity River 11mi up to the reservation boundary
where it joins the paved forest road with another 5-6mi to go to get to the
trailhead. I was a little worried I might find a locked gate at the boundary but
was happy to find no such obstacle and made it from Willow Creek to the TH in
less than half the time I had expected if going through Orleans.
I was up in the morning and starting my hike by 6:20a. 
The trail
immediately
forks in three directions. The left fork goes to Mill Creek Lake, the right
fork would be my return route. I headed up the middle fork which goes uphill
to Water Dog Lakes before joining the Horse Ridge National Recreation Trail.
Before reaching the lakes, the trail goes over the southern shoulder of North
Trinity Mountain. An easy 
cross-country jaunt
goes several hundred feet up to 
the summit
which I reached in only 40min's time. The summit is on both of the
lists and is also a P1K, yet seems remarkably unremarkable. The summit is large
and rounded, trees mostly blocking the views. I had some trouble finding rocks
to shelter 
a new register I would leave at the summit atop
the benchmark, then headed down 
the southeast side of the peak
to return to the trail.
A few minutes later I reached 
Water Dog Lakes,
a few small ponds looking more like swampy marshes than alpine lakes. A couple
of backpackers were camped there, 
still sleeping, the only other
visitors I would run into all day. I took a few photos before quietly leaving
them undisturbed. I joined the Horse Ridge
Trail and started south along the crest towards Trinity Summit, about two miles
away. I made a slight detour enroute to visit the minor summit of unnamed
Peak 6,146ft, little more than 
a collection of rocks
amidst the forest. South of here, the trail passes through
a large meadow area at a saddle and a poorly-marked
trail junction before climbing up to Trinity Summit. I arrived soon
after 8:30a to find the old 
guard station still standing, much as it
has since the 1930s, though perhaps a bit weathered. The 
inside
is plain and mostly empty, though one can't help but think "hanta virus" when
walking around. The front door was locked but the rear one not so, allowing me
a 
brief visit inside. There is 
a campsite on the north side
of the building, 
an outhouse behind the bushes to the west and what
looks like 
a small barn further to the south. There are two areas
vying for highpoint, one immediately behind the guard station in the bushes
where I found a very 
dated canteen lying half-buried. The nicer summit
is found to the south where 
a rock outcrop makes a far better summit
than a clump of bushes. I left 
a register
here before 
continuing south along the ridge.
Less than a mile south of Trinity Summit I came to 
a trail junction I
was
looking for. The east fork drops down through Devils Hole on its way to the
Grizzly Camp TH about 7mi to the south - the very trail I had lost track of the
previous day. It would have been interesting to follow this trail down to see
where I went wrong, but that was going to be more effort than I cared for - I
still had a lot of unknown on the route ahead. I took the right fork that
drops off the crest as it makes its way downhill towards Corral Creek in the
direction of Tish Tang Point. The trail started off nicely but I lost it after
about a mile. This part of the Wilderness had burned in the 2013 Corral Complex
Fire and five years later most of it is more brush than forest. It took me
almost two hours from this point to reach Tish Tang Point, a distance of about
3mi - not great, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been.
I tried to follow
a trail shown on my GPSr down to Patterson Meadows where I hoped to find another
trail junction. I found 
appliances and other stuff from a homestead
that once stood in the
meadows but few signs of a trail. The cross-country travel wasn't bad and once
I reached Corral Creek at the meadows I found the beaten path of a trail I was
looking for on the west side of the creek. This trail heads north towards
McKay Meadows and eventually back to the Mill Creek Lake TH, giving me hope that
I could use this for the return rather than going the long way back up Trinity
Summit.
I stayed on this trail for only a few hundred yards before striking off to the
west towards Tish Tang Point. There were no trails shown on the map and none
discovered for this two mile stretch. I had to go up through a saddle at about
5,100ft, then drop down to a lower one at 4,500ft before climbing up to the
summit whose elevation doesn't quite reach 5,000ft. This was the hardest part
of the day with 
the most brush - not overwhelming, but I had to pick
and choose my route carefully to avoid the brushiest places. The
final climb up to the summit involved walking along downed logs to get
through the thickest parts of brush. I found the summit to be the least
summit-like of the four I visited - flattish, no views, heavy brush, low
elevation. I happened upon 
a large boulder to call the highpoint
but left no register since I had no other rocks to hide it in - the next
fire would simply consume it without a second thought. This CC-listed summit
should definitely be delisted as it has no redeeming qualities that I could
discern - you wouldn't even recognize it from a distance if you didn't know
where to look.
I followed a similar return route from Tish Tang Point to Corral Creek,
picking up the faint trail pretty close to where I'd left it. I soon became
dismayed when I had trouble following the trail through several
creek crossings
and boggy areas that quickly had my boots wet. Would my route continue like this
for the remaining five miles? It would not. East of McKay Meadows the trail
goes through a saddle where it becomes an actual 
roadbed.
Once driveable all
the way to McKay Meadows, the roadbed now serves as a trail and I was highly
confident that I could follow it even if there was little foot traffic to
preserve a use trail. The road traverses 
the west side
of the crest around the
5,200-foot level as it makes its way in and out of several
side creeks in the
Tish Tang a Tang Creek drainage (now there's a name to remember). It was
a pleasant enough hike that would take several hours to finish, and I was most
happy to be done with the brushy cross-country business. I
returned to the TH
by 3p, still with plenty of daylight to drive back down to Willow Creek for
gas and refreshments before driving back up into the hills south of town. A
very good day indeed...
Continued...