Finding this lost trail has been on my to-do list for quite awhile and today I did it, heading south from the McClellan Butte trail head with a heavy heart, knowing my great pal Lili would not be home to greet me.
Anyway, when I hike the McClellan Butte trail I typically look east to the eastern side of the Alice Creek gorge where I could swear I have spied a wispy trail snaking through the brush on the other side.
According to the maps, there is an abandoned service or logging road that runs in that area and I have wanted to see if I could find it. Today, I did, and I followed it until almost the very end (see track below) where it disappeared into the undergrowth.
I reached this, by the way, by turning left where the McClellan Butte trail intersects the service road (NF9020) and pushing past the barrier that has been erected to stop vehicular traffic. Less than a half mile from that barrier the trail splits, and I headed right and up.
It is likely that had Derek been along, the two of us, leveraging his route-finding skills, would have been able to forge ahead a bit farther but I turned around, since I was way off-trail with no one around to help should I run afoul of one of the obstacles on the trail. Here is what much of this “trail” looked like:
At one point there was a peek through the trees in the direction (west) of McClellan Butte:
I also saw a very neat fungus, bright yellow. A little Googling leads me to believe it might be Ramaria rubicarnata. Whatever it is, it was an interesting fungus:
5.6 total miles, rather mild. Here is the track:
A beautiful fall day in the Pacific Northwest and I was trying to be open to enjoyment.