Let me share my story with this trail. I read about this trail in a book (can’t remember the book and I don’t have it anymore. I think I burned it and scattered the ashes in Fires Creek- j/k). It looked like a great trail for a weekend, I love ridges, and bonus -it’s a loop, so no shuttling, no backtracking. I also decided to bring along my friend, for his FIRST BACKPACKING TRIP.
Plan was to get to the trailhead Friday evening, hike the trail (clockwise) on Saturday and finish up by late Sunday. We stealth camped near the trailhead Friday night and set off in the morning. Didn’t take long to see that this trail is NO JOKE. Briars everywhere, crazy steep up and downs, and staying on the trail was hard. I think animals were using the trail more than humans – I saw LOTS of scat right on the trail (at the time, I wasn’t sure what kind of scat it was, but I find out soon enough).
We hiked all day Saturday. Water was so scarce we had to filter water out of a muddy puddle in a part of trail that apparently was an old road. And as the sun was getting low in the sky Saturday (late because it was July) the trail comes to a gravel forest road. A post was there that at some point probably had a very helpful trail sign – the sign was gone. No idea where the trail goes at this point. Can’t find it. We keep looking trying to pick up the trail…no idea. We were pretty low on water again, so we followed the road downhill for a mile to get to a creek. Filtered water and came back up to the where we left off.
So far, this hike isn’t what I was expecting. I made the call that we basically needed to bail and abandon the idea of finishing the trail. We would camp and go back out the way we came in the next day. So, we are a few minutes into backtracking, looking for a place to camp, I round a bend in the trail and something BIG AND BLACK runs across the trail into the Rhododendron. This part of the trial is on a narrow part of the ridge, so there was really no way to give this thing space. We had to go right past there in order to keep moving. As we got close, the animal sprang out of the Rhododendron and started jumping up and down, darting back and forth, snorting, and kicking up dirt. It was a wild hog. And it was super mad. He moved back into the Rhododendron, and we ran past as fast as we could, all the while that hog was making snorts and shrieks like crazy.
My poor friend was completely exhausted now, mentally and physically. I found a nice place to camp, pitched the tarp right as it was getting dark. I made some dinner on my stove and when I tried to give it to my friend, he was already asleep. We slept under my tarp up on the ridge, my friend snored bad and sometimes it would wake me up and I thought that hog was back!
Sunday morning, hit trail. When we were on a part of the trail that looked like an old roadbed, I noticed that it seemed even more overgrown than I remembered on Saturday. I put my concerns to rest when I kept seeing blazes – I must be on the trail, right? Wrong. I eventually knew it wasn’t right. I stopped and my friend asked me why I had a puzzled look on my face. I told him that I thought we had gotten off the trial somehow. I thought he was going to breakdown and start crying. I had him sit down and made him promise me he would stay right there. I started retracing my steps until I found my mistake. I retrieved my friend and we made it back to the trailhead late Sunday afternoon. What an adventure. Strangely, my friend would never go backpacking with me again. Not sure why. Be careful out there yall.
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If you don’t mind getting your feet wet, this is the trail for you. Fantastic views from atop Big Scaly. Do it counter clockwise so you give your shoes time to dry out by the time you are back at the trailhead.
Don’t do this May - November. Overgrown and not well maintained trail. Maybe the reason why it’s not popular. Only other mammals we saw were wild pigs - which was incredible☺️
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