Hi everyone, I met rob and a couple other members while hiking up fish creek mountain and they told me about this site. Really happy to learn theres other people doing trail maintenance and rebuilding.
I have been working on forest road 4620 and it is cleared to the junction with 210 and I'll be working on clearing a trail down 290 to the junction with 5420 as my next project.
I'm always out on saturdays or sundays, if anyone has something to work on if they want an extra set of hands send me a message.
Hi Mike
Welcome to the site!
We did some work on Baty Butte a few weeks ago and will be doing some more work later this year. Yesterday, a few of us hiked Baty Butte all the way down to Joyce Lake. I hadn't done that since 2008. There are a few rough sections that need some help which we will hopefully be getting to later this year. More hands are always good - there is always more work than time (or energy) available.
We need to get back to Fish Creek Mtn too and finish cutting out the trail to high lake - that will be on the agenda in the fall after the rains start again.
After weeks of work I finally made it to big meadow quarry and I believe that will mark the end of forward progress on 5420 for the season. I was mostly following game trails and whats left of the atv trail so its less a defined trail and more of a path at this point. The alders and vine maples were giving their best effort to completely take over parts of the road. I'll be heading back up there a couple more times with my crosscut saw to cut through the bigger stuff I skipped over in the heat.
Some unfortunate news, there's a logging operation going on 5410 and they dropped some big trees across 5420 before rimrock creek and I don't think they're planning on removing them, so to get down to 54 you're either scrambling over the logs or some good steward will have to go through there with a saw and at least a 36" bar.
Which quarry is the big meadow quarry? Is that the one about halfway between Rimrock and first creek?
I haven't been up 5420 for a few years since 54 has been closed - it makes for a long day when you have 3 miles tacked on to your trip just to get to the beginning.
That sucks about the trees they dropped across the road. I remember there was a pretty big cedar near the beginning that someone dropped across the road before all the recent work. I can only imagine what is there now. Once they re-open the road it will make it a lot easier to get in there though. I'm hoping that will happen this fall sometime.
The coordinates for big meadow quarry are: 45°01'16.5"N 122°09'06.3"W
The USGS 1:24,000 maps from 1997 have labels for the main roads, spur roads, and major features.
I found a geocache out there too which was neat, last signed September 2019.
I'm trying to reach surprise lake and hike up the camels back. I tried this summer going up fish creek but the trails getting pretty bad with blow downs and black berries so I only made it to the second bridge and decided to cut the trip short and head back. Thats how I knew about the trees across 5420, I had to navigate over/around them with a #50 pack on; not a pleasant experience.
Looking at maps I came to the conclusion that the next best option would be driving up 4620 then follow spur roads to 5420 and take that. I'm about halfway to the junction with fish creek so we'll see where i can get next summer. It really sucks having to hike five miles just to pick up where you stopped the last time.
Oh Wow! The reason I didn't see that quarry is that I was looking way too far north! You are WAY down 5420!
Yeah, unfortunately there is no good way into the Fish Creek drainage, especially after the fire. There was a good way to get into the heart of the area but unfortunately it got destroyed in the fire.
I did get an interesting route to potentially get to Surprise Lake which I'm going to investigate. It is coming in from Skookum Lake - it is still a long trip but it holds the most promise of any route I've seen. Surprise Lake is a really difficult place to get to and the fires have only made it harder.