2011/07/16 – Saturday – Adopt-A-Trail and Holcomb Creek Trail

Amanda and I got up early and we headed out for the mountains.  I planned for a two hour drive.

Before getting on the way, we stopped at the store to get lunch and snacks.

On the way up, I was starting to notice that we were very low on gas and when I took hard left hand turns the Jeep would hesitate (starving for gas)

We made it to the top of the mountain and of course filled the Jeep up with the necessary go go juice.  We made it in 1 ½ hours – so not bad.  I was the first person to be at the meeting location.

In the next hour we had 22 more vehicles (22 Jeeps and one Toyota).  We had the Dirt Devils group and a Big Bear club to join us.

We left a little after 9:00 once the driver meeting was complete.

We headed towards the west end of Deep Creek Trail via Kuffel Canyon Rd, Lake Arrowhead, and Hook Creek Rd

Before heading down to the bridge over Deep Creek some sheriffs where doing some training at the parking area, also the rocks necessary for a gate keeper is staged ready to be moved into place.

We proceed to the bridge to stage and prepared the vehicles for the trail (so we all aired down our tires.)  We also talked with a Ranger that was doing some trash cleanup.

We made it to the waterfall section of the trail and we had traffic.  Five vehicles took about an hour to make it through this section. 

We started and I was the first one to try the waterfall – I tried four times without making up it.  But Quinn was able to make it up (going further to the right), so I showed him which line not to take.  Several others was able to climb it.  All of us made it through the section in about an hour.

We pulled into Crab Flats for a late lunch, we parked on the main road (not in the campground – it was close to being full)

Amanda drove to the next trail which is Holcomb Creek Trail, but some of the group had enough for the day so they did join us for the next trail.

I was no longer the second or the third in line so now I am in the middle.  I helped a few people and extracted one person from the start of the trail (he did not have the front locker working correctly)

While traveling the trail, it has changed.  The fire took a lot of my landmarks away and opened up the views.

You can see the sections they had to work on to restore the trail.  And all the trees they had to cut down.

The east end (upstream) end of the trail no longer has a good gate keeper. There is no real obstacle at the creek crossing.  The last time I did it the hill would help to insure only the equipped vehicles would be able to start the trail.  There is a rock garden gate keeper further into the trail, but nothing like the west end (downstream) of the trail.

Once we finished the trail, Amanda drove to Fawnskin.  We aired up our tires and headed home.

We got home with the sun still in the sky.

I must be getting older, because I even went to bed early for me at 9:00 – I was falling to sleep on the couch, so Cheryl told be to go to bed.

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I was very glad that I was able to enjoy both trails in one day!!!