A great day with Joel and Liz! Perfect temperature and some afternoon clouds.

We started out up Barks Canyon, and eventually headed off-trail before connecting with the Cave Trail back down to the Trailhead. While there were signs of other people having taken this route before, it was actually much more enjoyable to just choose our own route rather than attempting to follow the randomly placed rock cairns and faint attempts at use trails. Basically, if you do this, I'd recommend setting a few destination waypoints and just going with what works. Attempting to follow the cairns between Barks Canyon and the Cave Trail would leave you more frustrated than its worth. I'll post a GPS route of our day if it helps.

Of course not being on a real trail, there's a few challenging spots: a little bit of cat claw and some short climbs depending on your exact route.