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| Hiking | 6.10 Miles |
1,208 AEG |
| | Hiking | 6.10 Miles | | | |
| 1,208 ft AEG | | | | |
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| partners | | With the warm temps, we needed to find someplace higher to escape to. We'd had some places short listed in the Sierra Ancha before the Billy Fire struck - we decided to head up that way to survey the damage, and see if we might get one of those hikes completed. As we drove in, it was hard seeing the damage on the hillsides - the devastation was even worse up close. While there are areas where it looks like the fire didn't burn too hot, and plenty of green is moving back in and larger trees were spared - there are other regions where the fire burned through hot, taking everything with it, and high enough temperatures hindering recovery with nothing appearing to be coming back yet. The character of the Workman Creek area is forever changed - it looks like the fire burned pretty hot through the area, and the erosional damage from last fall's heavy rains have taken their toll. Lots of gravel has washed into the creekbed along with snags of deadfall, and there are areas where previously smallish side drainages have become much larger due to erosion. The road up to the Moody Point Trailhead is in decent condition, with a few rocky spots. Unfortunately, while the trailhead parking was spared, the Moody Point Trail itself departs the road in one of the areas that burned completely. All that remains of the old tread is a cairn marking the road crossing and about 10-20 feet of obvious tread before it disappears into soft ashy soil. With this discovery, our original plans to hike down to the Devil's Eye were scrapped.
Disappointed, we headed back down to the Carr Trailhead to have a look at the Parker Creek and Rim Trails. Before fully committing, we decided to walk the trail to where we could get a look at the terrain as the trail drops down off the rim. While there was evidence of fire around the trailhead, the trail itself was spared any significant damage - and from what we could observe, we'd be able to hike a bit before encountering burned regions. We decided we'd gather our gear and head down to see what we could see.
The Parker Creek trail remains in excellent condition, thanks to all the maintenance done by @AnchaGladtrailz and cohorts. Surprisingly, as we descended towards the junction with the Rim trail, we spotted a potsherd. We figured we'd do a little exploring to see if we could find the midden heap and any evidence of ruins from which the sherds may have originated. Our exploration had us pushing through thickets of mananita, locust, and ceanothus...while none of it was catclaw, it wasn't pleasant and had me thoroughly ensnared more than a few times. While most of the blood sacrifice was extracted from J, I also contributed. While we failed to turn up any obvious ruins, we found plenty more sherds of varying size, color, and form. It was fascinating to see the variety that we stumbled across. Eventually, we decided to continue on our way, and made our way back towards the trail.
We hit the junction with the Rim Trail and continued onward, making our way towards Moody Point...and the burned regions. The trail immediately after the junction remained unburned and in excellent condition, but we were soon into the burn area. There are some areas with groundcover and grasses returning, but plenty others are moonscape. We were glad to see that there were regions where the larger pines survived, but it was still disheartening to see all the damage. We were able to follow the tread for the most part thanks to cairns, though we lost track of it in a drainage - after some hunting and consulting the downloaded track, we were eventually able to pick it back up again.
After a while, we peeled off from the trail to head cross country to have a look at a large window in the cliffs overlooking the Coon Creek drainage. The area had spots of burn, but much of it seemed to have been undamaged. While we were making our way towards the window, we had to take extra care while walking - the plateau has a healthy population of desert spiny stars. After taking in the view and enjoying a break in the shade of some juniper, we opted to make our way back up towards the top by heading cross country rather than by retracing our steps. With the way cleared for the most part by the fire, it was a matter of picking a line and heading up hill. We eventually hit a stand of locust that required careful negotiation before making the top. Surprisingly on our way up, we spotted a cairn, and some evidence that someone may have attempted to cut a use path at some point in the past. When we made it back up, we continued cross country, stumbling across a couple of fenced areas - one containing a weather station and another with a solar panel and label indicating it was a study area of some sort. Not long afterwards, we hit the road and followed it the rest of the way back to the trailhead.
The day was warm, especially in the sun with no tree cover to be had - luckily we had a decent breeze, which helped keep things comfortable. While we heard plenty of birdsong during our hike and saw a few butterflies and grasshoppers, we didn't see much evidence of other wildlife. We saw one set of relatively fresh elk prints on a section of the rim trail, and a few deer prints as we made our way uphill back towards the road, but we didn't spy any lizards, and the large swaths of soft tread through the burned areas didn't have any tracks save for ours. |
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Wildflowers Observation Light
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Happier when hiking....I may not move fast (and I'm often distracted by wildflowers), but I'll get there eventually  |
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