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| Run/Jog | 28.70 Miles |
5,400 AEG |
| | Run/Jog | 28.70 Miles | 10 Hrs 57 Mns | | 2.62 mph |
| 5,400 ft AEG | | | | |
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| no partners | | Next in my backlog of "crazy adventures that I'm fine with only doing once" (this backlog goes back years) - the one I'm calling "The old maps say East Webber trail goes all the way to the rim."
Logically, we figured the best place to start when scouting out East Webber is not the closest trailhead (Geronimo), but Pine TH. Gotta get in a little warmup!
So we headed up Highline, then Donahue, then overshot the West Webber turn (despite having come up that trail a billion times - it's an easy one to miss). Heading down West Webber was of course fun. After that, heading east on Geronimo was all new territory (not including the Boy Scout days).
East Webber trail is actually quite nice - verdant and smooth, at least to the turnoff to the springs. We stopped at the "swimming hole" for a few minutes for a dip, but the temperature was a little below "refreshing." The trail gets a little overgrown on the way to Rim View junction. After that, it pretty much disappears completely. We were able to follow a semblance of a path until a big giant boulder field choking the canyon. Seriously considered aborting at this point, but we decided to try heading along the slope above all the nonsense. Found what was probably just a game trail that helped us get a little further up canyon. Paths came and went for the next mile or so, until we hit some nice red slickrock, which was also the upper reaches of the creek's flow. After this, it was just mostly hopping over boulders interrupted by one stretch of decent trail.
We cam to a pour off that looked like it has a couple of possible ways around it. We decided to try and go to the left to avoid it, but it turned out to be the "wrong" decision - we went up way too high, and couldn't easily get back down to the creekbed. So we just kept going up and up, avoiding cliff bands, until we ended up at someone's campsite on top of the rim. Whew.
From here, we jogged Milk Ranch Point Rd to 87, and then down into Pine Canyon (which would provide a much needed water stop). Pine Canyon is beautiful, and even better, it has a good trail. When we got down to the girls camp, we were ready for this adventure to be over - there are two competing trail signs on opposite sides, one that says Pine Canyon TH is 4 miles, and one that says 7 miles.
At one point 4 miles may have been accurate, but over the years they've added a bunch of unnecessarily long, swooping switchbacks that have made this trail a lot of fun for MTBs, but absolute torture for pedestrians. (I may or may not have gotten so annoyed with these flat, crappy switchbacks that I cut through on some of the old alignments. If the FS doesn't like it, then maybe they should've considered other trail users before they gutted it.)
In summary... Beautiful route, East Webber trail does not (continuously) go all the way up to the rim, and I'll probably never do this loop again. |
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