Today’s hike had two objectives:

1. To do some conditioning before my annual backpacking trip with Carly
2. To see if I could find any evidence of a continuation of Corral Springs on the south side of Roaring River

We headed out a bit early since it was just Thor and I, and we made good time to the trailhead. As we headed up 4610, we started getting into the clouds. When we got to the trailhead we were in the clouds:

We suited up and headed down. The first mile or so of the trail all the brush was wet, like it had rained, but I think it was just the fog. The roads on the way in didn’t kick up must dust either since they were wet.

As we started down into the canyon, you get a good look across the Roaring River valley over to Indian Ridge – on the way down it was in the fog:

A little farther down the trail, it runs right alongside a huge Rockslide – this part is near the bottom:

After looking at the rockslide for a bit, we continued down, down, down and the trail continues to get fainter and steeper as you get nearer the Roaring River. The last little bit before the River is extremely steep – fortunately it is short. After navigating that steep section, we were finally at the Roaring River:

It was still early (about 11:00) so we decided to cross the river to look for trail on the other side. I thought I could rock hop but I slipped on one of the rocks and got wet – it wasn’t too deep this time of year – only about calf deep. Once across, we had to get above the river so we scouted out a good way to get up. We made it up reasonably easy, but soon found a sea of devils club, ferns and vine maple:

We made it thru that mess and I decided to head up the hill to see if I could see any semblance of tread. The hillside was EXTREMELY steep and is covered in brush of various types. There were some places that “could have” been tread, but nothing definitive. I did find what I’m very sure was a blaze – looked pretty clear and was blazed on both sides of the tree:


Once I found that blaze I tried to follow “tread” but it didn’t go very far – there were three separate small side creeks that I had to go down and cross, similar to this one that had a huge log:

We went a little farther after this creek crossing and I soon gave up – if there was trail here, it appears to be pretty much completely obliterated – at least I couldn’t find anything except the one blaze. We headed back to our crossing point and since my legs and feet were already wet, I just pretty much waded the river.

Once back on the other side, we stopped and had a quick lunch and drank some water. Once lunch was done, we started the slow, plodding trip back up the hill – but this was why I wanted to do this trip – doing the extreme uphill on the way OUT is harder than doing it on the way in – plus there was significant elevation to be gained. The GPS said it was about 2600′ of elevation on the trip.

We made reasonably good time back up the hill (better than I thought we would). When we got back up to the open spot where you could see Indian Ridge, it was now mostly out of the fog:

We continued up the hill and soon came to a switchback that was VERY near the top of the rockslide, so we decided to head over to see what that looked like. This is what it looked like looking down the rockslide into the Roaring River drainage:

And then I had to get a picture of Thor at the top of the rockslide looking down into the Roaring River Drainage too:

After enjoying the view from the rockslide for a bit, we continued up. At this point, we were mostly up the hill, but we still had a fair amount of elevation to gain before we’d get back to the truck. I didn’t think the grade would ever quit, until it finally leveled out. At that point, we made pretty good time back to the truck.

Thor and I were both tired but we thought we’d try and stop at Fearless on the way home to see if we could take advantage of the sale on strong scotch. It seems Fearless is either going out of business or is being sold, so I’m not sure what will happen to it. It has been our go to post hike place for a number of years now – if it isn’t an option it will be sad.

This was a good day in the woods that achieved both objectives (even though we really didn’t find any trail on the other side).