Today’s hike was different than many I’ve done recently. The weather on Saturday was forecast to be really nice, which turned out to be very accurate. I wanted to get out, and after some discussion with Kirk, we decided to head down the Bagby trail and explore some old potential trails that show on old maps. It turned into a very interesting day.

We had to follow several slow trucks with trailers all the way into Ripplebrook – I wasn’t sure where they were going to go 4 wheeling since there isn’t much open as far as off roading. Once at Ripplebrook, they stopped and we got to continue up to Bagby. When we got there, there were only 3 vehicles in the parking lot:

One person arrived shortly after we got there – they headed down the trail pretty quick. We suited up and then headed out, looking for old junctions as we went. It wasn’t too far before we saw an old junction and I followed it up a ways. I thought Kirk was going to follow but we waited and he never came so we went back – we didn’t see him, so we continued on to the hot springs. The side trail we were on was (I think) an old alignment of the trail – it basically followed the current trail, although up the hill a bit. I think the current trail was constructed down lower to make it a more level grade, and also to harden the trail a bit since it gets quite a bit of traffic to the hot springs.

As we continued down the trail towards the hot springs, at one point you get a really nice view of the hot springs fork – it is a really pretty river:

And throughout the day, we saw several versions of this – sun beaming thru the trees – it was gorgeous:

This area is an ancient forest with some truly magnificent old trees.

As we proceeded to the hot springs, we encountered the couple that took off ahead of us – they had stopped to rest for a minute – I asked if they had seen another guy with a dog and they said no – I was hoping we would meet up with Kirk at the hot springs (which we did). A little bit down the trail, we got to the second bridge that crosses the hot springs fork:

Thor didn’t really like crossing the bridges – although he seemed to do better on the way out – he kind of slithered across the bridge:

Shortly after the bridge, we had to walk under this HUGE log before we got to the hot springs:

And just up the road we got to the hot springs. Here is what I think was the old guard station (all the buildings were open which was kind of weird):

And a closeup of one of the hot springs:

Here is a video of one the hot springs showing the bubbling that happens – the water is pretty hot:

Here is the tub that gets fed by that hot spring:

After looking around a bit, we stopped to have lunch (there are some picnic tables there). There were only a couple of people at the hot springs. After eating lunch, we continued south down the trail. The snow just past the hot springs got quite a bit deeper:

I think the depth was due to it being a bit more open – once we got back into the larger trees it got a little more manageable. We continued down the trail, but there were spots that were difficult to traverse. The trail is cut into the hill and there were spots with heavily compacted snow that was icy. We had to walk around those areas as best we could. We made it to the camping area at Shower falls, and looked around a bit. After looking around, we investigated Shower Falls:

We saw a rough side trail that headed up so we went up it and it kind of dead ended at Shower creek at the top of the falls. It gave us a good view looking down into the shower falls basin from above though:

After exploring this for a bit, we continued down the trail. Kirk found what appeared to be a junction and we decided to continue a bit farther down the trail to where the old trail down to Whetstone joined. We didn’t make it too far until the icy patches became too much. We decided to turn around. We headed back to the junction and I headed down it. Kirk saw it continued below the trail so he took that path. The trail heading south shortly ended up back on the current trail, so I can only conclude that this was an older route. Thor and I headed back on the current trail and soon found Kirk, who followed the trail below the current trail for a bit before it got lost in some old blowdown. We guessed that was the older route of the trail and the current trail was a better graded route.

We headed back north to the hot springs for the next exploration of the day. Unfortunately, I didn’t really take any pictures here. There was a trail that headed east and then south down to Dickey Lake – we wanted to try and find it. We crossed the un-named little creek next to the hot springs and headed east. We looked for trail on the south side of Peggy creek as that looked like the most likely route. We didn’t find anything until we kind of crested the hill above Peggy Creek and Kirk found some tread up there as well as some blazes. Here is one spot near the end of what we found – a blaze next to teh tread:

We continued to follow the somewhat intermittent tread until a point we kind of lost it. Kirk headed up hill and eventually found tread – we tracked it back to where we were – the trail switchbacked up the hill. We could have continued to follow it, but it was getting late so we decided to turn around and see if we could follow it all the way back to the hot springs. We were successful until shortly before the hot springs – the trail took a turn and then kind of got lost in a flatish area before that un-named creek. There wasn’t much in this area that looked like trail, and we didn’t see any blazes either.

We made it back to the hot springs. Kirk wanted to take a look at the two buildings up the hill which was interesting. I hadn’t realized that all the buildings were unlocked. The larger building is a newer building and had pretty modern amenities in it. It had a kitchen sink and had some sort of electrical system (wall plugs and in one of the rooms had some sort of battery/generator/inverter setup). It had 3 rooms – one bedroom, a bunk room and a kitchen area with a woodstove in it. There were skylights in the ceiling. It must have been a pretty nice place to stay back in the day.

After looking at those buildings, we headed back north. Kirk had told me earlier he thought he found part of the Nohorn trail heading northwest, so we went back there so he could show me. The trail junctioned off the old alignment of the Bagby trail, and headed uphill to a cut area. At the cut area, it kind of disappeared but it was interesting to see the short segment of it. This what the upper part of that short segment looked like:

We made it back to the parking lot – it was getting a bit dark in the big trees. We packed up and headed out – I know Thor was tired. We had gone quite a bit farther than I was thinking we would, having covered at least 7 miles. When we got back to the parking lot, there was only 1 other vehicle in the lot – we thought that was weird because we met a guy coming in as we were going out and there was a couple at the hot springs when we were there. After we headed out, we saw a car on road 70 – Apparently they thought they might get stuck in the snow in the parking lot, so stayed on the clear pavement.

We headed back down, and we were talking about Pegleg falls – I hadn’t seen it in years, so we took a quick side trip over to see it. I had thought there was an old dam there, but I guess my memory failed me. There was an old fish ladder next to the falls. After a quick look, we headed back to the truck and headed home. Here is Pegleg falls with the fish ladder next to it:

It was an absolutely gorgeous winter day. I had forgotten how beautiful the forest around Bagby was – it is an incredible ancient forest with some truly gigantic trees.

A stop at Time Travelers for dinner made for a great end to an amazing day. I think we will be re-visiting this area again soon to see how far we can find the old Dickey Lake trail.