Trail Log: 9-9-2024

 

• Trail: Snow Park - Meadow Creek Ridge
• Miles: 5.5
• Riders: Self
• Horses: Jack - Drifter
• Dogs: Groot

Notes: I call these outings "Hike and Ride's." I'm not getting much exercise these days. The horrible smoke - excessive heat - lack of wood to chop and fences to build have found me binge watching WAY too much Games of Thrones and ALONE. I don't recommend anyone watch GOT. My sister and I call it Games of Porn. With that said...we watched every episode of every season. Mostly with our eyes closed. ALONE, however, is awesome. It's a survival reality show. The contestants are set in an area of wilderness with a few items and camera equipment. They document their own story...no camera crew. The last one to tap out wins 500K. It's the one survival reality show I know I could do. I wouldn't last 3 days on shows like SURVIVOR which are predominantly popularity contests. ALONE....I could do that. Isolation is not a problem for me and I'd eat a couple of slugs for 500K any day of the week. Anyhow -  if I'm going to lose the GOT-15, as I call it...I need to get out and do some hiking. To kill several birds with one stone (yet another useful skill for my stint on ALONE) - I ride one horse for a while - walk for a while and lead both - switch horses - ride the other and repeat. 

I like to explore areas I've not been. I parked across from the snow park and rode up an unmarked road. The road started out pretty well developed. Firewood cutting evident. As you climb - the road turns into more of a four-wheeler road and soon becomes quite over-grown. Near the top of the faded road turned game trail, you are confronted with a sheer rock out-cropping. The trail "sort of" fades off around this rock face and seemingly disappears into the oblivion. I hobbled the horses here and crawled around to see what I could see. Meadow Creek to the west flowed at the bottom of the huge canyon and Schneider Meadows to the NW.

I had hoped the "road" would have looped around and taken me back to the trailers via Schneider Meadows. The Avenza map showed the path I took in - a big gap of nothingness around that rock face and the road lower down the canyon  I hoped to get to that connected back to the Snow Park. 

I sent the map of my tracks to an armature cartographer who has spent his life exploring this area. Near as he could determine - it must be an old logging concern as mineral exploration as far as he knew was not in this particular area. Why it just ends and then picks up again is anybody's guess.  I'd like to walk in sometime and walk around the rock face and see if I can pick up the road shown on the map. It would be sketchy to do it on horseback even with Jack the mountain goat. It's one of those things you do only if your life depends on it. Not today...

Map does not show topology. InReach map shows the elevation of the rock face to be at 4750 feet