{"id":582,"date":"2016-08-09T04:38:10","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T04:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/?p=582"},"modified":"2017-06-05T14:47:56","modified_gmt":"2017-06-05T14:47:56","slug":"macks-inn-bushwhack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/2016\/08\/09\/macks-inn-bushwhack\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday, August 9 Mack’s Inn Bushwhack"},"content":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 <\/strong>Today we knew we’d face the hard part of the Mack’s Inn alternate route: 5 miles of no trail, following a creek westward until it reached Lillian Lake and the official CDT. We could not locate the beginning of the 5 miles, so we had to improvise.<\/p>\n

The map said to closely follow the creek, but we soon discovered that was a bad idea\u2014thick strands of plants, fallen trees, multiple creek crossings\u2014yuck! So we went up the hill above the creek and followed along that way. Just before Lillian Lake, we came to a large area of swamp and bushes, but marched through (yelling, in case of bears) and made it back to the CDT.<\/p>\n

Now we are high up on the Divide, with incredible views and a very strong wind. We are camped behind a grove of trees with the wind roaring.<\/p>\n

DETAILS:\u00a0 <\/strong>There was a beautiful sunrise this morning, but the clouds looked ??? so I lashed my raingear to the top of my pack where I could grab it easily if needed.\u00a0 We continued our long walk up Sawtelle Mountain Road, admiring the awesome views, but then the “fun” began.\u00a0 We could not tell from the map what we should be looking for at the place where the Ley route turned off the road.\u00a0 Should we be looking for another little road?\u00a0 Or a trail?\u00a0 Or what?\u00a0 We knew we needed to get to the Hell Roaring Creek canyon (what a name!)\u00a0\u00a0 We hunted and hunted for some indication, going up the road a bit, then back, very puzzled.\u00a0 Finally we found it!\u00a0 And it was a trail.\u00a0 What had happened was the SIGN which had been set up to show the start of the trail had been knocked down and pretty much destroyed.\u00a0 All that was left were a couple of fallen posts.<\/p>\n

So we swung off along what turned out to be a VERY pretty trail, with lovely groves of trees, wildflowers and views.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 We were hiking along, enjoying it tremendously and thinking happily that eventually we would get to the end of it, where it would turn into the 5-mile bushwhack.\u00a0 That’s what it looked like on our map, anyway.\u00a0 But what we didn’t realize was that our “bushwhack route” turned OFF from the nice trail we were on, and we walked right by the turnoff.\u00a0 I didn’t realize anything was wrong until the trail started dropping down quickly into a very pretty canyon….and a look at the map made me say, “Whoa!\u00a0 We are going the wrong way, and this is the wrong side of the mountain!”<\/p>\n

So we climbed back up onto the mountain shoulder and looked long and hard at the topography, trying to figure out what to do.\u00a0 Finally we decided, “OK, let’s assume THAT canyon over THERE is the Hell Roaring canyon”, and we simply headed for it.\u00a0 We knew we needed to be travelling west along Hell Roaring Creek, to reach Lillian Lake and the CDT.\u00a0 At first we tried to stay high above the creek, but the mountainside was so steep and rough that it made for hard going.\u00a0 And, the map showed the route being right down AT the creek.\u00a0 So we scrambled down and started walking the creek.\u00a0 It turned out to be a sort of mini-Gila , but WORSE.\u00a0 There were thick stands of plants and bushes, fallen trees and multiple creek crossings.\u00a0 It was slow and frustrating.\u00a0 Finally we said, “Phooey on this!” and climbed back up the hill so we could parallel the creek, but higher up.\u00a0 And hooray, up there, we even found some bits of “use trail”, so obviously other people had gone this way, too.<\/p>\n

When we stopped for lunch, there was a very cold wind blowing–brrrrr!\u00a0 So we didn’t take long to eat before pushing on.\u00a0 Finally we got to the end of the creek, and it turned out to be a swamp zone with an awful lot of bushes.\u00a0 Fixit hates swamps.\u00a0 I hate swamps.\u00a0 We stood there and looked at it.\u00a0 There was a knoll up ahead, where we could go and maybe spot Lillian Lake, but to get there involved going through swamp.\u00a0 Yuck.\u00a0 Fixit didn’t want to do it, but I was very anxious to be able to get up and SEE what lay ahead of us, so I slogged through (yelling “Hey bear!\u00a0 Hikers!”).<\/p>\n

Hooray, I was able to spot Lillian Lake!\u00a0\u00a0 Fixit growled a bit and slogged through the swamp, too, and we hiked past the lake to the spring on the far end, where we were able to get some really good water AND best of all, there was the CDT!\u00a0 Hooray!<\/p>\n

It sure was good to be back on a real trail, and have the Garmin available.\u00a0 And we did need it–there were several tricky places where we weren’t sure which way to go.\u00a0\u00a0 We met 3 more SOBO’s in the afternoon.\u00a0 The CDT trail went up and down a lot, but the trail tread was fine, and there was a part going along a narrow ridge, where the views were awesome in both directions, but the wind was so fierce that it was hard to hike.\u00a0\u00a0 We are up very high, and there is a lot of open grassland with groupings of trees.\u00a0 The wildflowers are lovely–all the “late summer” kind like asters, etc.<\/p>\n

When it was time to camp, it was really hard to find a spot.\u00a0 Everything was mountainside and the wind was cold & howling.\u00a0 But finally we spotted a grove of trees on the hillside below the trail that looked like maybe there would be a way to tuck ourselves in on the “lee” side.\u00a0 So that’s what we did–we squeezed between some bushes next to the trees.\u00a0 I actually sort of like being able to camp in wind-protected spots where I can still HEAR the wind, and that’s exactly what this spot turned out to be.\u00a0 I am so glad to be back on the CDT!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUMMARY:\u00a0 Today we knew we’d face the hard part of the Mack’s Inn alternate route: 5 miles of no trail, following a creek westward until it reached Lillian Lake and the official CDT. We could not locate the beginning of the 5 miles, so we had to improvise. The map said to closely follow the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-idaho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":997,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions\/997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montybillpct.net\/blog2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}