Sunday July 27, 22.6mi/36.4km

WF Crooked Creek (401.3/5830ft) to Lookout Mountain ridge (374.9/8090ft) (ID) +1.6mi missed turn, -5.4mi main route

This was a hard day, lots of elevation gain, along with some bonus elevation that was partially my doing, with the help of some missing trail signage. I finished off the last mile along Crooked Creek, and then had a quick 600-ft climb up to a pass, to drop into the drainage for Coxey Creek. The pass had a nice view.

And I’m still surprised at how good most of the trails are out here in the Frank Church Wilderness.

While the trails are pretty good, the signage and mapping is decidedly poor. There was a trail junction which was not shown on any of my maps, and there was no sign at the junction, so I continued unaware on the good trail, until it started climbing more and more. Sometimes trails side-hill above a valley, but after it climbed 400 ft. and had a switchback, I decided that was very wrong and retraced my steps. I eventually found the correct trail back in the valley bottom, which had a less prominent trail tread and had turned off abruptly. Looking ahead to Big Creek Ridge which I would be climbing soon:

I followed Big Creek for a couple of miles, it was another well-maintained trail and I enjoyed the views of the water.

The creek was very quiet, but judging by this massive pile of logs, it’s deceptively powerful.

I had to ford the creek, which was about 60 ft wide at the crossing point. It wasn’t difficult, and it was just under knee deep, but the force of the moving water was still surprising.

Safely across the creek, I attempted to dry out my socks and shoes while having lunch under a shady pine. After lunch was the big big 3,800-ft climb.

I left the river at elevation 4300 ft, and hours later topped out on the ridge at 8100 ft. Overall it was very nice trail and I only lost it once in a boggy meadow. The top had good views mostly because all the trees had been burned away.

The usual afternoon clouds moved in and kept things nice and cool.

And it seems the new normal weather pattern is for thunderstorms to start forming around 3pm.

I spent a couple hours traversing the ridge, enjoying a surprisingly good trail given all the standing dead trees around.

At one point I even hiked briefly through a live forest.

After traversing the ridge for a few hours, I felt like I was getting pretty tired after each little up and down. And I checked my watch and noticed I had hiked almost 6,000 vertical feet today, mostly from the big climb, plus the two smaller ones this morning and then the ridgeline with its up/downs. So I stopped early and set up my tent at a nice flat spot on the ridge just north of Lookout Mountain.

I made dinner and relaxed for a couple hours reading my book and watching the sunset.