Sunday August 31, 18.0mi/29.0km
Angel Lake Campground (1133.6/8360ft) to Secret-Starr Trail (x/7660ft) (NV)
I was awake early at 6am, excited to get started on a day full of unknowns. Sunrise seems to be a few minutes after 6am these days.
My little campsite that wasn’t officially a campsite, but everything else was full because apparently it’s a holiday weekend.
I packed up camp and walked a minute up to Angel Lake to see the view, and also to scout out a potential alternate route.
The whitish peak in the middle is Gray’s Peak, and back in June some other hikers, Chance & Out-and-About, had scrambled up a gully on the left side of that peak. That route would be steep, but also would cut off 4 miles and some elevation gain. But I decided to stick with the main route, as the trail was reported to have been good. One last look at the lake:
And the trail was quite good, all the way to Grays Lake.
Entering the East Humboldt Wilderness.
These little aspens grow like weeds, and I was optimistic to see that they were trimmed back.
For most of the morning, I enjoyed hiking on a nice trail through the alpine.
Looking down on Grays Lake:
Just after I took that photo at the top of the pass, I met a young couple from Elko who were out backpacking for the holiday weekend. They were just as surprised to see another hiker out here as I was to see them. Apparently almost nobody hikes out here, because beyond the lake the trail gets pretty rough. That assessment was correct:
About a mile after Grays Lake, I came to the spot where this morning’s alternate route rejoined. It had taken me 4 hours to get to that spot, whereas the scramble up and over probably would have taken only 2 hours. Oh well. At this point, I had been playing hide and seek with the Highline Trail, ever since I left Grays Lake.
Basically I was following cairns that were hidden in tall grass, with very sporadic trail tread. Pretty soon I decided to utilize one of my alternates, and departed the Highline Trail, using the Herder Creek Trail to descend down to the Secret-Starr
trail, which several local people assured me definitely existed. Initially, the Herder Creek Trail was just following cairns, but those were easy to follow on a ridgeline. Pretty soon it became an old two-track road, which connected all the way down to the Secret-Starr Trail, which was also a two-track road. It definitely didn’t follow the mapped line but it was working. Even after it reduced to singletrack trail, heavy use from cows meant the trail was pretty wide and brush-free.
This little spot in an aspen forest was basically the last time I saw a trail that day.
From that spot, the trail forked into three options. A 2-track road headed back uphill to the Highline Trail, the cattle trail went downhill, and my trail continued straight ahead into brushy aspen and willows. It appeared the cattle trail would soon cross into private property, and I didn’t want to climb back up 1500 ft to the Highline Trail, so I took the brushy middle option. Over the next hour I barely covered 2 miles, but by then I was committed, and the trail only got worse. The trail had 100% disappeared on the south facing slopes, but that wasn’t a big deal since those slopes were just sagebrush that I could weave through.
The north facing slopes were thick with Aspen trees, which made progress extremely slow, half a mile would take me 30 minutes. I definitely found evidence of the old trail, with cut logs, benched tread, and even some old signposts… but it was only barely faster than straight-up bushwhacking. I hadn’t expected it to go this slowly, and sunset caught me in the middle of an Aspen forest, so I spent another 30 minutes by headlamp navigating my way to the next clear area, so I could camp. Finally, at 8 pm I came into a sagebrush area, and found a mostly flat spot and threw down my tent. Long day.