Well, par for the course, many of the assumptions we made about this place were wrong. We thought that since it had a reservation system that it would be crowded, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. No one here yet for the holiday week, it’s been nice and quiet, which is just the way we like it anyway, just unexpected. We also thought that the trails here would be well-marked and well traveled, but after seeing how little the horse camp is actually used for horses, we were beginning to wonder about that, too. I had three different maps of the place, and when I overlaid them on to Google Earth, they all showed the trails in different places, so I didn’t see the point of downloading them to my GPS until we did an exploratory ride, and that we did today. And what an exploration it was! We headed north out of the campground along the creek, which had two different numbers depending on which map we used, and none of them showed the trail so close to the creek. Nevertheless, it seemed to be marked in a few places, so we continued along. We lost our way a couple of times at the first intersection, not much to go one, finally found an old weatherbeaten sign on a tree so overgrown you had to duck under the limbs to get close enough to read it. From there we thought we determined a path, but it ended up being a circle back to where we had come from. Finally pressed on, figuring maybe that wasn’t actually the intersection we were looking for, and that turned out to the be case. We finally got to a bridge crossing and a trail number, 8, but we didn’t know if it was the beginning, middle or end of 8, as this was the first time we’d seen a sign. We kept heading north, looking for a left turn, took the first one we came to but that just took us to a meadow full of turkeys that made the horses jump. We circled back, then took the next left, which had a much more recent roadsign pronouncing it as the "New Trail" but we weren’t sure whether it was on the map or not (it wasn’t), but it did take us a lot further north, still paralleling the road, until we reach another parking area and a trail to the right that went up the mountain. Since we knew we had to eventually get to the top, we took it, and it was very nice, pretty steep, but it took long sweeping switchbacks as we went, and we could see Turkey Meadow again along the way. Just when Hubby was getting anxious, we finally came across another trail that went further up the mountain, and I persuaded him that it would lead us to the trail we wanted, and fortunately, that turned out to be true. Finally, we seemed to be back on track, so we stopped for a snack and to let the horses graze in a clearing before carrying on with the Figure Eight route I had planned, though we skipped one short leg because we wanted to see where we had gone wrong on the way out. It seems the old trails aren’t too badly marked once you know what they look like, but there are a lot of other trails that either aren’t marked, or are poorly marked, or aren’t on the map at all, which is crazy, it wouldn’t take anything to make a new map! Once we got back to the center of our Figure Eight, we debated whether we should just head back to camp along the creek on the trail we came out on, or finish the loop we had intended. We decided to try the new trail, but once again, the markings betrayed us. There were horse markers along the creek on the other side, but they only went about 50 yards before the trail was impassible, so we went back again, until I found the trail on the other side of the main park road. We took that, and then we started climbing, and climbing and climbing, almost straight up it seemed, actually a 500 feet ascent in less than ¾ of a mile, pretty hard on the horses considering they’d already done several major climbs today. We finally leveled off at the top, which didn’t last, because then we started descending again. Not quite so steeply, but pretty much straight down, no switchbacking at all. At least the footing overall wasn’t bad, and the last stretch was obviously an ancient carriage road which had mostly grassed over. We did run into a few rocky areas, but not too bad. Apollo had on his new Cavallo Simple Boots, and they were holding up well (though I had to trim his toes a bit so they would fit), he didn’t seem to mind the stones as much as usual. Anyway, we finally made it back, everyone very tired but happy our explorations had been so revealing. When I transferred my GPS data to Google Earth, what a surprise! Almost none of the trails we were on matched up with anything on the map, even the ones we KNEW were supposed to be the ones marked! Very few stretches coincided, really, really bad maps, even though the shapes of the trails sort of seemed the same on all of them, they’re relationship to what’s really out there is remarkable off. It almost seems like one map was drawn from the other, then the other, when the basic information was wrong to begin with. Oh well, by the time we get done, we’ll have a copious and complete map of almost all of the trails here, on the print maps or not! Exhausted, we got everyone settled in, had dinner and crashed!
Well, par for the course, many of the assumptions we made about this place were wrong. We thought that since it had a reservation system that it would be crowded, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. No one here yet for the holiday week, it’s been nice and quiet, which is just the way we like it anyway, just unexpected. We also thought that the trails here would be well-marked and well traveled, but after seeing how little the horse camp is actually used for horses, we were beginning to wonder about that, too. I had three different maps of the place, and when I overlaid them on to Google Earth, they all showed the trails in different places, so I didn’t see the point of downloading them to my GPS until we did an exploratory ride, and that we did today. And what an exploration it was! We headed north out of the campground along the creek, which had two different numbers depending on which map we used, and none of them showed the trail so close to the creek. Nevertheless, it seemed to be marked in a few places, so we continued along. We lost our way a couple of times at the first intersection, not much to go one, finally found an old weatherbeaten sign on a tree so overgrown you had to duck under the limbs to get close enough to read it. From there we thought we determined a path, but it ended up being a circle back to where we had come from. Finally pressed on, figuring maybe that wasn’t actually the intersection we were looking for, and that turned out to the be case. We finally got to a bridge crossing and a trail number, 8, but we didn’t know if it was the beginning, middle or end of 8, as this was the first time we’d seen a sign. We kept heading north, looking for a left turn, took the first one we came to but that just took us to a meadow full of turkeys that made the horses jump. We circled back, then took the next left, which had a much more recent roadsign pronouncing it as the "New Trail" but we weren’t sure whether it was on the map or not (it wasn’t), but it did take us a lot further north, still paralleling the road, until we reach another parking area and a trail to the right that went up the mountain. Since we knew we had to eventually get to the top, we took it, and it was very nice, pretty steep, but it took long sweeping switchbacks as we went, and we could see Turkey Meadow again along the way. Just when Hubby was getting anxious, we finally came across another trail that went further up the mountain, and I persuaded him that it would lead us to the trail we wanted, and fortunately, that turned out to be true. Finally, we seemed to be back on track, so we stopped for a snack and to let the horses graze in a clearing before carrying on with the Figure Eight route I had planned, though we skipped one short leg because we wanted to see where we had gone wrong on the way out. It seems the old trails aren’t too badly marked once you know what they look like, but there are a lot of other trails that either aren’t marked, or are poorly marked, or aren’t on the map at all, which is crazy, it wouldn’t take anything to make a new map! Once we got back to the center of our Figure Eight, we debated whether we should just head back to camp along the creek on the trail we came out on, or finish the loop we had intended. We decided to try the new trail, but once again, the markings betrayed us. There were horse markers along the creek on the other side, but they only went about 50 yards before the trail was impassible, so we went back again, until I found the trail on the other side of the main park road. We took that, and then we started climbing, and climbing and climbing, almost straight up it seemed, actually a 500 feet ascent in less than ¾ of a mile, pretty hard on the horses considering they’d already done several major climbs today. We finally leveled off at the top, which didn’t last, because then we started descending again. Not quite so steeply, but pretty much straight down, no switchbacking at all. At least the footing overall wasn’t bad, and the last stretch was obviously an ancient carriage road which had mostly grassed over. We did run into a few rocky areas, but not too bad. Apollo had on his new Cavallo Simple Boots, and they were holding up well (though I had to trim his toes a bit so they would fit), he didn’t seem to mind the stones as much as usual. Anyway, we finally made it back, everyone very tired but happy our explorations had been so revealing. When I transferred my GPS data to Google Earth, what a surprise! Almost none of the trails we were on matched up with anything on the map, even the ones we KNEW were supposed to be the ones marked! Very few stretches coincided, really, really bad maps, even though the shapes of the trails sort of seemed the same on all of them, they’re relationship to what’s really out there is remarkable off. It almost seems like one map was drawn from the other, then the other, when the basic information was wrong to begin with. Oh well, by the time we get done, we’ll have a copious and complete map of almost all of the trails here, on the print maps or not! Exhausted, we got everyone settled in, had dinner and crashed!
No comments:
Post a Comment