August 11, 2014 - Bass Lake Area

Red-McLead Hike; Yellow/Purple-Chilkoot hike

Title: August 11, 2014 - Bass Lake Area

Trail head: McLeod Flat Road

Hike Info:

Type:  Hiking

Trail: Meandering along 4-wheel drive roads and Willow Creek

Destination:  Exploration

Distance:  1.89 miles

Start Time:  9:43

End Time:  11:51

Travel Time: 2:07 (0.89 mph)

Moving Time:  1:12 (1.58 mph)

Elevation Rise:  417'

Maximum Elevation:  4.515'

Description:
Jerry J is the campground host at Chilkoot Campground close to Bass Lake. As such he is asked for local points of interest and things to do. So he likes to have a ready stock of answers. There was a couple of places he wanted to explore so he invited John and Cathey, Sherri and myself up to his campsite to help him wander around. A neighbor of John and Cathey, Clare, joined us for the fun.

After last night's full moon hike and getting back in at 1am, Cathey took pity on us and had us over for a breakfast of eggs, hash browns, bacon and muffins. A pretty good start to the morning-thanks Cathey. John drove us up to Bass Lake-thanks John! I would have been OK going up, but coming back would have required some concentration on my part. Jerry's site is pretty nice. He has the upper spot, a bit close to the road, with a trailer and a nice canopy of mosquito netting to cover the table.

Cathey, John and Sherri

While we are glad to be up with Jerry to visit, we have business to attend to. The first order of business is to go to McLeod Flat and figure out can we hike to Jerry's campground. There is a sign showing that there is a trail coming out of McLeod. But the road down quickly turns into a four-wheel drive road. We stop after about 3/4 of a mile and unload ourselves.

When we got home I looked at a Forest Service map and  I saw our first mistake. I suspect that the trail heading UP Willow Creek was a bit higher up than where we parked.  Our path, and I use that term lightly, is a four-wheel drive road. It heads pretty steeply down towards Willow Creek. Not too much good can be said about it. Fortunately we are going down in the morning, but already it is a bit warm-soon to get hotter. The road, or I should say tracks-plural-sort of meander around. But as long as we head down I think we pretty much get to the proper place.

Jerry crossing Willow Creek

I have taken off on a few promising leads to the side, but do not really find a trail. We get down close to the bottom and there is a trail, not just a low place. Why do we know this? There is a set of wood planks across a dry creek, followed by a few more wood planks and a tree crossing some water. Jerry says this is Willow Creek. Right now the creek does not look to promising. But as John might have said, you can imagine what it would look like in a non-drought year. The area is pretty lush. It must be crazy with wild flowers during the Spring and early Summer.

 

Willow Creek

Our trail is short lived. After a hundred and fifty yards it leads us back to a four-wheel road and we do not see signs of a trail again. But the road loads us further down the creek. Notice the word down as this is not where we want to go. Since it is fairly flat so we do not realize that down is the direction of travel until we come out at a campsite, the end of the road and spot Willow Creek. We cross a large slab of rock to see if there is a trail we can find around here-none, but there is a nice little trickle falls coming out of Willow. Lots of pot holes where the water had worn away rock. Very pleasant. The rock which we are on would be slippery when wet.

Willow Creek

We spot a couple of people on the other side of the creek. They are from a jeep we saw up close to our "trail". The indicate that the Willow Creek trail is just above them. After looking at a map, we were about a quarter mile above the Devil's Slide area. We decide to cross Willow Creek and return via the Willow Creek trail.

Sherri, Jerry and Clare

We sort of follow a path, but it is more of a meander through shrubs, trees and over rock-sort of what I call Great Fun! Nothing too exciting, but definitely nothing I would tell Jerry's guests to follow.  I think I must still be a bit disoriented. Earlier I had set a waypoint around our "trail". So I have been navigating us around towards it. But I am also noticing that we are getting close to our GPS tracks. So we head to the tracks and meet up with the road a bit higher than I anticipated. This is a good thing. So we do not have much to walk up  to get to our vehicles. An enjoyable meander, but I am not sure how well we could re-trace our steps.

Trail head: Chilkoot campground

Hike Info:

Type:  Hiking

Trail:  Chilkoot Campground to Willow Creek

Destination: Willow Creek

Distance:  0.92 miles ¹

Start Time:  12:49

End Time:     2:09

Travel Time: 1:19 (0.70 mph)

Moving Time: 0:58 (0.95 mph)

Elevation Rise: 271'

Maximum Elevation: 4,719'

  ¹Because of the type of terrain, I set my spreedsheet filer to not record anything less than a quarter mile per hour instead of a half.

Description:

Trail down

We took a bit of a break from walking... and the heat by relaxing at Jerry's camp. Jerry served us a sausage roll and cheese-definitely is good. After an hour break, Jerry suggested we go on a little hike down to some pools at Willow Creek. We leave right from Jerry's camp site, pausing only to pay homage to the outhouse.

Then it is down a series of paths until we hit what may have been a fire break put is now the main path. The path is pretty steep with the steepest part dropping about 30' right before Willow Creek. After crossing Willow Creek right above the junction with Chilkoot Creek, we head up a small ridge, only to drop down into Chilkoot Creek. This is not for the faint of heart and I would suspect some of Jerry's guests turn back when they see this. But not us! We drop down some rocks, putting additional wear on the seat of our pants until we get to Chilkoot Creek.

Chilkoot Creek

Jerry would like to explore a bit more up the creek, but with the heat, most of us want to just sit and enjoy the creek. So Jerry and I cross the creek and clamber up the other side and head up. But this is not the way to go as the creek's sides on the south side goes steep and we can only go up maybe an eighth of a mile before needing to turn back. Jerry said that some of his guests has said there are some nice little set of pools with a water fall back further. But they did not go this way, I do not think. We save the north side of the creek for another day.

Western Aquatic Garter Snake-underwater

When we get back to the rest of our group, Cathey has seen a water snake, probably a Western Aquatic Garter Snake. Looks like the snake is fishing as he looks like he is searching for a fish or two. Jerry takes us back via another route. Definitely more pleasant than how we came in. This way is by the creeks so we see a bit more plant life and enjoy a bit of the shade.

Reflections

But then we head back up the slope and it is one of those, take your time, enjoy and breath type of walks. Before we know it, we made it to the top.

Reflections

While these hikes I do not think will be part of my top ten list, at certain times of the year they have potential to be developed into something which will have good memories.

On the way back, John said he wanted to go back through a more scenic route-through North Fork. In reality, he wanted to take us by a trail head called Brown's Ditch. I suspect this will be a subject of a future meetup hike. A good thing about riding with John is he has a wide range of experiences and is willing to spin a story about them. Enjoyable traveling, especially when you are tired.


Trail Lesson:

Get it or forget it.-From John