From the LO site, I followed the current trail for a while, then angled off to intersect Dog’s SE ridge at about 2,600’, then went down the ridge to see if I’d cross a trail. Something looked promising at 2,500’ but I continued down then circled back just to be sure. The area between the LO site and the SE ridge is fairly open, with several moss covered boulder fields.
Eventually, I made it back to where it looked like the old trail cut the ridge,
and continued on along what was a pretty well defined (for a while at least) track. The old CCT contoured around Pt 2714 just below 2,600’ and this track was doing precisely that.
I kept looking for blazes and/or trail markers but saw none until, about half-way along this good section of trail, I saw an old telephone line insulator embedded in a tree!
To me, this is evidence that I’d found (or re-found) what remains of the CCT in this area. These insulators usually indicate the previous existence of a phone line to a LO. Dog Mtn had served as a “lookout point” starting in the 1920s but an actual LO structure was not built until 1931 (then rebuilt in 1952 and removed in 1967). As of 1930, there was no phone to the LO site (One wonders how a fire was reported?), which made it an ideal location for some of the U.S. Forest Service’s earliest experiments with radio communication between lookouts and district HQs (Dwight Beatty report, 1931). Presumably a phone line was added after the 1931 structure was built – possibly to the ranger station at Hemlock (now Stabler)? I continued along the trail until it entered a draw and was overcome by vegetation – at which point I called it good. One obsession down, many more to go.
My guess is that the old trail continues – in over-vegetated fits and starts – until it drops into, and finally succumbs to, the veg chocked morass of the intermittent tributary of Dog Creek. “Mission accomplished”, I ‘schwacked from the draw up to the main trail and on to the summit for lunch – to enjoy the sunshine filling the Gorge.
A short day of exploration (7.2 mi, 3000’ EG), with an obsession-taming find of a small portion (arrow) of the old CCT (Topo!’s rendition of the CCT between the TH and Pt 2714 is fully bogus).
Merry Christmas!
Ho! Ho! Ho!
Hike! Hike! Hike!
