Bell Creek 5/16/15

[arlohike]

Since the trail to Triple Falls is open again, I went out last Saturday to try the Bell Creek loop for the first time. I left from the Horsetail Falls trailhead at 9 am and traffic on the trail was pretty light. When I got to Triple Falls I was the only person there, which was a first! It was pretty neat to hang around there for a few minutes all by myself.

I continued on with the intention of using the unofficial bypass trail on the East side of Oneonta Creek, rather than crossing on the footbridge and then crossing again at the ford. I'd never followed this trail before, but it was clear enough to follow. It required some hopping and scrambling over logs, but that was kind of fun and it gave some nice views of the creek and the main trail on the other side. I will say that this is probably easier uphill than it would be coming downhill (which I'd like to do as part of a Rock of Ages loop some day) because it's fairly steep in spots.

The only place I got confused was at the south end where it connects with the official trail again. I assumed the junction was at the creek level, so I headed straight for that, then saw a flag about 20 yards south of that and another beyond, but those led me into oblivion. Then I backtracked up the shortcut trail and saw the actual junction heading further up the hill. The official trail is not much wider than the shortcut trail at this point, but basically, it's before you drop down the last little hill to the creek, and turns sharply uphill.

The climb up to the Bell Creek trail was pleasant, if you like climbing, as I do. A couple spots at the start of this section were overgrown with tall bushes that I had to push through, and some other parts had smaller bushes brushing my feet and ankles. This wouldn't be a big deal, except I was wearing shorts, and all the bushes were wet and started to soak my socks ... argh.

When I reached the Bell Creek trail at about 3000 feet, things changed quickly. I found myself in some fairly thick fog, which was lovely, but chilly -- my zipper thermometer was reading 40 degrees -- and with all the climbing behind me, I stopped generating much body heat. This is when I started regretting my clothing choices for the day. After several weeks of sunny weather, I had ejected my gloves from my pack, and I really missed those; I could have used one more top layer; and more wet underbrush meant more wet socks. This is the first time in a long time that I didn't bring the right clothing options to be comfortable, so I was really kicking myself for embracing summer too quickly. As a result, the three miles around Bell Creek became more of a grind than a happy exploration. But I was still awed by the gigantic trees, some different vegetation around the swampy areas, and some impressive scenes of arboreal destruction.

The Franklin Ridge trail was more overgrown than I remember it being when I first saw it last year; maybe that's just because it's later in the season now. There were a couple sections of tall devil's club to wriggle through, but it was fine otherwise.

I saw one small group of campers at the start of the Bell Creek section, and one lone hiker in the middle who may have come down from Larch Mountain; otherwise, I didn't see anyone until well down the Franklin Ridge trail toward the Oneonta Creek. Of course, the closer I got to Triple Falls, the more people there were, and I did not have the falls to myself on the way back!

The repair job around the landslide was interesting. Instead of clearing the original trail, there is a new trail that switches back steeply and passes above the slide. It's hard to see exactly what happened, but the original trail seems to have been completely obliterated. The new trail is fairly narrow, steep and slippery. As I was coming down, I met about a dozen people coming up who were all surprised by its intensity, so I'm curious if that will be the permanent new trail or if it's meant to be temporary.

My knees have given me some problems this year, so I slowed down quite a bit in the last two miles, so much so that I got passed by a group of college-aged guys wearing jeans and cowboy boots who had been hanging around at Triple Falls. As they passed, they were talking about how far they had hiked, and with how much elevation gain. It's all relative, of course. I got back to my car just before 4 pm with Strava reporting 15.8 miles, but maybe that's a little high? In any case, that was a good long day for me, too.

[Splintercat]

Nice report and photos! Love that shot of the big tree in the fog -- great old-growth up there along the Bell Creek trail. Nice to see folks hiking that section!

Thanks for posting!

Tom

[ErinL]

Love that section of forest up there. Glad you got to visit that.

Great report on the conditions.

Your picture of the swamp flower is a skunk cabbage. If the flowers on that one had been newer, you would have probably guessed the accurate name on your own!