First off we checked out the old spur trail that goes up to the Summit of Bald Mountain, this short little diversion is well worth it for the spectacular view you get from the top.
On zooming in you can even see the entrance to the ice cave talked about in this thread.
From here we returned to the timberline Trail & headed on to the Muddy Fork crossing. I hadn't been here since the late 1980's & it has certainly changed. Here is a view of the new waterfall below the Sandy Glacier.
Crossing the Muddy fork wasn't difficult but if you wanted to keep your feet dry you certainly had to walk up and down a bit & think about where you wanted to jump!
I wasn't sure we would make it to Ramona Falls after reading here about a washout of this trail. Anyway I can report that the trail has been fixed and is easily passable. We had a bite to eat at Ramona Falls before heading back to Top Spur.
We were running a bit behind schedule as we were supposed to be home by 5:00 so we did a quick march from Ramona Falls down to the new PCT junction to the bridge over the Muddy Fork & then on up to Top Spur. We noticed that about 3/4 of a mile before the Top Spur Junction the PCT runs very close to the road leading up to Top Spur. In order to save a few minutes we headed off through the trees to see if we could make our way to the road at this point & save the hike back down the Top Spur Trail. This turned out to be very easy to do in fact we found a use trail leading up from the road to the PCT. The Blue X on the map below marks the location of this access trail.
- Location of the PCT access use trail
