Horsetail Ridge

[cja]

Wow, I haven't been to this sub forum for a long time... It needs some love!

We ambled up Horsetail Ridge a few weeks back, on February 24th. Seems fairly safe to assume no one's done it since before the fire? Saplings are bad for good stretches here and there, and navigation was harder than 10 or 12 years ago, despite having done it before. That said, I stupidly took my dog and she made it with minor help, so it certainly goes.

It was a great day out. Reading about the state of the Elevator Shaft back in the fall, and my experience here on Horsetail Ridge, as well as RoA and Mystery Trail (more conclusive evidence that we were the first ones back on this one, last spring, since the fire), leads me to beg you few intrepid readers get out there, and to implore you to carry your loppers, and not just those little 12-in ones! These paths will be completely lost if more people don't get on them in the next couple years. The elk and coyotes are doing their work, but they need some help to make it a bit more appealing for us.

GPS track

[EricInVancouver]

Thanks for the TR....I think a few people have made that trek over the last few years. But all of the Eagle Creek burn area is still in rough shape. Have been trying to get the Nesika Lodge to Franklin ridge connection made for a couple years and it's a continuous slog to keep fighting the underbrush and new fallen trees.

[Lurch]

It's definitely been hiked since the fire, it got covered a few years ago during a search up ROA.

Have been trying to get the Nesika Lodge to Franklin ridge connection made for a couple years and it's a continuous slog to keep fighting the underbrush and new fallen trees.

FYI I'm not sure how permanent cougar territory is, but there was a momma with cubs there a year or two ago.. I'm not usually a huge fan of user cut trails, but that Nesika cutoff was handy.

[EricInVancouver]

Yep, definitely a bunch of cougar in that whole area. Bears too. Noise is your friend when hiking above "Cougar Rock" on the plateau.

[Chip Down]

From your GPS track above, I gather you didn't go up the ridge until it gets close to Horsetail Creek Trail 425. Where/why did you leave the ridge and drop to Oneonta? How did that go? It doesn't look like you followed a natural feature like a spur ridge or creek, so perhaps you just aimlessly took the path of least resistance.

[cja]

Good eye Chip... We did continue up that way 10 or 12 years ago, and I think that would have been the better way to go. There's an old map layer that shows another trail, more or less the way we went- we were trying to follow that course, which drops away from the ridge at a saddle before the last uphill push to the plateau. That map seems to imply that that course- pretty much our track here- was at publication the principal trail, so we were just curious. There was a LOT of downed wood to negotiate going down that way, now largely camouflaged with bramble- not pleasant for us or the dog.