Ridge above Multnomah Falls?

[bobcat]

Does anyone know the condition of the Multnomah Basin trails right now - i.e. the loop around the rim past Cougar Rock and the Elevator Shaft connector? I understand the latter may be completely overgrown with saplings, but has the Trails Club done anything with their trails?

[EricInVancouver]

Does anyone know the condition of the Multnomah Basin trails right now - i.e. the loop around the rim past Cougar Rock and the Elevator Shaft connector? I understand the latter may be completely overgrown with saplings, but has the Trails Club done anything with their trails?

The trail between elevator shaft and Cougar Rock is a mess. I have been trying to spearhead more trail work up there, but the current main focus of trails club is trying to recover the site from the Eagle Creek fire. The Franklin ridge connector has had a good start to it and I flagged the path from where trailwork ends up to the main trail, but hasn't been finished connecting. Also I would be careful of trouncing through the tall fire weed up there, lots of cougar and I spotted some nice denning spots on my last trip.

[cja]

We did the Elevator Shaft today, across through the mess at the top and over to visit Cougar Rock and then the Trails Club Lodge and viewpoint.

The elevator shaft was much more navigable than what I'd imagined from reading this thread. I thought it was in surprisingly good condition. The lower ~400 feet does have a significant amount of Poison oak, but that's been so for a long time, and we gave it a pruning along the way. It hasn't leafed out yet but will very soon. There are three or four places where the saplings have come in so thick that you'll skip a switchback or two, but these were no real problem and it was obvious that others have done the same. Plus, more pruning was done.

Atop the talus, the trail out to climbers' right is easy to follow for a fair stretch, but is quite overgrown where one would dip down to connect to the pretty bald green ridge in question in the original post. That shouldn't be too difficult though.

The ridge heading up from top of the shaft to the plateau is in fine shape, with more branches cleared and more pruning. The only part of the day that seemed remarkably changed from before the fire is the section across the plateau to the Cougar Rock ridge, as Eric noted earlier. From there the trails club has ostensibly done a great job cleaning up the paths surrounding the lodge.

I'd say the next week or three would be prime time to do the Elevator Shaft. Hand pruning shears or short loppers would be a welcome addition to the usual kit.

Eric, the road, at least between Multnomah Creek and the lodge, is in good shape. We moved a couple small trees off the road but there is one medium tree blocking part of the road that will need to be bucked to get a vehicle around it. 10 minutes with an ax would be enough to get around it, but it would be short work with a chainsaw to get it properly off the road. There's also a large tree down over the ATV trail to the lodge, but I think you can get an ATV in going down the other way via the gate as well.

[EricInVancouver]

Thanks for the awesome report! I almost went up Elevator on Saturday with my pruning gear, but didn't want to play slip on the rocks during the rain Thank you so much for doing a little cleanup on your way. It would be amazing at some point to get the path from the lodge over to the shaft logged out so you at least didn't have to hurdle a mass of logs to get there.

We have a crew going up today to log out the road, so hopefully by end of day all those logs you mentioned will be bucked and clear If not, we will have a second crew bat cleanup soon.

Thanks again for all the details.