On the USGS TOPO there is a small segment of the Mitchell Point Trail drawn connecting from the road to the Starvation Ridge Trail - this piece appeared to be blazed at the road end but has be lost to the partial cut unit in the area. It was easy travel, though, to connect to the Starvation Ridge Trail.
Here's what I saw from the tower viewpoint on Starvation Ridge, the trail snakes off up the side of the hill between towers. In the canyon below is Starvation Creek Falls. If you want to get a closer look click on the image for a 4000x3000 size image.
Here's the trailhead to the powerline segment, just a little east beyond Starvation Creek Falls - maybe 2-300 feet. A corner of the paved trail is in the lower left corner. Originally I was concerned I'd have to go all the way to Viento State Park to get to the powerline trail and I was hoping the maintainers had built an access point closer to the Starvation end and indeed they did.
I wasn't sure this was it until I read the tale of the tape:
The trail is in great shape lower down, sees some use by passers-by and use trails to viewpoints are scattered here and there.
At the first tower on the trail I could see folks on Starvation heading up to Defiance I suspect.
Great views from the trail if you can tolerate the powerlines.
I looked down the line towards Viento State Park, I'm guessing the trail goes all the way down and then off to Mitchell Point. An exploration for another day.
I left the powerline trail and turned up the ridge for the trees, I knew I'd landed on a good route when I saw well used game trails.
And that was the story all the way up to the road, the following are samples of the ridge line route.
A rock+tree arch:
The goal was to avoid going through anything like the following. The wall of brush to the east of me looked like this.
After a couple of hours I landed on the road and I headed for the short segment of the Mitchell Point Trail to connect to Starvation for the return.
I believe I located the old trail head for the segment of the Mitchell Point Trail to Starvation connector based on a couple of blazed trees right off the road.
But no trail in the partial cut - easy travel, though, to the Starvation Junction.
At the junction I believe I ran into the crew I spotted on the Starvation Trail from the powerline trail, if it was then the ride up Viento Ridge was pretty fast.
Right at the junction is a great view of Adams.
~6.5 miles ~3200'. A nice off trail route with no brush on a beautifully secluded ridge. The powerline trail is a bit rough in spots and passes through some very steep slopes. I want to make a return trip to map out the rest of the trail to Mitchell Point. Click on the image for the big print version.
The blue line is my route today, the green dashed line was my 1st attempt on the old alignment. If you look closely at the map you can see, in the route in blue, the westward bias on he ridge line to avoid the brush.
