This was the day before the holiday weekend began, and the Lost Lake Resort was announcing that all camp spaces were full. However, I didn’t see a single soul out on these trails, which seemingly lead to nowhere. I took the Lake Branch Trail from near the resort’s general store. It had rained that morning, so I quickly donned rain gear from head to toe before I swished through damp huckleberry bushes overhanging the trail. The Lake Branch Trail veers away from the Lake Branch and reaches FR 13 to continue across the road as the Old Skyline Trail.
I wanted to walk back from the end of the segment, so I ambled along FR 13, paved but narrow, until just before Buck Point Creek, where I saw a scratch of trail heading into a screen of willows. Sure enough, a few yards in, a sign proclaimed “End of Skyline Trail.” (The section that goes up to Waucoma Ridge from here was abandoned several decades ago.) The trail is in decent shape with only a couple of logs across it. It passes below a massive boulder field to reach the Lake Branch, where I crossed on a log about six feet above the river.
From here, the trail burrowed its way through huckleberries to cross a talus slope below Raker Point. Then I made a right turn on an old road bed before the trail, getting somewhat indistinct in places, directed me back to FR 13 and the Lake Branch Trail.
For good measure, I decided to hike what is now called the Old Skyline Trail that runs above the east shore of Lost Lake. This section is a much later incarnation that was designed to carry horses away from the lake and its campgrounds. The trail ends at the Jones Creek Road near Lost Lake's horse camp and not far from the Huckleberry Mountain Trail, which has become the connector from Lost Lake to the PCT.
The enterprise took longer than expected because I was navigating via Caltopo’s version of the trails. This put me off for a while – here’s a correction:
