We were down that way over the holiday weekend, having booked the Drake Peak Lookout six months ago. We tried hiking the Fremont National Recreation Trail from both directions starting at the South Fork Crooked Creek Trailhead on Road 3615. Heading north was a failure because after the first half mile we totally lost the trail and couldn't find it. Looking at Google Earth I see where we went wrong. There had been no signage or anything to indicate we should turn onto the faint, grassy, old track that did not look like the trail.
Heading the other direction down Crooked Creek was also a fail due to about a hundred downed trees across the trail in the first mile. We figured it didn't get better further along so we turned around.
Yamsay Mountain & Hager Mountain 6-22-22
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Re: Yamsay Mountain & Hager Mountain 6-22-22
I describe the lower part of the Crooked Creek section in this report viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30393. I got to the point where it was quite confusing. It was hot and I didn't feel like thrashing about. The NRT badges led one direction (directly up the north bank of the creek but downed ponderosas and no trail visible), and white diamonds leading up to a regenerating clearcut (probably the current route); to add, there was a cow trail, by far the most obviously used of the three!justpeachy wrote: ↑July 6th, 2022, 5:06 amWe tried hiking the Fremont National Recreation Trail from both directions starting at the South Fork Crooked Creek Trailhead on Road 3615.
However, the section north from the South Fork trailhead should soon get you out on that nice ridge that runs from Twelvemile to Crooked peaks, also attainable by a cross-country jaunt from Drake Peak lookout itself! Hope your stay in the lookout was great. Mosquitoes were a bit of an issue there, as they are everywhere this year.
BurnsideBob wrote: ↑July 4th, 2022, 6:55 amWe drove it in an F-350 pick up and those 6" wide cracks in the paving were bone jarring!
My dad told me the solution to driving on washboarded gravel was to speed up until it became almost painless. I applied that principle to those regular (and intentional) cracks in the tarmac!