I made it up to Baty Butte last week during the nice weather.  I wanted to see how the Baty Butte trail fared in the Sandstone fire.  There is good news and bad news.

The good: The 7010 and 7010-160 spurs have been all brushed out and are in very nice shape. Some of the really bad spots on the 160 spur are all gone now.  The 7010 road past the 160 spur did not get any work, however.

The bad: They built a dozer containment line for the Sandstone fire starting from the 160 spur at that old logdeck (where the connector trail took off from). The dozer line crosses the trail twice up to the junction. I think they "fixed" the trail where it crosses the line but it was hard to know with all the snow - I lost the trail at the first crossing but found it on the way back down.

The ugly: The dozer line took out a portion of the trail near the start - the part where it went along the bluff heading south. It isn't too long - probably a few hundred feet, but it definitely went right over the trail. The beginning of the trail off that connector that goes over to Lost Creek Meadows is pretty much obliterated - well, maybe obliterated is too strong - it is heavily obscured - with logs and debris from the cutting where the dozer line went thru. On the way back I did find most of the tread until it hit the dozer line. At the end of the line, someone put a pink ribbon with "Trail" written on it, but you can't even really see the tread due to all the debris on the tread there. I hung some flags in both places to help passage for now. This initial section is going to require a good bit of work to make it easily passable again.

Once past the end of the dozer line, the trail is mostly as I remember it from the last time I hiked it 2 years ago - Pretty brushy in spots, with a fair number of logs down, but still a beautiful old trail.  It needs some love now more than ever...

Here is the log deck at the connector trail off the 160 spur (this appears to be where the dozer line started):

And here is the dozer line along the bluff - right here the actual trail is to the right in the trees, although it was completely covered with debris from the cutting done for the dozer line - at some point the trail pops out onto the dozer line:

Here is that pink ribbon across the trail - you can see the flags I hung in the background but the tread is pretty much covered up in here:

Here is the trail right where it heads south from the trail coming over from Lost Creek Meadows - you can see my flags in the background, but this will require a good bit of cleanup to make the trail followable again: