Curious how to find the old trailhead for this trail? Did it come up the hill from the west of the powerline tower or from the pullout/dispersed camping area to the east of the powerline tower? There is a pullout right at the bridge over Roaring with an old road going upriver a bit but from the description it seems access to the trail was from the very large pullout with the old quarry at the top of the rise? I followed a small trail from that pullout up to the powerline tower but it seemed to end there. Thanks.
The trailhead for this trail as well as the lower portion of the trail has been quite disturbed post fire. The trailhead is/was near the old quarry west of Roaring River, basically across the road from the Hole in the Wall boat access. The area has been mostly filled in with logs now. If you get across the logs at the base of the hill, you should be able to see the beginning of the tread, however shortly as the trail ascends and gets into the powerline corridor it has been disturbed by all the cutting that was done there. Once past the powerline corridor the trail is in reasonably good shape up the hill. In the flatish area up higher it gets pretty indistinct but if you can find it, the trail continues past that flatish area up to an un-mapped spur road off of the 4611 road.
There is poison oak up higher on the trail that has gotten worse post fire.
Boy, tried to find it again the other day and was only slightly more successful. Took a small trail up to the first powerline tower and then kind of headed uphill from there to get past all the downed trees. Found parts of a trail once into the burned trees but couldn't get a good sense of its ryme or reason. Seemed to be rather indistinct from animal trails up there. Got about half way up to the first flat area. Got stuck in the log maze on the way down with my dogs and that was miserable.
Yeah, the bottom end is pretty messed up - it used to be easy to find pre-fire, and the tread was pretty good almost all the way up, but after the fire things changed a lot.
Finding it from the top is pretty easy, assuming you know which unmapped road you have to head down. We should figure out a day to meet up so we can explore it - it is a good wintertime trail.
Part of my problem was the poor decision to bring the dogs. Pretty rough going for them with all the evergreen blackberry and logs. Not too hard with just me. Well hindsight as they say....
I did a spur of the moment trip up to Rho Ridge today and while I was driving by, it looked like someone might have done some cutting at the bottom of Sounds. It needs more recon to see what is going on. I didn't have time to stop on my way home today unfortunately.
In other news, it looks like they are actively cutting both 57 and 4620 now. The gate was open last weekend and today it was kind of open, and I could see a whole bunch of logs stacked up a little ways up from the gate. Maybe they will finally open up those two roads soon!
I hiked the Dry Ridge Trail yesterday with the fam. Went about 1.75 miles in. Looked like some logs had been cut which was great compared to the last time I was there earlier this fall. I was able to cut about 4 smaller logs that looked new. Still one log left that I was 90% through before my battery ran out but it's an easy one to step over. Other than the target shooting across Roaring River and the wind, it was a nice outing. Some folks have been cutting some of the logs for firewood in that area but haven't looked too closely. It does look like there is maybe some better access to the bottom of the trail from right next to Roaring River. Wonder if it might be worth re-routing on that side.