Last visit to trail #505 this season.  Brushed some, pruned a bit, removed the big log before the Ram Creek crossing, worked some more on the Great Logpile.  That pile needs another two hours of work, some beefy logs, almost finished with it. 

Days are getting short, and I came out by headlamp.

Next season I'll spend a full week at Meadow Lake around Memorial Day.  The first two days will be dedicated to removing all the little annoyances left on the trail to the lake -- the step-overs, the workarounds, new winter deadfall, anything that was passed over earlier.  With this route in great shape, with Meadow Lake a reliable destination, we'll be ready for the next stage.

Maintenance run on Coleman Ridge #505, needed work left undone by my attention to Basin Creek #360 this year (five outings).

I started brushing the switchbacks up from Andrews Creek, choked with Ceanothus, clearing maybe 1/3 of the tread.  It's a slow-go, it dulls and loosens my loppers to the point where I'm snapping at the branches with them.  I'll make this a regular chore, clearing 3-4 switchbacks with each visit until the job is done.  Maybe there's a lopper with a blade I can change in the field.

My loppers had enough edge left to clean up the alders choking the perfect "oasis" further up the trail, reliable water well before the Ram Creek crossing.  At Ram Creek, I put one cut through the very large tree down there, a tree nearing the limits of what my Silky 650 saw can handle.  I need to branch the other side and cut it again (an hour), and a ton of wood will roll downhill, right off the trail.

I also took on the Great Logpile, a huge stack of logs with its origins in a freak windstorm that laid a number of trees on top of and parallel to each other.  I actually crawled under these logs two years ago with a dislocated shoulder, to make it out to my car.  There are cairns and a crude way around this pile, but the original path is best and can be restored. 

I sawed through the heart of the original pile, but Nature added even more trees a little lower down.  I may need to section these to remove them from the trail, tedious, but doable, maybe another 3-4 hours of work.  When finished, hikers will go through the heart of the pile, with big cut logs all around.

Looking ahead to the next stages of #505, to Vic Meadow, Fire Creek, point 6600, and Coleman Ridge proper, it's important that Meadow Lake remain a viable, enjoyable, weekend destination.  I'm seeing good signs of visitor traffic, the trail needs to be doable, wild and exciting, a trail that traverses the burn to reach a perfect alpine lake.

Long weekend at Meadow Lake, a fine base for explorations in the area.  I made some furniture and cleaned up around the lake, removing two log piles, stacking them instead on other log piles, opening a bit more meadow space to enjoy.

There were other parties at the lake.  A couple with dogs ascended the cleared section of #537 Little Andrews Creek to visit Reed Peak and see the fantastic high expanse of the USGS Coleman Peak quad.  As I hiked out, I saw two hunters with a herd of pack goats, the first I have seen on the Coleman Ridge trail.  They can go in many directions from the lake.

Trail #505 Coleman Ridge is easily followed north from the lake to ascend the ridge that once continued to Fire Creek, Remmel Mountain, and Four Point Lake.  You can follow #505 as far as the end of the ridge, before it drops to Vic Meadow.  Will visit this area next year to scout out the next legs of the trail.

I removed all of the orange flagging tape from #505 from Meadow Lake as it climbs this ridge to the north -- it is no longer needed.  The tread is clear and clean and in the best condition since the fires swept through here two decades ago.  It is easy to ascend and explore this ridge.

On the drive home, I picked up two PCT hitchhikers in Concrete, and dropped them off in Fremont, Seattle.

I have been following the trip reports of Christian Gustafson and saw that he had finished opening up trail #505 (Coleman Ridge) to Meadow Lake and #537 to the ridge below Reed Peak. What a trail hero! We had 2.5 days and the 18 mile Little Andrews Creek #537 to #505 to Andrews Creek (#504) seemed like a fine option. From the trip report, I could see that #537 was still not fully cleared of blowdowns, but I under-estimated how bad it would be. There was 3-4 miles of hard travel through thick blowdowns, but much of it was beautiful and certainly we had solitude.

If you do this hike, make sure to have a good GPS track and waypoints marked. There is a public track on Gaia by eric_sweet, marked 'Hike Out 9/18/24' and another by eric_sweet called 'High Buck 2024 Approach 9/14/24'. These 2 were on the existing track and importantly will help you catch the critical start down Reed Peak on #537. You need to catch that to avoid dangerous steep terrain.

We started at 4:00pm from Andrew Creek trailhead. We promptly missed the turn off to #537. It is at (48.78580, -120.10838), a ways before the creek. We crossed the creek and thrashed up it and up to the ridge to catch the trail. Do not do that. There is a good trail, but the turn off is not marked. The trail was good for about a mile, at which point we came to a nice dry camp. Here we lost the trail and floundered in blowdown for awhile. We eventually found the trail again so we must have missed where it left that camp. In about 2.5 miles, it was getting dark (we were were slow with all the losing the trail), but we found a nice camp with water nearby (via a 5-10 min thrash down through steep blowdowns). (48.80162, -120.09782). Otherwise there is no place to camp in this section.

The next day we set off on the trail. Lots of fallen trees to step over, but not too bad. However in a mile, the trail disappeared under the blowdowns. Had I read Christian's trip reports more carefully, I would have known to expect this. From there we had 3 miles or so of picking our way through the blowdowns. At around 6200', you turn north towards Kaye Peak. Now there is water and lots of places to camp but the blowdowns are still thick. We climbed NW to get on ridges where the blowdowns were lesser. At around 7300' below Kaye Peak, the blowdowns ended and we traversed the high meadows under Coleman Peak and towards Reek Peak. Here travel was easy but we saw no sign of #537. No tread, no cairns, no flags. Supposedly there are cairns somewhere but we saw none at the 7100' level where we traversed.

We reached the south shoulder of Reed Peak. It is lovely here. High meadows. We continued down and used the USGS map to find the location of the old #537 trail. Per Christian, it still existed and it was important to catch it to avoid dangerous terrain nearby. Well, I should have studied his last trip report better. We found what looked like a trail, but wasn't the right one. Fortunately we were not too far off and caught the real trail about 300' lower. The trail is good. It is not a faint animal track. it is a clear trail but it disappears in the high meadow and you need to catch the entrance (which you cannot see from the meadow) before you drop north. It is very near (48.84534, -120.11010) and a little off from where the trail is shown on USGS topo. Once we caught the #537 (around 7000') we easily followed it north until the intersection with #505 (Coleman Ridge). There is a sign here for the intersection (thanks to Christian's recent work).

We spent the night at the nice camp at Meadow Lake, and hiked the 8 miles out via #505 and then Andrews Creek trail. The #505 trail is good now; good enough for horses or mules as we saw a lot of horse sign around Meadow Lake camp and on the trail down. It is 3 miles to the Andrews Creek trail and then 5 gentle miles out that to the trailhead.

Overall it is a nice 18 mile loop, though I'd wait until the Little Andrews Creek trail through the 2006 fire zone gets a bit more cutting; this is the first section of #537 to the south of Kaye Peak. The blowdowns are quite severe and it is very slow going.

I have recovered trail #537, Little Andrews Creek, the section that branches south from trail #505, Coleman Ridge, just past Meadow Lake.  This work enables safe access to Reed Peak, Coleman Peak, and the vast subalpine areas of the Coleman Peak USGS quad.

I logged and brushed the path of #537 through the extensive 2003 burn above Meadow Lake.  There are cairns, and I have flagged the entire trail to its end in the high meadows at the 7200' level.  I brushed the upper switchbacks of this trail; the middle section of the trail still needs brushing and has a couple of minor blowdowns.

I rebuilt the signpost at the intersection of #505 and #537, salvaging a fallen tree with an existing sign, plus a loose trail sign that had been arranged in a cairn.  I backed out the giant zinc-coated nails from this second sign, straightened them, and used them to tack the sign to the stump post.  A curious lynx watched me work on this project; I caught a glimpse of him scampering up the ridge as I finished and stood it up for duty.

Trail #537 is plainly evident from the intersection, and easy to follow.  While there are a few trees remaining on the path, some step-overs, and a few walk-arounds (beefy "project trees"), the trail is clear, and there are no adventurous detours.

Let us leave the extensive flagging in place until the trail is reinforced from visitors' boots.  There are many ambiguous places on the climb up Reed Peak.  What makes this trail so enjoyable is how elegantly it solves the problem of ascending Reed through a very narrow defile.  It can be quite dangerous to lose the way, I know this from personal experience (cf. July 2023 TR).

Exiting the switchbacks at 7200', the old trail is lost across the grassy meadows, but it can be picked up again into the basin below Coleman Peak from cairns on the ~7500' summit ridge of Reed Peak.  If you gain the ridge, please note the relative location of trail #537 -- it's not a bad idea to take a GPS mark -- because bands of trees just off the top may block visibility down and across these meadows.

So trail #537 is back!  Try it out, let me know what you think.  Fred Beckey is not wrong when he says re Coleman Peak in 3rd vol Cascade Alpine Guide:

ROUTE: Meadow Lake Trail (see Andrews Creek Trail*) extends to above 7100 ft on the S slope of the peak (take southern trail branch).

Hikers, peak-baggers, sportsmen, have at it.