Foggy Dew Ridge, Cooney Lake, Sunrise Lake, Foggy Dew Creek & Merchants Basin — Sunday, Oct. 4, 2020

Did a loop of Foggy Dew Ridge -> Cooney Lake -> Merchants Basin -> out and back to Sunrise Lake -> Foggy Dew Creek trail. The rest of the trails/locations have been covered pretty well recently so I won't detail those, but thought an updated Foggy Dew Ridge report would be welcomed as the last one is over a year old.

In short, it's in great condition. No blow downs or major obstacles. Not sure if we benefited from recent trail maintenance, an increase in traffic this year, following behind new motorbike tracks, or a combination of the three, but we found most of it extremely easy to follow. As other reports have mentioned, the actual trail is off from the mapped trail, but we rarely needed to look at a map anyways. There was maybe a half mile to mile where the trail was extremely faded in the bear grass and we lost it for a few minutes, but we were able to find it again after backtracking ~100 feet. It is pretty relentless in its' climbing and most of it was in the trees, but it was worth it to have total solitude after we saw quite a few motorbikes zipping up the road to the Foggy Dew Creek trail when we were getting started. Also has some golden larches right now!