Ashland Lakes — Friday, Jun. 7, 2024

The road up to the trail head wasn't too bad. Potholes? Yes. High clearance? That's subjective to your driving skills and what your tolerance level is. Would I recommend 4x4/high clearance? Leaning more towards yes than no. But not mandatory.  

The trail starts to the right of the outhouse- "locked until further notice". The first part of the trail is crushed rock, very clear and good tread. Once I reached the "board walk/planking" sections, that's where things got a little interesting. As other trip reports have reported, there are an abundance of planks that are loose, broken and or sag while walking on them. There are large nails exposed and once I reached Upper Ashland Lake, the planks continuing on were scattered about drifting away from each other in the high waters of Ashland. I didn't think to bush whack around the damaged trail because I'm one of those who stays on the trail and I didn't want to encourage others to follow my social trail further damaging the area. I'm sure it will be some time before the Forest Service and or volunteers are able to get up to this trail for the much needed repairs that it needs. 

On my way back down, I passed four parties heading up, two with dogs and one with fishing poles. I briefed everyone I passed on the conditions of the trail up ahead. Once back at the trailhead, I cleaned up all the garbage around the outhouse to include four dog poop bags and several plastic water bottles and some wrappers. It took me about 50 minutes to reach Upper Ashland and about an hour to get back to the trailhead.