Someone's been putting in a ton of good work clearing up the trail, but past mile 5 ish it gets tough to follow. Past the knoll/south huckleberry, the trail is mostly nonexistent. Don't waste time looking for it, just embrace the bushwhack.
Cons:
1) Burn zone, but someone's really cleaned it up quite impressively. The unburned part in the last 1.5mi to the top is the worst by far.
2) Swampy sections
3) Stinging nettles are out in full force DON'T WEAR SHORTS
4) spiderwebs
Pros:
1) Not kidding about the work done on the trail up to a point. The lower few miles were actually brushed out (as in someone trimmed the brush on either side nice and short). I should have counted recently sawn logs (hewn?).
2) Blackberries? The non invasive kind? They were small, but absolutely delicious. In the very beginning of the trail.
3) Burn zones are cool, and this one had a TON of variety and fascinating boundaries between severe burn and fresh green growth
4) The few views up there are pretty good
5) Great workout
6) Suiattle River Road drives VERY nicely right now, minimal potholes/washboard
7) No people
Comments
dugfresh on Huckleberry Mountain
Thanks for the write up! I was up there back in February and only on a whim. At the time I only made it to the wilderness boundary sign, or what's left of it and had gotten that far in snow that I wasn't prepared for. Route finding was fairly ok then due to the Max Dead nature of things at that time of year. But several places were really bad and I had to rely on some flagging someone did (Thanks for that!) and really good trail maps on my garmin unit. Can't even count the number of downed trees we had to climb or dodge.
Posted by:
dugfresh on Aug 28, 2024 02:53 PM
dugfresh on Huckleberry Mountain
Thanks for the write up! I was up there back in February and only on a whim. At the time I only made it to the wilderness boundary sign, or what's left of it and had gotten that far in snow that I wasn't prepared for. Route finding was fairly ok then due to the Max Dead nature of things at that time of year. But several places were really bad and I had to rely on some flagging someone did (Thanks for that!) and really good trail maps on my garmin unit. Can't even count the number of downed trees we had to climb or dodge.
Posted by:
dugfresh on Aug 28, 2024 02:53 PM