I set out to do a solo run of Miller-Freedom-Navaho on a recommendation. Arrived at Miller Bear at 8:30am on a summer Saturday; no other cars in the lot ended up being a sign of how few people I'd see on the day. Headed up Miller Peak trail - there are a few ankle-deep creeks that are simple to cross in the first mile or so. Lots of stands of wild blueberries and huckleberries, which were delicious - however, the flies were horrible and geniunely chased me off from gathering more berries than I'd have liked as they swarmed me whenever I stopped for more than a few seconds.
Reached the ridge after about 1 hour and summited Miller after that. Summit register on Miller is full of illegible crumpled paper; hope someone is able to replace it one of these days. Heading back down to the supposed turnoff was the first minor difficulty. I had both printed maps and GPS for the loop, but couldn't see any indication of the actual trail to head towards Freedom. I eventually just headed down toward the ridge, which I think is essentially correct - there's no obvious trail to follow, and you're going to be largely navigating solo for a while, it turns out.
After starting toward Freedom, I learned fairly quickly that this was more difficult than I'd been planning for. Despite being visible on a number of digital maps, there really isn't a trail for much of the way, especially close to Miller Peak. Boot paths come and go further along the ridge, but it's slow going. For my plans on the day, it was climbing into the 80s and I realized I was going through water much faster than I'd hoped, and with no likely water resupply available to me until ~11 miles in when heading back down Stafford. I'd known the distances, but hadn't accounted for the day's heat and the much longer amount of time it was taking me on the traverse.
After about 30 minutes on the ridge, I decided to change plans and take my first available out by going over Freedom, but skipping Navaho Peak and taking Old County trail back to Stafford and water. By the time I'd gone over Freedom Peak and was standing on the saddle between Freedom and Navaho, though I was four hours in and not relishing the climb and loop still left around the basin, which I thought would be at least another 90 minutes of midday exposed effort. I mildly gambled and decided to cut off-trail down into the basin to join Stafford trail, which would be a big shortcut. The terrain is mostly open scree, and I didn't think there was a way to get lost - my main worries were been topping out or running into thick growth, neither of which (thankfully) happened. After about 500 ft of descent, vegetation started popping up and I finally found a delicious spring. Water never tasted better - drank a ton, filled up my bottles, and kept to the south side of the creek heading downhill. I successfully met back up with the actual trail after about a mile, very grateful to have some more stable footing again after 3 hours of ridge climbing and scree. Running downhill, I said hi to two hikers going up, who ended up being the only people I saw on any trail all day. After getting to the Stafford trailhead, I ran the ~0.8 miles up the road back to my car at the still-empty Miller-Bear trailhead.
This was tougher than I thought it would be - the views in Teanaway were lovely as usual and the trails are in good shape. The hard part is the traverse between them - if anyone is planning on that, would strongly suggest 1) going with someone else, as it's not frequently trafficked; 2) bring AT LEAST 3L water and plan for no resupply, and 3) either go in a cooler month or get a much earlier start to avoid the heat.
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