Dock Butte — Wednesday, Sep. 26, 2018

The start of Forest Road 12 has recently been graded and it is now much, much better than several weeks ago. The only bugs I noted were patchy swarms of very tiny flies in the forest which seemed to be harmless despite outnumbering me by trillions. The best berries near the trail are higher up (hungry humans or hungry bears??). Fall colors are fantastic in many places. The uppermost about 10 feet of the trail (where the actual scramble route reconnects with the main trail) is a curious little bit of a scramble across a sloping flat slab.