Barnes Creek — Saturday, Apr. 27, 2019

Starting at the Storm King Ranger Station, I hiked 7 miles in to Lizard Head Creek, which is 2.25 miles past the junction with the Aurora Ridge Trail, for a total of 14 miles.  On a beautiful Saturday, I saw nobody else once I turned off the trail to Marymere Falls.  The first three miles up Barnes Creek were particularly nice, because the trail is often near the creek, and there are lots of big old trees.  As the trail climbs toward the Aurora Ridge Trail junction, at 4.75 miles in, it skirts above an old slide, and the opening in the forest offers a view across the Barnes Creek valley to Mount Storm King.  Aside from that, the scenery on this hike is forest and creek.  

The trail was generally in pretty good shape.  All three footlogs were intact with handrails, and the trail tread was well-benched in most places.  But there was a lot of blowdown, some of it pretty big.  I cleared much of the smaller stuff. 

Beyond the junction for Aurora Ridge, it's clear that the Barnes Creek Trail doesn't get much use.  The trail was mossed over in many places, and there were some big blowdowns that required some real effort to get around.  But it gave the place a nice feeling of remoteness.  You could imagine encountering Bigfoot here.

I don't understand why WTA's trail description says this is a 10-mile roundtrip hike.  If you hiked from the Storm King Ranger Station all the way to the end of the Barnes Creek Trail, it would be 10.5 miles one-way.