North Fork Sauk River — Thursday, Apr. 4, 2024

Four of us went up Thursday morning to the mountain loop highway. We entered the highway at around 10 AM, 2 1/2 hours later we made it to the trailhead for the North Fork of the Sauk river. we were in a three-quarter ton Chevy Silverado with plenty of clearance, but the potholes and the ruts were enormous and it was so consistently bumpy that you almost hit your head on the ceiling of the truck and one location on the spur that led to the trailhead we had to strap a tree fallen across the road and pull it out of the way. Our top speed never exceeded 5 mph, which is hilarious as we really didn’t want to go 40 mph. 15 mph would’ve been a dream come true.  
when you get to the trailhead it’s like an apocalyptic scene. There is a massive, and I mean massive tree that came down and it obliterated nearly everything in the parking area. The signage and stuff still stands along with the toilet that is there. The trail has an abundance of down trees over it crawl under walkovers and walk arounds. It’s not absolutely horrible but it’s not ready for prime time by any stretch. We need to get a crew up there to spend a day or two cleaning it up a wee bit. The  plan was to make it to the bridge  and our pace was really good on the trail. It was driving on the mountain loop highway and the access road to the trail that did us in for the day because it ate up so much time we knew we had to conserve time to get back to civilization before dark. Over all   I think it would benefit everybody if whoever manages the Mountain Loop, Highway would post the status, pothole and rut, wise and washout wise of the highway. calling it a road is a stretch. It’s just a constant rut. I’m fully aware that it is winter time / off season for the most part on the mountain loop highway, but maybe a sign at either entrance, describing the conditions of the road currently like someone would with a fire danger warning sign could really help. Nobody wins when a vehicle gets stuck or breaks down due to road conditions and I understand that it’s buyer beware but we could help each other out quite a bit by better communication. Overall, I would highly recommend staying away from the Mountain Loop, Highway until whoever it is that decides work can be done and should be done gets the work done to improve the conditions  

 That’s the end of my rant. 
by the way, I am a crewmember of the volunteer corps of WTA