My first trip to the Colville National Forest in the northeastern most corner of Washington.  This was a BCRT for WTA to logout a few trails as part of on going maintenance in partnership with the Forest Service.  

The forest roads in the park are in very good condition.  Recent grading have left them relatively smooth if dusty.  No problems for any vehicle.  

The work project included removing logs and some treadwork on the Shedroof Cutoff Trail, #511, Shedroof Divide Trail, #512, and the Salmo Divide Trail, #535.  The good news is that we removed all but a couple of logs on the trail so they are in good shape for hikers as well as stock.  

Most people choose the Salmo Loop trail in this area, but please consider a trip up to Shedroof Mountain via this set of trails.  The views into Idaho and into Canada are fantastic.  We could see into Priest Lake in Idaho on two of our working days.  You are well over 6000' elevation so the views go on a long way.  

Wild flowers were in bloom along the majority of the trails.  We also found a few early huckleberries as a snack on the way back to our base camp. 

This is a very, very dry area this summer.  No fires permitted anywhere.  Please bring in sufficient water because some of the usual watering spots are already gone due to the high temperatures in the area. 

Best wishes for your next adventure.   

Headed out Saturday to explore some roads and trailheads I've never been on and planned to do a short solo day hike up thunder creek a ways. I'm going on the BCRT trip here in a few weeks and wanted to check it out. It was after 1 o'clock by the time I started up the trail and I didnt plan to go all the way up to the junction with Shedroof as I wasn't sure I wanted to do 10 miles. Well as it turns out I went up to the junction and then decided I didnt want to go back through the old roadbed/clearcut section of thunder creek again. The wilderness/old growth section is truly amazing but wanted to explore new trails. I haven't been on the shedroof divide before and wanted to see the views. They did not disappoint! I also knew a loop could be done by using Shedroof cutoff that would get me back pretty close to the car. Got out the map and figured I had enough daylight to do the loop so I headed north up the divide. There's always that extra motivation when on a new trail! 

The Shedroof divide between thunder creek and the shedroof cutoff does have some trees down but the real nuisance is the brush. Guess I should have worn long pants! There are long stretches (many of them through the burned area) where you can hardly see the trail. Thunder creek trail is in great shape. I anticipate most if not all the work will be done on shedroof divide trail.

There were a few spots to get water up on the divide but they were small and not sure how long they'll be available. There is one decent spot near where Jackson creek trail begins. Mosquitos weren't bad but the black flies were relentless! Had to keep moving to keep them off me. Didnt see a single person or animal all day.

Had a great day even though my planned short day hike turned into about 14 miles. Took just over 7 hours. Got to explore new trails and made it back to the car before dark so all was good!

I did the Salmo-Priest "lollipop" loop beginning at the #511 Shedroof Cutoff trailhead.   #511 had been recently cleared.   The problem area was #512 that runs across Shedroof Mountain between #511 and the Salmo Pass trail.   That stretch of #512 had numerous blowdowns and some brush.

Actually,  that stretch of #512 splits in two as it crosses Shedroof mountain, with an upper trail that climbs to the summit while the lower trail runs along the West side of the mountain.   I took the upper trail as I headed North to the "loop", then on the return trip I took the lower trail.

The upper trail is in the worse shape, with numerous blowdowns and in some places brush completely obscuring the trail. Nonetheless, the upper trail is passable on the South side of Shedroof mountain.  I removed a few of the blowdowns with a folding Silky Saw, but did not get them all.    The bigger problem is as the upper trail descends the North side of the mountain, it grows faint and eventually disappears all together, forcing the hiker to bushwhack to the lower trail.

The lower trail had numerous blowdowns, and I cleared some of them, but did not get them all.   

I also submitted this report to the Idaho Trail Association but I believe this stretch of the trail is mostly in Washington state.

I had a small window to take advantage of a short outing before the heat wave hit in earnest, and decided to do a quick overnight in the Salmo Priest Wilderness. I didn't do the full loop: my objective was to check out trail 349 out of curiosity, plus check conditions for my BCRT trip next month. 

I started by hiking in on the Salmo Divide Trail, where there were a few trees down but nothing like last year when the trail clearing crew found 50+ trees down on this 3 mile section. Most of the trees this year are easy step overs, with a couple that require a short detour for the time being. I stopped long enough to cut a few branches off the worst downfall (Engelmann spruce have the prickliest needles, so I didn't want to try to climb over until I'd gotten rid of the offending branches).

At the junction with the Shedroof Divide I turned north. I stopped at the campsite below Cabinet Pass to top off all my water bottles since this is the last reliable water source, then continued up to trail 349. The trail is still very evident on the ground, although it is very brushy. I was considering hiking down as far as the water crossing to camp, but at the 0.4 mile mark I decided I just wasn't having fun negotiating the trail in shorts, so I turned back. Instead I camped at the summit of Little Snowy Top, hanging my hammock between one of the old lookout footings & a nearby tree to take full advantage of the views.

This was only my second time camping at the summit of Little Snowy Top, and a little sad since last time the lookout still stood on the summit. I'm not a fan of dry campsites, but I am a huge fan of the views from up here, so carrying in 5L of water was worth the effort. I had a relaxing evening climbing around the rocks near the summit & admiring the views, and the sunset was spectacular!

However, just a little before midnight the fulltime resident showed up & spent the next couple hours giving me grief for camping up there! There is a very quick, very persistent packrat who calls this mountain home. He started by trying to carry off my shoes (so they went into the hammock with me), then he tried to carry off my Jetboil (so it went into the depths of my backpack), then he tried to get inside my backpack to see what other shiny treasures I might have in there (at which point my backpack had to go into my hammock), and finally he tried to jump into the hammock with me! I think I finally gave a good enough shout at that point that I managed to scare him off. I didn't sleep as well as I'd hoped, but I guess all of the activity in camp allowed me to witness more of the full moon reflecting off Priest Lake in the distance and see occasional shooting stars overhead. Just always remember it's the Salmo Priest rodents who are the most fearsome beasts. As for the carnivores, I saw one pile of bear scat, just enough to remind me they might be hanging around somewhere.  

On Friday I packed up & headed out with a plan to see conditions south of the Salmo Divide trail junction, perhaps even as far as Shedroof Mountain. However, it was already getting quite hot as I started to climb, and I was content to turn around at two large downfall trees that will provide some excellent crosscut practice for my crew next month. There were still a few patches of snow throughout, with more as the trail started to climb Shedroof. I returned to the car & headed to Sullivan Lake to go for a short swim before returning home.

Our group of 6 participated in a 4-day BCRT on the Jackson Creek Trail which is located on the eastern slope of Shedroof Divide. Jackson Creek drops down to Idaho and our goal was to log out, brush and deal with tread/drainage issues as far as we could to connect to work already done on the lower section of this long-neglected trail. This is a multi-year project on this part of The PNT.

Our access was the adjacent Thunder Creek Trail on the western side of Shedroof Divide which is in excellent shape. 

We were able to improve approximately 1.5 miles of trail from the Shedroof Divide junction. There is still lots to do in the future to restore this trail.

A couple of us took an after-work stroll about 2 miles north on Shedroof Divide to the summit of Thunder Mountain via an unmarked and unmaintained spur trail for big views from this former lookout site. 

Huckleberries were plentiful and the only other people we saw during the entire trip were 2 equestrians on the hike out.