Bear Creek Trail

Shasta-Trinity National Forest

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I found the Bear Creek Trail topping a page of Hayfork Area Trails, but it was already on my radar because, well, it's on the map. It's even got a bridge! I was so confident about the bridge that I didn't want to add it to OpenStreetMap until I saw it. It should be easy to find because it starts by the "9 Mile Bridge" (happens to be right next to mile marker 8). I had a look at it the day before just to be sure it was there. (It was!) Then I took advantage of the official dispersed camping road a smidge to the east to find camping. The top is a bit rough, so I elected to walk in. The car probably would have made it back up. Review: Bit loud with Hayfork Creek crashing past, but the major county road that runs past the other side gets very little traffic at night.

This line of dirt looks well used and it connects into unmistakably built trail.

There's paved parking on the same side at the trail, but I took the little dirt turnout just past the bridge and across from the trail.

The advertised trail is 8.5 miles to Hayfork Bally, which I didn't think I would do. I would try for the 5 miles of trail to a junction with Pasture Gulch Trail and Bear Creek Ridge Jeep Road. Being a legal and open road, it would surely be easy to find and annoying to walk. The trail might present me with any number of hardships, so any plans for a long day could go astray anyway.

Somehow the trail already looks lesser used through this clearly burned forest.

A little waterfall pouring into Hayfork Creek below.

Playing who-burned-this again. This time it is the 2011 Hyampom Fire which wasn't long after the 2008 Miners Fire. There really is unburned forest out there. This isn't it.

Down that way somewhere, Hayfork Creek delivers its water into South Fork Trinity River.

It's quite a lot of water.

There's some trees down, but many of the smaller ones have been modified. It seems like randomly, some have not been cut. Right at the start there's a cut tree on an uncut tree. Surely it didn't manage to fall down under an earlier fall?

Surely just cutting it is easier?

The big challenge is over with quickly. I managed to climb it. Others have walked down and around.

Hayfork is a creek with many pretty spots. Perhaps a little scoured here.

I was right to be suspicious of the marked footbridge across Bear Creek. No sign remains of it. Bear Creek isn't very big, so no worries.

Bear Creek coming down the hill in the morning shade.

It also marks the end of the large tree challenges. Well, except one within a mile of the end. It's also long before there's any navigational challenge. Well, except one immediately. Two trails leave the creek, one steep and wrong looking, one looks right but quickly dissolves into animal trail. Someone did cut a branch along it. Option 3, along the low trail, but not far, then switch back across the steep trail and turn again to connect to it where it isn't so steep and narrow. A small blockage of a pile of branches dumped from some tree sits across it encouraging the shortcut. Once I saw it, I cleared off the branches and made the route clearer in the oak leaf duff. This sort of small clearing to make the trail usable instead of some walk around being required would be repeated over and over as I climbed.

Time to wave goodbye to Hayfork Creek. Bear Creek flowing into it is the last water on the trail.

A log to step over (and branches to break off) as the vegetation changes.

There is another bit of confusion as the trail crosses an old ditch. There's some root sprouting burn victims trying to obscure the trail, but a straight trajectory through at a sharp angle keeps one right on track. Others have followed the ditch. Hum. Maybe it connects in with the bottom of Pasture Gulch Trail? Probably not quite so far, but a loop might be possible.

Looking back over the trail and burn survivors around Bear Creek and Hayfork Creek.

And looking out over a twice burned landscape.

Layers of ridges dropping to Hayfork Creek as it flows to the river.

There were footprints on the trail from some other recent user although I saw no one. As I climbed, I found myself on a wide and solid and easily followed tread. Sparse growing knee high yerba santa sprouts from it requiring a bit of wading. It offers little resistance to travel, but I was glad to be in long trousers.

A meadowlark hunts in a bit of root sprout.

More to see with each step.

There's plenty of open trail stretches too.

Rounding the corner onto Hayfork Bally. I enjoyed some snacks with this view.

The trail transitions to a ridge top traverse. From here, I guess one could just stay on the ridge. Life gets a little easier if one finds the side trails around the peaklets. Bear has been taking these and keeping up the tread.

Some of that ridge top trail. Note the existence of shade!

Acorn woodpecker having a good glare as others land nearby.

Pondering the sections of trees and not across the way.

Well, I can't do anything about that one.

The trail is almost entirely a steady climb, but there is one drop along the way. There, the bears let me down. They are shortcutting the switchbacks and not keeping the tread up at all. A bunch of trees are down and branches settling into the thin tread. I cleared it as best I could to recover the switchbacks, but bear probably won't return to using them.

Past a big old blaze while rounding one peaklet.

Aren't deer supposed to make themselves scarce during hunting season? This one decided to wait around and get a closer look at me.

I did miss one trail around the edge in an overgrown flat area. I got it on the way back and it was great to start around the north end, but had a big tree down in the middle and then became very brushy with lots of little things down on it. One section I walked on the trees. It was no wonder I missed it. Going over the top meant a very steep, take care not to slip on the hard, dry ground, route down.

The old fuel break the trail recently met is rather easy to travel except when it goes vertical.

The last ridge out there is South Fork Mountain.

I met a stoutly stacked cairn with trails splitting and decided to walk Pasture Gulch Trail a little bit. Bear is maintaining that first bit of tread, too, but I turned back when it started to feel too much like a dirt ledge on a cliff.

There is a narrow trail here. Maybe Pasture Gulch Trail exists still, too. Maybe even Knowles Gulch Trail too.

The stout and deliberate cairn (left) marking the trail junction is getting lost in the manzanita.

Also at the end of the junction should be the end of that legal Jeep road I was expecting to meet. It's not exactly a stopping spot for a road and I can't help but notice that the last vehicle through here was probably the bulldozer doing rehabilitation after one of the fires. It does not appear to have been done thinking there is a road here. I continued up a little further.

This could serve as a reasonable end point for the legal road that is nowhere to be seen.

I stopped in a shaded flat on the ridge that could serve as a reasonable end point for a road. I could still see erosion control scrapes along the best guess for where that road is. I pulled out the Motor Vehicle Use Map georeferenced PDF and confirmed I was on legal road. Admittedly, that downloadable MVUM is dated 2014, but it's the latest one so far as I know and the current Forest Service data off their GIS server says the same thing. My best guess is that there is sometimes used road a little more than a mile further. I could have kept going to find it, but all the trail work was taking it out of me and the road section was proving even harder to navigate.

Just a little past my resting point. Fire killed and burned again on the right, thick forest on the left, and nothing more than an old fuel break down the middle.

Admittedly, this stopping point didn't have much view.

I decided to increase the frequency of points my GPS takes in hope that that'll increase accuracy for the track. It was a rather easy procedure considering I only ever did it once 13 years ago. What I really need is a new GPS. Maybe one that knows about all the satellite systems available to the public now.

The meadowhawk was a surprise to see. While Bear Creek is the last water on this trail, Pasture Gulch Trail is rumored to find water rather quickly once it starts dropping.

My first glance out to the west on my way down was startling. There was a plume of smoke rising from the far side of South Fork Mountain. So somewhere on the Mad River was on fire? The canyon was already filling with smoke and it wasn't too long before the scent of the stuff came to me.

That sure looks like a smoke plume to me.

I could get no signal off of anywhere, so couldn't discover the cause. (I still haven't found the cause.) It was too far away to worry much about, at least not yet.

Finding that bit of trail I missed on the way up. It isn't well used, but the tread is there.

South Fork Mountain is starting to vanish in the smoke.

The Bear Creek side of the ridge.

Some of the trail sections were definitely harder to find on the way down than they were on the way up.

An old fuel break marker along the old fuel break and trail.

Some fire art along the way.

Already shaded Hayfork Creek reflects the still bright sky.

A grasshopper on some of that on trail yerba santa.

An island of trees out on the hill could be a spring?

The gully could have water. Big water is near anyway.

I ran out of water (3L at the start) a little before getting back to the creek, but couldn't be bothered to stop for more just then. It's a flat ⅔ mile back, some tree climbing involved.

Back at the mystery ditch with its extra trail along the edge.

It definitely was easier to walk the trail on the way down. Just a clearing of at least a dozen piles of branches and tossing off various little trees and it becomes much more stroll like. Once back to the car, I headed off for a new camp as this one was rapidly becoming smoky as well as loud. The cell signal in Hayfork wouldn't let me on. The Trinity County Library in Hayfork was already closed and all the wifi seemed to come from nearby homes, so I didn't find out anything about the source of that smoke.

*photo album*




©2024 Valerie Norton
Written 8 Nov 2024