Thursday 9-14-23 Hiking Upper Big Creek Trail & Campground Trail

 

Let's go hiking

We woke up with the temperatures in the 50s. The high temperature got into the high 70s or low 80s. Hard to tell since we don’t have any internet.

I crawled out of bed around 6:45 and turned on the oven. Once the oven got to temperature I baked cinnamon rolls. 

After breakfast we went on a 6.5 mile hike. We started the hike from the campground and went to the trailhead parking lot. We picked up the Upper Big Creek Loop Trail, you can either take it clockwise or counter clockwise. We went counter clockwise, we crossed over a few creeks via bridges and up the mountainside 1000 feet in elevation. It was a tough climb but there were places you can rest and a few benches to rest on. Some places the trail flattened out. The scenery was beautiful with all the different trees including pines, ferns and other green plants. The trail was very well maintained. As we hiked we heard the creeks flowing in the trees. Sometimes you could see them and other times they were hidden. We saw Mount Ellinor and Mount Washington. At one resting place there was a sign that said Mount Ellinor and Mount Washington. If you looked through the trees you could see both. There were a couple of mile markers. The whole loop is 4.5 miles. There was a mile marker for 1 mile and another for the halfway point 2.2 mile. There trail is maintained by the Mount Rose Trail Group (MRTC). They not only do the maintenance they also rebuild and maintain the bridges on the trail. One they rebuilt in 2022 and another one in 2021. The one that was rebuilt in 2021 is a Troll bridge. It had a troll in a gate house. It was very cute. By the same bridge there was a beautiful bench dedicated to Ted Baily Mt. Rose Crew 1996 – 2014. On top we saw two creeks (Skinwood and Parallel) converge into Big Creek. The creeks were small but they sounded big. There were a lot of benches on top for people to sit and enjoy the forest. We met a couple of women hiking there. The First people we had seen. As we continued our hike we saw an area where they milled downed trees to make the benches and pieces of the bridges. That explained how they got the wood up on the mountain. There were more benches on the way down the mountain. The way back wasn’t as steep as we thought it would be but you still had to watch for loose rocks. This part of the hike we saw hikers starting to hike and a couple of the people had their dogs with them. Of course I had to pet each dog (a year old lab and a miniature Australian Shepard). We had a super hike. I was worried it would be too steep but it was ok.

Mount Ellinor

 

Mount Washington

 

Troll Bridge

  

 

 Troll at the troll booth

 

 Skinwood Creek

 

Tree decorated with rocks

 

Parallel Creek

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying our campsite. I finished my Shogun Sudoku and started Sumo Sudoku. Larry read and chased the sun with our solar panels. While relaxing a few more campers showed up.

For dinner we barbecued pork. After dinner we hiked the campground trail (1.33 miles). I ended up doing 20,500 steps today. We had a great day