Dirt-grub, the Meat and I did a lollipop loop from the Troy TH up the Wenaha River Trail to Crooked Creek, then up Crooked Creek to the Packers Trail/Three Forks Junction. We climbed the Packers Trail to Moore Flats and followed Smooth Ridge Trail up to Twin Spring. We then took the Smooth Ridge trail back down to the Wenaha River at Fairview Bar before returning to Troy along the Wenaha River Trail. About 31 miles and 5500' of gain in total.
We(I) had planned for this to be a somewhat relaxing 4-day backpacking trip but the difficulty of the trails made for some long and mentally/physically exhausting days. The Wenaha River Trail to Crooked Creek is in good condition with blow-down here and there. On the hike in we saw bighorn, elk, a bear and numerous wild-flowers along the wild and scenic Wenaha River. Heading up Crooked Creek the trail quickly becomes inundated with blow-down and is overgrown in a lot of spots until you reach the Three Forks Trail.
The Packers Trail branches off the Crooked Creek Trail at a sign for Moore Flats, though the sign is burned and now just reads "Moo Fl". Immediately you cross Crooked Creek at a horse ford that, while okay in low-flow, was waist deep and scary fast on this late May morning. In retrospect, crossing a 1/4 mile or so down-stream of the horse ford where it is wider, then scrambling up to the trail would have been a better and safer option.
The Packers trail steadily climbs out of the Crooked Creek Canyon and is scenic the whole way. On USGS and USFS maps there are two versions of the Packers Trail, neither of which represent reality. The Packers trail crosses Crooked Creek at the northern version of the trail and then steadily works its way south to meet the southern version of the trail near 3400'. The trail then follows the southern version until the junction with the northern version.
There is plenty of burnt blow-down on Packers Trail that will block horse traffic until it is cut out but the trail is otherwise easy-going. Once up to Moore Flats the trail heads into dense "forest" and is covered more thickly in burnt logs. In sections, 3/4 inch brush is overtaking the trail making it a struggle to get through that in a couple more years of post-fire low-use will become an impassable jungle. The burnt forest floor was flush with Morels for miles. In places, you could pause on the trail and count a hundred of them from where you were standing. Near the junction with Smooth Ridge, the trail meanders to the edge of the flat and the brush lightened making traveling somewhat easier. We followed Smooth Ridge through patchy burn and wonderful old forests and meadows before turning back at Twin Spring which was running strong and cold. We had planned to hike to Lodgepole spring but we were out of light and energy.
From Twin Spring we took the Smooth Ridge Trail back down to the Wenaha River. South of the junction with Packers Trail it descends into intensely burned forest. When I hiked it a few years ago, just after the Grizzly Complex Fire it was entirely silent and grey, and while the trail was faint, the way was relatively easy since there was almost no plant life. The faint trail is now buried in places by charred timber and chest high plants. The trail was particularly difficult to follow due to the thick new growth north of Pistol Spring and for ~1.3 miles between the rim of the Wenaha Canyon and Mud Spring where we saw only a few hints of the trail and schwacked the majority of the way. Thankfully we only met one rattlesnake (that we saw anyway) in the thick blow-down. We descended the Smooth Ridge Ridge Trail into the canyon as evening began to set in and soothed our cut and battered bodies with whiskey in the Wenaha before setting up camp at Fairview bar.
We hiked the Wenaha River Trail on the way out which has plenty of blow-down to negotiate. We didn't see any evidence that anyone had hiked the trail over the long weekend which got my stomach turning over the possibility that crossing Crooked Creek was going to be dangerous. However, it turned out to have plenty of relatively "easy'" spots to cross in knee/thigh deep water followed by struggling through a bog.
In total we saw around 60 Bighorn, 2 bears, elk, deer (and a very cute fawn), at least 3 species of snakes, and vastly more morels than I have ever encountered. We're still going through the plants but probably ID'ed 50+ different flowers that are in bloom, not counting all the different species of Phlox/Balsamroot/Penstemon/ect.. that are hard to differentiate. Dirt-Grub seems to still like me after this bit of adventure but our next outing will be on trail that is used occasionally by other humans.
<3 the Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness!
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