We hiked from the trailhead on Highway 3 in Manning Park south to Monument 83 / Holdover Peak.
With the current COVID situation, this was the first weekend the trail was officially open for hiking. There were two other cars already at the trailhead - a couple who were leaving after encountering some big downed trees early in the trail and some trail runners, who themselves turned around at the 78-83 fork.
The downed trees are an issue. On our way back we counted the number of trees across the trail. 665 in all, or 1,330 for the 20-mile round trip. The sheer number of blowdowns spawned a new trail metric - blowdowns per mile (BdpM). We decided our new BdpM limit was considerably less than the 66 this trail is currently registering.
When there aren't trees across the path, the trail is generally in very good condition. There is a bridge out when crossing Monument Creek at the 6km / 10-mile point, however, the crossing was very manageable. There were also a couple of small pockets where the brush is starting to engulf the trail, but these again are not yet an issue.
For the last mile, there was fresh snow from an overnight storm. This largely fell on top of 4" - 6" of snowpack hanging on from the winter. I imagine this will be gone in a couple of weeks.
The summit itself is just about the only time you find yourself outside the trees, so the view was beyond welcome. However, the chilling breeze and occasional flurries weren't so welcome. The original cabin was locked and the US fire tower has a big "do not climb" sign at its base.
After some lunch at the top we uneventfully made our way back down. The highlight of the descent was hearing wolves up t
Comments