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Hi all,
Just an FYI- I went up to hike to Horse Meadows on the South Fork Trail off Jenks Lake Rd with the kids and dogs to play in some snow.
About 1/4-1/2 mile from the trailhead (where the trail turns left across the river) it was completely washed out. Someone on the trail said you could continue up that drainage, but because I had the kids and dogs, we turned back. If I was by myself, I probably would have walked the drainage as there was what looked like a trail on either side.
It did look like you could make it across on some logs if you were careful, or perhaps go up the drainage a bit to find a place to cross and come back to the main trail.
Also there were a couple downed trees across the trail, but were easily to climb over.
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The trail is washed out in two distinct places at the first bend in at the 1/4 mile mark on the south fork trail. Casual hikers will find it completely impassible, and we could not find a safe way to continue on the trail this weekend, so we climbed the ridge between the two major wash-outs to the old road (which is also badly washed out) that goes up to poopout hill which we took to where the trail crosses the road above horse meadow.
I will be very curious to see how the trail is repaired. At the hairpin bend at 1/4 mile, there are two drainages which each usually have a small stream flowing over the trail. Each of those streams has gouged a chasm where the trail used to be. the first cut probably 5 or 6 feet down, leaving a pretty good mess, but there are a couple ways to get around it reasonably safely. The second one cut more like 12 or 15 feet into the valley, leaving steep dirt walls on either side and completely obliterating about thirty feet of the trail.
Looking north at the first major wash-out from the top of what used to be the hairpin turn:
I didn’t get a great photo of the second, much large washout. A photo from a vantage I could access wouldn’t have shown the extent of the damage anyway. It’s pretty amazing. It also is super-unstable, and I’d imagine there’s years worth of additional erosion before either drainage is able to support a trail near where the trail used to be.
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If you make it past the washout, it’s a winter up there like it hasn’t been in a decade or more. We walked as far as Dry Lake before putting on our snowshoes. Right at the bend above dry lake where the trail leaves the valley and heads toward mineshaft saddle, an avalanche that came off the chute west of San Gorgonio’s north ridge left giant piles of snow and some huge downed trees. Here’s Joe standing under some at the bottom of the avalanche for scale:
Some partially toppled trees in the avalanche path:
We climbed Lake Peak, which went in snowshoes on a few inches of powder over hard frozen snow and some icy spots.
Then climbed the north ridge of gorgonio from mineshaft saddle, which went with snowshoes to around 10,500 ft, where we switched to crampons. The powder right above the saddle got pretty deep at times. From about 10,500 to the summit it was all hard-frozen snow and ice.
And along the summit ridge:
It was snowing as we walked out. A great winter up there!
Chris
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