Tag Archives: trail crews

Granite Chief 2025-07-22 trail survey and trail work

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My fourth Granite Chief trip of the season was a trail condition survey, and then work with a trail reroute group. I surveyed three of the trails which I had not done this season, the Greyhorse Trail and Shanks Cove Trail. And then joined a Western States Endurance Run trail work crew working on the Tevis Cup reroute.

I entered the wilderness from Five Lakes Trailhead (formerly Alpine Meadows Trailhead) and camped at Whiskey Creek Camp. Heading down Five Lakes Creek Trail the next day, I was able to follow the trail from north Big Spring Trail to Shanks Cove Trail, which I’d lost on my previous trip. 38 down trees, and heavy debris in many areas, but the trail can be followed with a close eye.

The southern leg of the Shanks Cove Trail, from the Five Lakes Creek Trail to the junction with Greyhorse Trail on the ridge, has not been maintained since 2009, and it shows. Many, many down trees, dating from those 16 years. Since the trail is seldom used, the lower crossing of Shanks Cove Creek is completely filled in with alder and willow, so you’ll have to find your own way. Across the creek is a deep pile of down trees and debris, obscuring the trail. It is hard to find where it starts up the rocky slope through brush, but once found, is not hard to follow. After the upper crossing of the creek, the trail climbs up the headwall to the ridge, sometimes steeply and sometimes switchbacks. Again, many down trees and areas of heavy debris. At the top of the ridge, the junction with Greyhorse Trail is signed and obvious. Enjoy the views!

I descended the Greyhorse Trail to the trailhead, which seems to have been renamed the Shanks Cove Trailhead. The trail is not too hard to follow, no worse then when I last walked it in 2008. About one-third of the down trees have been chainsawed. I’ve come to terms with accepting chain sawing by private individuals since the Forest Service has long given up on trail maintenance, but it looks as though the person who cut was riding a dirt bike, sometimes on the trail and sometimes off. More about chain saw use in a future post. The official trailhead signing is gone, but there is a user-made trailhead sign. I think the trail name is still Greyhorse, and the number 15E13, but the trailhead has apparently been renamed to Shanks Cove Trailhead on the Forest Service and other maps.

Back on the ridge, I headed on the north leg of the Shanks Cove Trail, going to the Western States Trail. There are a few down trees on the ridge, but other than one stretch through a dry meadow where the trail starts to head off the side of the ridge, easy to follow. And great views into Picayune Valley. The trail down across the volcanic bedrock is sketchy but acceptable. It drops steeply down a gully to the valley where an early season creek runs. Then up the other side, though down trees and brush fields, but the trail can be followed with care.

photo of view east from Shanks Cove Trail north section
view east from Shanks Cove Trail north section

I walked back on Western States to Whiskey Creek Camp, and slept. A long day, 27km on unmaintained trails.

The next day I went up Whiskey Creek Trail and north along the PCT. Sadly, there were bicycles ridden on the PCT the day before. At the junction with what I formerly called the Tevis Connector, and am for now calling the Middle Fork Trail, I headed down to the dry meadow beside Middle Fork American River, and set camp. With time left in the day, I explored the Tevis Cup reroute. The Middle Fork trail was worked last year and is in good condition, with two down trees. Where is meets the existing Tevis Cup Trail, there is no sign, just some ribbon. When the reroute is complete, the Middle Fork Trail will follow the old trail eastward, to a completed but hidden switchback to connect to the reroute.

I walked west on the reroute to the end of work, where the Great Basin Institute (GBI) trail crew was building switchbacks down through a mules ear meadow to eventual connection with the old Tevis Cup Trail, west of the difficult riparian and bog areas. My thought was that the Forest Service had given up on ever completing the full reroute, and was connecting to the old trail short of that, but got clarification from the WSER leaders on Saturday.

WSER Tevis Cup Reroute Project

I had signed up for a trail crew session with the Western State Endurance Run (WSER) organization. This is the lead private organization working on the reroute. I met the group of 14 at the PCT-Tevis Cup junction, and went to the work site, which is primarily the rock causeway through a wet area. Photo below, from an earlier trip. I worked on a pan through to carry a tiny creeklet, which turned out to be just the surface part of a considerable below-ground flow. A muddy mess, but the pan was build, and the beginning of the causeway extension beyond. Early afternoon the thunder boomed, it got very dark, and it rained and hailed for about two hours. The work crew set tents on tiny pieces of flat ground and waited it out, but my tent was on the Middle Fork, so I head back there. The sun came out, and I had four hours of sun to dry things, and the crew got more work done. Next morning I headed up to rejoin them and continued the work. Most of the crew was finding large rocks for the causeway, breaking up rocks into small pieces to fill the causeway and gaps, and sawing logs along the trail.

In the middle afternoon we hiked east on the unfinished reroute, then up to Watson Monument, down to High Camp, rode the tram down to the village, and ate dinner together.

I quite enjoyed working with this group of people. I had last worked with a trail crew on the Tahoe Rim Trail, about 15 years ago, and was nervous about working with people instead of by myself, but the group was welcoming and fun. They are all runners, both on the Western State and other runs, so they live in a different world than I, but are good people, and the crew supervisors were great, low key but with high expectations.

Some info about the reroute:

  • A Forest Service crew has drilled both the roughly blasted area at the east end of the reroute and many other spots to the west, and will blast sometime this season.
  • There will be two trails, the switchbacks down to the old trail, being worked by GBI, will be the horse route. The hope is that it will be complete for use next year.
  • A runner reroute will stay high all the way to Lyon Saddle, where Road 51 comes up to a trailhead. I formerly called this Foresthill Saddle, and it is on Foresthill Divide, but Lyon Saddle makes much more sense. It will take at least two more years to complete the runner route.
  • California Conservation Corps is not working this year, which will slow down the project.
  • When the reroute is complete, the trails may receive different names, hopefully less confusing.
photo of Tevis Cup reroute rock causeway

Granite Chief 2024-08 trail survey

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With this trip, I retired my old hiking boots and started with new. My boots are Altra Lone Peak, which is the only brand I’ve found that offers a wide toebox that my feet require. The old lasted a little over three years, since June 2021, not bad. The soles were more worn that the tops, but both were done. Altra has saved my hiking, as any boot without a wide toebox causes me great pain, and the one other common brand with wide toebox just doesn’t work for my feet.

The purpose of the trip was mainly trail condition survey. I often do that early in the season, but didn’t get to it this summer. Conditions for the trails I did are listed below. I went in at Granite Chief Trail (after enjoying Bluesday at Palisades Tahoe), then south on the PCT. The number of PCT hikers has dropped off, but there are still some going, either late starts or flip-flopping.

I was curious about rerouting of the Tevis Cup Trail, a project which started last summer and will continue through next summer. A CCC (California Conservation Corps) trail crew is base-camped at Little Needle Lake, and working from near the PCT to the west. The reroute is in varying stages, ranging from just sketched out enough to follow from being walked on by the trail crew repeatedly, to essentially complete. Several rock outcrops near the east end had just been blasted the day before, leaving a mess that requires a lot of reconstruction. The crew has worked as far west as a small seasonal creek, which will probably be the only water source on the rerouted trail. Though the trail route has been flagged through to its connection with the old trail, somewhere, I did not follow beyond the existing work, but I’m guessing a little more than half of the reroute has at least been started. This will be a very nice trail when completed! As I’ve written before, the Tevis Cup Trail design was horrible, gaining and losing altitude repeatedly, often for no apparent reason. I don’t recommend that you try to follow the new trail until the end of next summer, I do encourage you to enjoy it when finished.

A Great Basin Institute trail crew was working on the cross-trail between the PCT and Tevis Cup, which I call the Tevis connector though it is not clear what its official name and number is. They are camped at the flats beside the Middle Fork. Because the reroute crosses the slope of Lyon Ridge much higher than the old trail, several new switchbacks are being worked to bring it up to that level. If you follow the old trail west from the PCT, the obvious worked trail will take you all the way down to the Middle Fork. The junction with the old trail is marked by a rock wrapped with flagging, but could be easy to miss.

Knotweed is brilliant fall color right now, bright to pale red, and occasionally yellow and orange. It paints the west slopes below Wa-she-shu Peak with color, mixed in with other plants of fall color. Some of the wooley mules ears fields are browned out, while others are mix of green and yellow. Though few things are still flowering, the California fuschia at lower elevations are striking red.

photo of mountain ash in fall color
mountain ash in fall color

All my previous trips I had been sleeping under clouds, or smoke, or trees, but I had a full view of the sky with only a crescent moon to obscure. I have to admit I’ve forgotten a lot of constellations, but the night starts with the summer triangle overhead, and ends with Orion up in the east, and Jupiter.

I was going to do a loop out the Tevis Cup Trail to Talbot Creek Trail and back in on the Western States Trail in Picayune Valley, but realized I really didn’t want to deal with the old trail, and never will have to again. So I headed south on the PCT to Whiskey Creek Camp, and then west on the Western States Trail (which is called the Historical Western States Trail on some maps, I guess to distinguish it from the Western States Trail run on the Tevis Cup trail. Picayune is one of my favorite places in the wilderness, and I spent two nights there. Hiked out the trailhead one day, recording trail conditions, and lolled by the creek as much as possible.

The rain last week, while I was home, perked up three ferns that grow among the metamorphic rocks in Picayune Valley: cliff-brake, lace, and indian dream.

My ambition was to come back and do the Shanks Cove loop up the ridge and back down to Five Lakes Creek below Big Spring Meadows. But ambition failed me, and I stayed a night at Whiskey Creek Camp.

I hiked out Squaw Saddle Trail (has it been renamed?) and Five Lakes Trail to the trailhead. I walked the Bear Creek Trail towards River Ranch, planning to sleep part way along. But there are only two flat spots along the entire trail, one by the water tank and another on a bald hillock. But I noticed the hillock was covered with bicycle tracks, and I suddenly had a vision of being run over by night-riding bicyclists (which has become popular in the Tahoe area), and I had already passed the tank, so I walked all the way out to the stables and then bottom of Alpine Meadows road and camped by the river. I was surprised to see how many creeklets cross this trail, including at least three that are probably year-round. But the creeklets are all east of the water tank sleeping area.

While on this trip I finally identified the low shrub that I had been working on the Powderhorn Trail. It is snowberry, Symphoricarpos. It spreads by sending out runners that root. Sometimes across the trail, and those runners age to an almost unbreakable trip-wire, which is part of the reason I try to get it out by the roots, and cut it back if I can’t. On my earlier trip, the white berries were not there, but now they are, so I was able to identify. On the plus side, there was a patch of the gooseberry without spiny fruits around the old wilderness info sign at the beginning of the Tevis Cup Trail. Hmm, delicious.

There is a new trailhead map at the Talbot trailhead. It has the extended wilderness boundary on the northwest (lands purchased by the American River Conservancy), the new name Wa-she-shu, and a few other details. Unfortunately, it still shows the Buckeye Trail, off the Hell Hole Trail, which is essentially unfindable.

photo of Granite Chief Wilderness trailhead map at Talbot trailhead
Granite Chief Wilderness trailhead map at Talbot trailhead

I finally figured out why my hips have been hurting this entire season. The waist belt on my Osprey Atmos 50 AG backpack has velcro attachments between the hip belt and the waist belt. On one side, the velcro no longer holds where it is supposed to, so the waist belt no longer cinches as tight as it should. So the pack was riding low on my hips and causing pressure with every stride. It also explains why I was more and more holding onto and pulling in on the shoulder straps, trying to pull the pack up off my hips. Though these are called hip belts, they are meant to go above the hips, to ride on top of the pelvis and not on the hips. I will have to get that fixed during my late fall slow backpacking time.

Trail Conditions

  • Granite Chief Trail (15E23): good condition, one 9 inch down tree, could use spot brushing; adopted by Truckee Trails
  • PCT south to Tevis: good condition, one 6 inch, some debris*
  • Tevis Cup Trail (16E04): see notes above, old trail unacceptable, new reroute not complete
  • Tevis Connector: good condition
  • Little Needle Trail: This is not marked on maps and was formerly just a seldom used and hard to follow hunters trail, but with the CCC trail crew camps at the lake, it is now easy to follow.
  • PCT south to Whiskey Creek Trail: good condition, five down but all easy to step over or bypass, some debris
  • Whiskey Creek Trail: good condition, except broken tree fragments at the bottom
  • Western States Trail (16E10): to Shanks Trail, 16 down trees, some very brushy areas, moderate debris; to Talbot trailhead, about 30 down (forgot to record), some brushy areas, some areas of moderate debris; most of the down trees have established bypasses or can be stepped over/climbed over, but some newly fallen are difficult; though there are a lot of down trees on this trail, it is still worth walking or backpacking; the trail sign at the junction of Western States and Shanks is broken and down, but still readable
  • PCT south to Squaw Saddle Trail: good condition, one down tree, well brushed
  • Squaw Saddle Trail (if it is still called that): good condition
  • Five Lakes Trail to Alpine Meadows Trailhead: good condition, could use spot brushing

Trails not checked so far this season:

  • Shanks Trail
  • Greyhorse Taril
  • Hell Hole Trail
  • Talbot Creek Trail

*debris: I used to call this winter debris, the branches and cones that fall out of the trees during the winter, but since if falls year-round now from dead trees, I’m calling it debris.

Photos on Flickr: