My first stop was 7.7 miles from the entrance gate. A service road branched to the right, heading up to some towers.
Nearby I found a use trail dropping off the roadside. This led to the abandoned road to San Sevaine Lookout.
The segment of road between the trail and the lookout kind of sucked, but it didn't suck as much as the segment returning to the towers, which I'll get to in a bit. First, let's talk about the lookout...
The lookout ruins provided a great spot for taking a break and enjoying the vast vistas.
The storm and wind had cleared the air of junk, so Lytle Creek appeared to be within stone-throwing distance. I scrambled to the highpoint and found a water-soaked Sierra Club register inside a cracked PVC container. I guess I was the first signature for 2018.
I felt like being "a rebel just for kicks," so instead of the use trail, I decided to try the abandoned road the whole way back. I don't recommend this route unless you really enjoy being impaled by thorns. It got so bad that I had to crawl through the mess many times like a wild animal.
The only redeeming aspect of this horrible route choice proved to be the old sign that I found.
Unfortunately I couldn't read the faint lettering, so the thrill of my discovery soon faded, and it was back to belly-crawling through thorns. Little did I know that this would be the easy part of my day. For, next up was a frustrating and stupid attempt at Buck Point. Frustrating, because I failed from two directions, making it to within a few hundred feet before hitting an impenetrable wall of thorns. And stupid, because I later spotted a much better route from a nearby vantage point, but by then it was too late in the day to try another direction.
From the east, I hit the first wall of thorns covered in ice.
From the west, I took a clear gully before being stopped again.
By now a storm had decided to add to my troubles by blessing me with freezing wind, light snowfall, and reduced visibility. As I desperately searched for a way, I took note of an interesting mix of impalement, numbness, and disappointment. Finally I gave up and turned around. Of course, the storm ended once I was safely back in the warm car.
I made a quick stop at Joe Elliott, just because.
I still had a couple hours of daylight and one more thing to try. I started back down the road and parked at a saddle east of Buck Point.
Another thornwhack, yes, but this time rendered doable thanks to someone who had done a bit of clipping recently. Unlike Buck Point, I reached my goal and found Rafael Benchmark, a triangulation station from 1934.
A geocache log contained only two names in six years.
I managed to make it back to the car a little before sunset. One of the many thorns embedded in my body bothered me more than the others. It chose to settle in my right knee cap. In the frozen twilight, I worked on this menacing plant fragment with some tweezers, but it was buried too deeply in the flesh. Removal would have to wait until I could get home and dig it out with a needle.
As a distraction from pain, I cranked up the heavy metal music for the slow, two-hour drive down the mountain.
