Miscellaneous current conditions:
The dirt road (2N58) to the Middle Fork Lytle Creek trailhead was in fairly decent shape - we made it there in our old Saturn, so no four wheeling needed. Just drive slow on the bumpy parts. (It should also be noted that we've driven that old car all over the A-B Desert, so YMMV.) Still, it wasn't as bad as the road to the Fish Creek Trailhead on San Gorgonio, which we had no problems with last year.
Also, no one has shot up the new sign since Cougarmagic's post last October.
Too bad the new sign is wrong: Commanche Camp is at 6100 feet, not 6400.
Anyway, thanks CM - your post helped give me the idea for where to hike this trip.
BTW, the plastic register can on Bighorn Peak has a crack in the lid, a hole in the plastic jug, and the register notepad is full. There's only one "live" sticker left. I was really hoping to get a plain generic eispiraten sticker this trip, but now I'm going to have to PM Simonov. You know, I've searched this entire forum and I still have no idea what "Big Ass Ham" is all about...
The Telegraph Peak register is also full. I'd like to add that whoever made the Telegraph Peak stainless steel register box (and very-much-permanently-attached beer opener!) and then bolted/chained it to the summit block deserves some major applause. Nice work! Truly a peak register to be proud of.
Also, major thanks to the rebuilders of the spring at Kelly Camp. It's flowing great, and when I saw the picture of the new pipe in a recent thread, I had no idea that it was actually a 1 1/2" PVC pipe - that sucker's huge! Excellent! Let's hope the PVC can handle freezing each winter like the old rusty galvanized pipe did...
As for bugs, the gnats were only annoying some of the time, and they seemed to be both temperature and wind dependent. The breeze was a true sanity-saver. My wife got a couple of chunks bitten out of her bare legs by some huge horseflies, and there were one or two mosquitos near the water in the shady areas. The bugs should be dying off soon, as the forest dries up. My wife's custom anti-gnat hat:
Anyway, since I posted this in the Trip Reports area and not in the News and Current Conditions subforum, here we go:
Short Trip Report: My wife and I did a four-day three-night backpack from the Middle Fork Lytle Creek Trailhead, staying the first night at Commanche Camp, followed by two nights at Kelly Camp. On our layover day we day-hiked the Three Tee's Trail, but only did two of them. On the final day, hiking out, we bushwhacked (foolishly) down into Stonehouse Crossing from upstream, and managed to have an off-trail adventure without getting lost or contaminated with poison oak. Conclusion: An excellent time was had in the mountains last weekend.
Ultra-super-overly-long Trip Report and way too many photos/videos can be found on my Flickr Page
The opener on Ontario's dead tree is one of the funniest I've ever seen, and the one on Timber is also well-placed:
