Back when headsizeburrito lived here, he placed a register on West Mermaid. So I thought I'd go sign in. Really wasn't feeling an alpine start, so I started walking from the West Fork confluence at 9:30. The place is a ridiculous zoo. The parking lots are closed. But the hordes are still there, parking on the side of the road just outside the lot. Walking into the West Fork drainage, I lost 90% of the humans. And by Bear Creek I was all by myself.
I haven't been here for a while, and had forgotten just how much this trail likes to cross the river. At times the river moves to the other side of the canyon, which necessitates a crossing. But many many other times the trail crosses the river for no apparent reason. The river is high. I had to wade in pretty much immediately, and spent the whole day in soaked shoes. Most of the crossings were ~ knee high, but a few in the wilder upper section were waist-high. Water temps were nice; that part was actually quite pleasant.
Alright, so Lower Bear and a bit before that have several nice wide camp areas. This is Lower Bear camp:
If you don't like the fire ring, you can use the fireplace:
Found one of these here:
Is this what I want? There were more in West Fork.
Up to this point, the trail is decently well-defined, between the river crossings. Obviously. Right after the camp the SG Wilderness starts:
Here the trail becomes more sporadic. But there's a nice view of Triplet rocks and (I think) Twin Peaks
After countless river crossings and brush battles I finally arrived at the West Fork Bear creek confluence, 2.5 hours after I started (includes one break). There're some nice open camp areas around the junction. There's plenty of water in this fork too, but there's less of it, so boulder-hopping is actually possible. Initially the going is easier than in Bear Creek proper, partly due to to terrain, and partly due to some faint narco use trails. There's a cool narrows section near the start, with cool sheer cliffs
After a mile or two the trails die out, and the brush intensifies. There's poison oak absolutely everywhere, and other exciting things. Like stinging nettles that go right through my pants. The only obstacle worth mentioning is here:
A series of 2 small waterfalls fill deep rock pools. There's an easy bypass. I arrived at the creek junction at ~ 2900ft 2 hours after leaving Bear Creek. I'd take the left branch, which was actually dry. But it was now my turnaround time. So I kicked back in a patch of poison oak to eat some granola and drink some water. No other type of patch was available.
The peak would need to wait until next time. I'm going to wake up earlier, and maybe show up at a drier time of the year.
There's some narco stuff happening in this canyon; the details are hazy. In the middle is lots and lots of black tubing, coiled up, and cut up. This wasn't deployed yet, but somebody cut it up! Upstream of that (nowhere close) there's some gardening junk, and a network of trails on the slope above. I would guess that's an old grow. Way older than the hoses. And downstream of the hoses (again, not close) is a recent abandoned camp. Lots of trash. Two pickaxes, a shovel, some beefy loppers, sprayer, etc. There's no grow nearby; the camp is next to a cliff in fact. I guess this is a commuter camp?
So let's see. There were 2 Mallard ducks in Bear Creek. They're all over the parks in the city, but I've never seen one in the mountains. There was a cool frog on one of the rocks in the middle of the river; too busy not drowning to take a photo. Countless lizards everywhere, both land ones and aquatic. Lots of squirrels. TONS of ants and flies that really wanted to get into my eyes. Found this guy in the West Fork drainage (photo after I cleaned him up):
This is my 3rd scalp. Anybody know what's going on here? I guess these are some sort of mountain lion kill, or something? It's the same skull fragment each time.
Saw one of those 2-yellow-stripe snakes dart off as I approached. Then there was this guy:
And this guy:
ID? The first one was maybe 1.5" thick; the second was much smaller, maybe 0.5" thick.
This was a day full of solid type-2 fun, and next time maybe I'll even bag the peak!
