We have driven passed the closed road that leads to the old 1890s mining town of Monte Cristo many times. This access road was washed out in 2006 floods and leads to some the reportedly awesome trails of Gothic Basin, Monte Cristo, Glacier Basin, Silver & Twin Lakes and Poodle Dog Pass. I had a late start because work has been picking up lately, so I decided this was an exploratory hike with low expectations. Indeed, it turned out to be quite enjoyable and I recommend it highly!
Once again, we had a somewhat challenging Sauk river to pass and bogie didn’t fair too well. He attempted to jump on the massive log stretching over said river, missed making it to the top because he was jumping from sand (not solid ground) and fell back into the river. He completely went under for a few seconds and came up with a definitive “screw you” look in my direction. After much coaxing, he got on the log where I was trying to get him to and we tip toed across the log (and said river) with ease.
It is about 4 miles from the road closure to the town site of Monte Cristo. A very pretty day and lots of photo opportunities on the way to the old town site. As I write this, I finally remembered to order a gorillapod for my camera for hikes. This is a way cool tripod that is all Gumby like flexible (so you can hang it from trees and what not). Bummer that hiking season is just about over. (tears in my beers)
Made it to the town site much faster than I imagined. Here you can see the old railway turntable when they used to turn the entire train around to head back up the mountain.
I took a number of shots of the town itself but few of them are particularly post worthy. I’m going to give that trail another go someday soon and perhaps read up on the history of the town a bit more. I did have a chance to chat with some volunteer workers on the site and they showed me some mining books of the town in its heyday.
I decided to trudge on forward to the Glacier Basin but didn’t have any real intent of getting there. My late start only gave me a hour or so of onward hiking before needing to turn back. A lot of folks ride their trail bikes the four miles to the town site (quite possible) and leave them there to do the the Gothic Basin, Silver & Twin Lakes and/or Poodle Dog Pass hikes. That might be something to explore next year.
We had lunch just short of the finishing up to the Glacier Basin site. Shame to turn back so close to the finish but I knew it would be a late drive back. Indeed, didn’t get back home until 7:30 PM and there was another factor that got me. The insoles in my hiking boots were goobering up. On the way back, my right foot insole would not stay in place and kept slipping down. I ended up with a pretty bad blood blister on my right heel. So I’m going to be packing fresh insoles in my backpack from now on!
The hike back was nice and since I knew the trail this time, we picked up the pace quite a bit. I stopped just short of jogging because of the insole problem but might consider doing this on a future hike. The entire trip to the town and back is about 8 miles and that is a nice jog distance with another 4 to 6 mile hike on top. Would need to consider using trail running shoes and a different backpack though. The other option is the trail bike method I mentioned earlier but not sure how well bogie would keep up. With the possibility of cougars, mountain loins and bears, I do like to keep him in my sights at all times.
All in all, a great hiking day and as you can see, bogie found this trail to be quite fun and snoozed the entire trip back to the casa.
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