This was a trip to explore the lower section of the Burnt Granite trail – the upper section is still an official trail, however the lower section was carved up by clearcuts and abandoned years ago. It has been re-found, and most of it is in pretty amazing shape for being abandoned for so long. Even many sections of the trail that went thru clearcuts has been located! The sections that went thru the old growth are truly impressive – these old stands have some mighty large trees in them. Unfortunately I didn’t take many photos, but here is one of the photos of some of the tread – it is MUCH more apparent in person than it appears in this photo:

We headed up to the road where the “current” Burnt Granite trail takes off from – but that starts down the road a bit. The section where this crossed the road was clearcut, and so the current trail uses an old cat road to begin. In due time, maybe the original tread can be located in the clearcut and the original path restored. Who knows. (edit – the original route has been found! And restored!!) It is just cool to see this very old path. It will make a great wintertime trail – could be used to snowshoe – start at the bottom, hike up to snow, then put on showshoes to go higher.

On the way back down, we took a slight detour to the un-named creek – there is a user/game trail down to it that is flagged with blue and white flagging. A neat little creek.

On the way back home, we stopped to explore the old Memaloose trail off road 45. We didn’t go too far up the trail, but we did find some old cut logs:

And even cooler, we found an old benchmark tree!

After exploring that trail for a short ways, we headed back down and wanted to stop at fearless for a pint, but found out they are closed on Tuesdays! So, we headed over to another bar in town and had a pint there – not the same as Fearless, but still tasted good.

Both of these trails will be on my list to explore further.