Today’s hike was going to be a relatively short one since Kirk had to get back early for an event. I’d been looking for trails that were opening up since the snow levels have been rising. I hadn’t hiked the Huxley Lake trail in a couple of years and have only hiked it a few times, so it seemed like a good option. We decided to come in from the southern trailhead since the northern one seemed like it still might have some snow on the road.

We headed out a little earlier since we had to get back early and we slowly made our way all the way to the end of the 4611 road where they built huge dirt berms to close the rest of the road:

We suited up and headed out. Kirk had to keep Ollie on a leash so he didn’t get too much activity on his knee. We walked up the 4611 road a bit and found the beginning of the trail. It was really hard to see since they built a huge tank trap at the beginning to keep out the ATVs. With all the new foliage, you couldn’t really see the trail, but there was a faint path next to the tank trap that led up to the trail. When we got on the trail I took a picture looking back to the road – you can barely see the road:

We started up the trail – it is very lightly used and you can tell – if there hadn’t been so much damage from ATV use years ago, the trail would be very faint, I’m sure. There was quite a bit of limbs on the trail – not too many logs, but lots of brush and fallen branches.

About a half mile up, we got to the first junction – this is where an old trail that comes from Winslow pit comes in – Kirk and I hiked this with Thor (his first real hike) and Ollie back in 2017:

We took the right turn to go to the lake – we continued climbing a bit and soon got to an open area where the junction to the lake is:

We headed down to the lake and at some point came across this huge nurse log with a big tree growing out of it:

A bit farther down we got to the campsite area and looked around. I flew my drone of the lake – here is the video – no editing this time as it was just a loop around the lake:

While I was flying my drone, Kirk decided to do some exploring. After I got done with my flight, I went to look for Kirk – he had apparently continued to follow the trail around the lake. I ended up following his path for the most part. There was a trail almost all the way around the lake – I think there were some other old campsites around the lake as well. About the only spot I couldn’t find a trail was when I encountered a vine maple thicket – I think I was too close to the lake – if I had been higher I bet I could have found a trail that continued. Soon I re-joined the trail we came in on and I followed it back to the campsite where I found Kirk and Ollie.

Before we left the lake I climbed out on some logs to get a good picture of Huxley Lake:

After that we packed up and headed back up the hill. When we got to the junction, we headed right which took us up to the end of an old road. The first time I hiked this trail I missed the side trail and hiked out the road. The route thru this area gets a little confusing as there are a bunch of flags which don’t really make sense. There are a couple of “Trail” signs (they just say “TRAIL” on them) – we figured out where the trail continued north of the old road and continued up.

It was near this area where Kirk noticed something nailed to a tree- it turned out to be some barbed wire!:

I’d never heard of anything in this area – farther north, on the Corral Springs trail there is barbed wire but there was a Corral (where the trail got its name) that housed horses and there are trees with barbed wire in them similar to this one. This is quite a mystery….

We continued up the trail – this is where the trail gets pretty steep – I think the original trail might have had more switchbacks but the ATVs just went straight up the hill in many areas, so that is kind of the trail now. We were watching the time pretty closely since Kirk had to get back, so we decided to hike until noon and then stop for lunch and turn around and head back down. We figured that should get us back to the truck when we needed to. Noon came and Kirk found a reasonable spot to stop for lunch. While we were eating lunch I was looking at the map and realized we had done almost all of the hard part of the trail. Shortly past where we stopped for lunch the trail got a lot less steep for the rest of the way up. We were about a mile short of the northern trailhead when we turned around. An adventure for another day!

We ate lunch, turned around and headed back down the hill. Along the way we did a little bit of trail maintenance. We made good time and soon got back down to the 4611 road. When I got down there, I was expecting to see Kirk and Ollie. I had stopped to do some cutting along the way and they got ahead of a me a little bit. I thought maybe they ventured up to see what the Grouse Point trail looked like. A few minutes later they came down the road – Kirk saw something that looked like it could have been a trail so he investigated it.

We headed out 2 minutes before our planned departure, so we did an excellent job at managing our time! It was a nice day in the woods – it was great to see Ollie back in the woods again!