Tanner Creek, Jan 29th

Tanner Creek, along with Tanner Butte is one of those trails that it’s being lost for lack of use. The primary reason is that we use to have a forest road to access the trailhead. That road was washed out some years ago and closed forever. So to do either of these hikes means that you have to start farther down and hike a good 3 or 4 miles just to get to the original trailhead and then start your adventure. You might recall that I did the Tanner Butte trail as a backpack with Mark and Brian in March last year. This hike was organized by Jessica and since I needed to start training for my trip to Patagonia, I decided to tag along with a big backpack filled with sand. We started from the Toothrock trailhead which offers easy access to the old road and a bit shorter distance. The first part of the hike was the expected uphill on the forest road. Besides passing the original washout that made them close the road, we passed two new washouts much bigger than the previous ones. One of them was big enough to almost cut the road completely. Further up we got to the Tanner Butte trail and continued on to the Tanner Creek which we found after a loop back turn with some nice views of the canyon ahead. Once there, the hike changed completely. What remains of the Tanner Creek trail is very little if any. We had to bushwhack part of the way, cross a couple of streams and find our way thru very old and almost disappeared signs. As some point Jessica was leading ahead and got to a point where she couldn’t make the trail any longer and didn’t think it was going to get any easier. At that point, she decided to turn around and head back. On our return I found an unreadable sign on a tree indicating probably the cutoff trail to Tanner Butte. The sign was not unreadable because it was old but because it was literally consumed by the tree.



We also found an old campsite with a much newer sign. I guess some people have used this campsite recently and are trying to keep it alive. Certainly it’s a place that can be explored on a longer backpacking trip. I also made a quick stop at one of the creeks that flows under the road for a couple of extra pictures. It was very nice getting out and definitely a good training hike still; it left us with a bit of a sour taste as most of it was on a forest road and not discovering some new path.