I must say that this is one of those routes I do love doing, even when I get a bit disoriented, loose the trail and have to find my way around. And yes, despite the fact that I have done this trail several times, every now and then I manage to go in the wrong direction. This time though, instead of starting from the Bridge of the Gods parking lot and hiking up towards Dry Creek Falls, I decided to start from Herman Creek. The only reason for that was to add a couple extra miles to the loop and some trail I had not done before. Leaving from the Herman Creek campground, the first part of the hike just follows the same route for Herman Creek but soon after passing the power lines, a trail sign shows the path of a shortcut towards the PCT. That path meanders thru the forest for a bit on an area that, even though is pretty close to the highway, is very secluded. We found several smaller streams with hidden waterfalls on this route that looked pretty nice. Then, after a bit over 3 miles, we reached the bridge over Dry Creek. We took a short break at this point and considering we had a long way to go, we opted for not doing the side trip to Dry Creek falls. Then we left the trail behind and started following the very faint path up Rudolph spur. Weather was not cooperating much so we did navigate a bit in the fog and at some point I made a wrong turn that thru us way off the path. After realizing my mistake and making corrections, we managed to bushwhack our way back to the faint trail and finally reach a viewpoint with open vistas of the Bridge of the Gods. To our surprise, we found a large group of oriental people resting and having a bite to eat at that spot. While taking our break, we learned they took the route we did and got there before we did which, to an extent doesn’t mean much until you consider how young they were. One woman we talked to was over 70 years old! And the youngest was easily over 50. If that wasn’t impressive enough, after taking some pictures, they continued up towards Benson Plateau and disappeared in the mist in almost no time! Obviously any comments of being tired vanished from our thoughts at that point. Then we continued up towards the Plateau where we found some snow and a very foggy forest. At a point, I got the feeling I was again going in the wrong direction and to our surprise, and rescue, we crossed path with the same group again… all happy and having the best of times and no sign of being tired. After exchanging some direction we finally made it to our trail and continued our loop towards the PCT. Finally, once we had lost some elevation it all became much easier and we were able to enjoy some scenery as we completed the loop going back to Herman Creek. If anything, we learned on this trip not to complain about our age!
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