Jones Creek Cove

Mid January, having explored the Jones Creek area to some extent the week before, but still not having thoroughly explored it, I felt the urge to get back up there again, and make some more progress.

Saturday evening, I packed up the Outback and headed back up. Again, I stopped at the Gold Creek Store, and the guy behind the counter was asking people riddles. He (bravely) caught 2 cops with one of them, but he didn't get me!

"What falls but never breaks, and what breaks but never falls?"

"Hmm... Night and day."

Ha! IDK if I'd heard that one before, but the answer came to me fairly quickly.

This time, I didn't camp as far down FS877 as I had in the past. Rather, I camped at the base of a knob that forms a bend in the river. When I was settled in, I cooked up some delicious fajitas.

I don't even cook the peppers, I just love them crunchy. Mmmm! So good.

It was decently chilly when I was cooking, and it was supposed to get down into the high teens over night.

I watched Oppenheimer on my phone, then hit the sack. All night, I was warm and cozy, but I do remember that I could feel the chill a few inches away from me. If I changed positions, the part of the bag that I hadn't been in before had to warm up. Still, it was exceptionally warm and comfortable.

The next morning, it was damned cold, but I had work to do, and I was motivated to do it. I cooked some eggs and toast for breakfast. The night before, I'd stood behind my car, under the lift gate, and cooked with the stove sitting on the foot of my mattress. That morning, it was cold enough that I just cooked inside the car, without getting out of it at all. I cracked the windows for ventilation, which was apparently good enough.

Like 15+ years earlier, I'd ridden through a gate on some side road off of FS877, that led around the back of the knob that I was parked at. The old road was passable on bike, but had become super chunky and rocky. When it eventually became overgrown, there was a trail leading from it around the knob to exactly where I'd parked. I had all of that on my map, but the GPS that I'd used at the time had poor resolution. So, I figured I'd re-explore the whole area.

I hadn't ever explored the old road that led up over the knob, so I started with that. Trees had fallen across it, and it was more of a trail than a road these days, but it still led to the top, and there was an old, overgrownish fishing trail leading down the other side. I found the old road that I'd ridden years ago, and it was definitely not rideable any more. It had a bunch of spurs that led directly down to the creek though. Old campsites, I guess?

The old roadbed continued along the creek and eventually crossed it near Booger Holler, and continued on from there. It was too cold to cross the creek though, so I left that for another day. Heading back the other way, I found the spot where the old road had become super rocky. It was just below these big, crumbly rocks.

But it wasn't rocky any more. I guess in the intervening years, it filled in.

Eventually I climbed over some downed trees, and the trail became as clean and well worn as it had been all those years ago.

Not much further down, there was a 5-star campsite just off of it.

I followed the spur back to FS877. Years ago, if not for the gate, you could have driven down the road, but since then, the culvert for a feeder stream between FS877 and the gate had gotten blown out, and now there's a sizeable ravine where it used to be. It was easy to cross on foot though, so I was able to continue exploring without backtracking.

I don't remember the exact order that I explored things in, but I looked for trails leading out of various campsites, and hit a few trails that I'd explored in the past, finding them to just be more overgrown than they once were.

I eventually turned my attention to what is marked as FS877A on various maps, but that I've never been able to actually find. It's a spur off of FS877, that just runs out into the flats along Jones Creek. Such roads are super difficult to follow, as they're just as subject to erosion as deposition, and deadfall. In the direction that it allegedly led, there was an elaborate network of campsites. It seemed that maybe the road had just become campsites. There was a trail leading toward the creek from the final campsite, and if I used my imagination, I could imagine that maybe the road had once continued in the flats there, but I couldn't find any direct evidence of it. Not even a break in the canopy, old tire tracks, harder soil, or anything. The trail did lead to a stream structure, with a bridge across it.

And on the other side, a trail led up a tight draw, past the Leverett Road sign...

...right where my buddy had said that it would be.

I followed the trail up to the old food plot off of Saddleback/Bare Hare, and explored that area for a while. Long ago, when aerial photos from the 50's were still available, they'd shown a different route for Bare Hare, and I was able to find that too.

Somewhere along some creek, I found some old boards in the creek.

Some still had nails in them.

And I found an old cable too.

I don't specifically remember where these were though. I think up old FS208, but I'm not sure.

I also don't remember the exact details, but climbing over some deadfall on old FS208, I slipped and wrecked the heck out of my shin.

I remember it getting stoved so badly that I just had to sit there and wait for like 5 minutes before I could walk again. Fortunately, it just got whacked and scraped - the only damage was superficial, but man, it hurt.

Shin destruction aside, it had been a another satisfying day of productive exploration, and I was looking forward to more in the coming weeks.