Humbug Hill
We ran most of Humbug Hill backwards, simply because that's how the day worked itself out. The network of trails in the Golden Horseshoe made it difficult to find one path through it, and we were keeping it interesting. We started up Prospect Hill and Mark left us at that point to do his own exporing while the rest of us continued up the hill. It was a really fun climb! We hung out at the top of the hill for a while just stretching our legs and chatting.
The elevation didn't change much as we worked our way east. Though there were lots of spurs, we stuck to the main trail in order to see the bulk of the area. We hung out at the cabin labeled "The One Step Over" just checking things out, and that was a nice break.
It didn't take long to get to Lincoln Park, the big meadow we'd seen before on our trip down the Brewery Hill trail. We kept going east, and soon left the part of Brewery Hill we'd done before.
We wanted to see both sections of the eastern side of the trail. Earlier, we had come up the southern connection to French Gulch Road after stopping at the gravesite. That was a fun hill climb. When we got to four points the first time we made a wrong turn and started heading up Farncomb Hill by mistake, so we were figuring it all out by now. Earlier in the day we had done the southern option along the easy trail. It was a nice drive, especially through the exposed area of mine tailings.
This time, however, we wanted to check out the more difficult option. We did the stretch over Humbug Hill to four points and then returned back up the Humbug Hill section to the northern end. Then we took the other trail.
The difficult and optional trail isn't particularly difficult, but it is more narrow and less used than the other section. We made one wrong turn early on and ended up going down a section of trail that was very eroded until it ended at some cable. We turned around and headed back up it. Even though it was a wrong turn it was still fun.
We worked our way along Georgia Gulch and Monica made a wrong turn to come to a cable across the trail. It was many feet above the trail and you could almost drive under it. We turned around, and Monica knew the group had been there before. It had been many years since then as it was probably in 2004 when we made that wrong turn. At the time, we didn't find Humbug Hill so we had turned around. It was nice to finally find it this time. We kept going down the rocky hill and eventually popped out onto the main trail at the switchback.
We had already gone to the trailhead earlier in the day, so this time we retraced our steps along the main trail to four points and west to the connection with the Galena Gulch trail. We'd finally seen the main Humbug Hill trail, and it was great. We'd definitely do it again.
