Swan River
Our group split up after doing the Saints John trail. Five of us continued on to do Swan River. We ran it in the clockwise direction, going down the middle fork so we could go up the steep north fork.
We left the end of the Deer Creek trail and it was a pretty quick trip to the town of Swandyke. We got out here to stretch our legs and take some pictures. We really wish we knew more about the upside-down car! It's so weird.
We left Swandyke just as another Jeep arrived so we went on ahead and didn't see them again. We were a bit sad to pass the trailhead for S.O.B. Hill as we had hoped to get to it while we were there. We just didn't have enough time. We'll save it for another day because it's one of our favorites.
There were a few people camping near the bottom at Tiger Road but it wasn't that busy. We ended up behind a car for the last bit of the trail so it was slow going. Still, it wasn't long before we were heading up the north fork.
This side of the trail is definitely more interesting. It's a long and narrow trench as you work your way up the steep hill in Garibaldi Gulch. There were even some bigger rocks to play on.
We were almost out of the trench and out of the trees at the mine where we leave the trees behind when we saw a big truck on its way down. We had nowhere to go so the truck worked on getting out of the way. It didn't look like he had lockers and that section of trail was loose and uneven, giving him some troubles. He worked really hard at it, though, and was soon off of the trail. He was grinning when we went by so he enjoyed himself.
When we got to the spur to go up to Wise Mountain we took it and parked at the cabin. There wasn't anyone in the cabin but we saw a cooler behind it. We looked around a little and took some pictures but we didn't stay long.
It was getting chilly as the sun threatened to leave us for the day. We still had the crazy hill climb and we all had a great time. Well, Hoa might not have enjoyed it as much as the rest of us because he really had to work on it. He had just bought new tires, though, so the work paid off and he made it up the hill without any assistance.
Just after the hill we could see some people wandering around with some goats. It took us a while to get there but when we got there it looked like they had been feeding them. We didn't want to add any more damage so we slowly worked our way through the people and goats. We couldn't believe that people would just get out and feed wild animals.
But then we were passed by a couple of dirt bikes who just tore through the area off of the trail even though we stopped to let them by with enough room next to us on the trail. We were really seeing some bad examples.
But the scenery continued to be gorgeous and we forgot about the bad examples until a few minutes later when we came up to some people letting their dogs run loose everywhere. We were just about ready to get off of the trail at that point. It's frustrating to see people not using any common sense.
Even with all of that we still really enjoyed our loop around Swan River. We passed by the Saints John trail and soon headed down Deer Creek to end our day. We were glad we took the time to do the extra loop.
Reports from Other Days: 3
Use the arrows or dots to flip through the previews of the other reports for Swan River. Click one of them to read more and see all of the photos from that day.
