It’s a sad comment on the state of things, that the unofficial trails are better maintained and marked than the official ones looked after by the Forest Service. They are so much better, it prompted me to take this picture. The official trails are listed as maintained. They are not and haven’t been as far as I can tell since we were first here in 2010 – unless you count the fact that someone sprayed red paint on trees at just two of the trail junctions. Years ago work-gangs were sent out to keep the trails clear and maintain them. No more.

There were only two points where this trail was badly blazed. The first was by a stock pond, where the blazes didn’t pick up immediately on the far side of the pond, so I had to circle the pond looking for the faint traces of the trail. The second was near McGarr Spring where the blazes stopped abruptly.