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| Quite a fungus! |
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| Time to walk on the rocky jeep road . |
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| I combined a picture focused on the distant sun-kissed mountains with one focused on the road and trees to get this composite picture. |
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| This time, Ambrose and I were going to take the Smith Creek Cutoff Trail – like we should have last year. |
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| It started off on an easy descent, and the dirt was a relief to my feet. |
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| But it wasn’t very well maintained. |
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| We encountered a good amount of deadfall. |
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| Nothing sadder than seeing green huckleberries 🙁 |
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| Some of the fallen trees were more difficult than others. |
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| Ambrose cut a switchback to avoid this tangle. I probably should have, too. |
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| It was right before our snack break. |
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| The trail started getting serious about the switchbacks. |
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| And another one. |
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| A little more deadfall. |
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| More switchbacking. |
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| This was the worst one. It seemed pretty fresh, and we had to force our way through branches still green with needles. |
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| Ambrose pushing his way through the tangle. |
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| Right on the other side of that fall was an old, falling apart cabin of sorts. |
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| The walls were so short, I was able to get a shot of the interior. |
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| Back to flats – we had to be close to the road again now. |
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| Hitching posts near the road. |
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| The sign for the cutoff trail from the road. |
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| Ambrose made it to the road! |
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| I don’t remember the road being this damp last year. |
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| More rotting structures along the road. |
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| There is a kind of beauty to nature reclaiming what man made. |
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| I knew we were close after passing this off-shoot road. |
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| The sun was starting to break through the trees. |
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| I kept watching for the ridgeline fall that pointed to the car. |
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| This cabin looked in slightly better repair, but I doubt anyone lives there. |
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| There’s the turn! We started from here! |
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| And the car. At last! |
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| This trip, I got dirty. |
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| The inside of the public area of the ranger station at Big Creek. |
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| The Big Creek Lodge construction was proceeding apace. |
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| When we drove over Profile Gap, we saw a fire on a nearby ridge. |
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| We actually got to watch a helicopter drop a load of water on it. |
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| It was hard to capture the glowing orange embers we could see with our eyes. We were lucky to get out when we did; the road closed the next day because of the fire. |
We camped and spent the night at Yellow Pine before driving home the next day.
