Damage to Sphinx Trail

Hiked into my adopted trail (Sphinx Trail) to do some trail work yesterday. I hiked in from the Great Gulf Trail. Great Gulf Trail is in good shape up to the Six Husbands / Wamsutta Trail junction. From here to the Sphinx Trail junction the trail is in ok shape with a couple of blowdowns you have to walk around and some standing water in the trail before the designated tentsites, as well as a couple of other spots where the trail passes near the brooks. I ran into Pat (Bombadil) who was taking the Great Gulf Trail all the way up and hiking a bunch of trails in the Great Gulf over this weekend so he'll post what conditions he saw in a few days.

As far as the Sphinx Trail goes, I removed small blowdowns over the first 0.25 miles until I approached the third water crossing where the trail was blocked by a wall of trees. Behind the wall and in the brook where the cascades are there were downed trees everywhere and looking up the trail there seems to have been a washout on a steep wall above the brook that created a small slide which has clogged up this section of the trail making it impassable. I couldn't locate the trail and I don't know how far up the trail is damaged, hopefully it's not to bad and is just this one section. If anyone has dropped down from the A.T. (Gulfside Trail) let me know what conditions you ran into. (pics below)

Arrow points to where the trail goes


Close up of trees blocking trail


Downed trees in the brook, in the upper left is where everything came down from


Close up of where the erosion happened taking out the trees (sorry for the fuzzy image)



-Chris

dailey7779 said:

Hiked into my adopted trail (Sphinx Trail) to do some trail work yesterday. I hiked in from the Great Gulf Trail. Great Gulf Trail is in good shape up to the Six Husbands / Wamsutta Trail junction. From here to the Sphinx trail junction the trail is in ok shape . . .

. . . As far as the Sphinx Trail goes, I removed small blowdowns over the first 0.25 miles until I approached the third water crossing where the trail was blocked by a wall of trees. Behind the wall and in the brook where the cascades are there were downed trees everywhere and looking up the trail there seems to have been a washout on a steep wall above the brook that created a small slide which has clogged up this section of the trail making it impassable. I couldn't locate the trail and I don't know how far up the trail is damaged, hopefully it's not to bad and is just this one section.

Click to expand...

First of all, thank you for getting out there to this remote location to check things out on your adopted trail. Your personal observations about the condition of the Great Gulf Trail confirms the information I'd gained in conjunction with a recent trek to check things out on my adopted Osgood/Osgood-Cutoff trails.

Hopefully, you're right about this being just a short section of the Sphinx trail that is damaged. I'm certain you'll keep this thread updated with any new information you learn from other hikers via personal correspondence, etc.

Thanks again!

Wow -- that's pretty impressive!

Thanks for sharing the info.

Yikes, a bit of treework to do there! Interesting chunk of eroison, hope it's not too major higher up! Thanks for the trail check and post

Thanks for posting and for getting out there.