Annoyed Land Owner near Little River Road?

[pedxing]

I've been planning a trip to Hale and South Hale to celebrate the start of winter. My planned route to the Haystack Road trail head is from the end of Little River Road, crossing the bridge nearby (just before the end of the road) and then turning a sharp left after crossing the bridge and following the well used route to the start of the North Twin Trail.

My understanding is that local property owners don't object to this route and that parking at the end of the road is fine as long as there is plenty of room for plows to turn around, but a friend thinks he has heard talk of a property owner who is upset with people taking this route. Has anyone heard anything along these lines? Is it the more direct route from the end of the road (which avoids crossing the bridge) that is the problem?

While I'm at it, how much debris did Irene or other storms leave on the Fire Wardens trail?

 

[Tom Rankin]

I've been planning a trip to Hale and South Hale to celebrate the start of winter. My planned route to the Haystack Road trail head is from the end of Little River Road, crossing the bridge nearby (just before the end of the road) and then turning a sharp left after crossing the bridge and following the well used route to the start of the North Twin Trail.

My understanding is that local property owners don't object to this route and that parking at the end of the road is fine as long as there is plenty of room for plows to turn around, but a friend thinks he has heard talk of a property owner who is upset with people taking this route. Has anyone heard anything along these lines? Is it the more direct route from the end of the road (which avoids crossing the bridge) that is the problem?

While I'm at it, how much debris did Irene or other storms leave on the Fire Wardens trail?

Parking and crossing the bridge was not an issue last winter. Finding the FW trail was!

 

[pedxing]

Thanks Tom. I'm hoping my memory and my notes work for me. I found it in the summer a few years back with no problem, but evidence of foot traffic right off the trail made confirmation easy. I have noticed that people, many with far better back country navigation skills than I, have been unable to find it when conditions are less helpful. Since it looks like there may be fresh snow, I should be cautious. If you (or anyone else) has any tips to PM me, that would be great. I do have notes on approximate distances from a couple features, though snow can obscure some (such as where the summer trail crosses the river).

A friend is going to research the route to South Hale - but any tips on avoiding the bushes that whack back the hardest would also be much appreciated.

 

[TDawg]

Last March I was unsure of where to park using this route for a hike and shred on Hale. Parked at 7 dwarfs, nobody home. Left a few bucks on the windshield and a note. Note and $ gone when I got back, car still there.

While I'm at it, we just followed the snowmobile route to the road then road to the TH. Is it better to follow the river?

 

[Raymond]

I climbed South Hale three months ago on September 11 from the Lend-a-Hand Trail. Using the map on my GPS, I noticed that, conveniently, right where I had stopped to take a break was the one place where the contour lines didn’t seem too close together, so I decided to try to climb the mountain. It was just a little bit past some bog bridges (coming down from Mount Hale), if I remember correctly. You can see some cliffs on South Hale before you reach that point.

I just followed the easiest route, deciding before I began that I wasn’t going to fight my way through anything too tough. A short bushwhack led to a herd path which climbed to the eastern summit. The true summit was a dogleg/boomerang-shaped route to the west away. It was pretty swampy in the middle, which explains the dogleg, but I didn’t get caught in the muck until I was returning, so stay on the high ground if you can. There was another herd path on the true summit, but the branch that I was on led past the high point. I just went back to what I could clearly see was the summit.

There’s a sign high up in a tree that says ZEALE (its back is toward the herd path), and below it is a nice canister; the bottom (not the top) unscrews.

The herd path I was following past the summit did lead in the direction of Haystack Road, so that may be a way you could take back, but I didn’t continue on it to see how far it went. Roy Schweiker’s was one of the register notes I remember. It was written in 2003 and he said that it was his third ascent of South Hale and that he had come over from Zealand and that it was the worst way yet. So you may not want to head that way.

While descending, I got onto a herd path heading toward the southeast summit and had to go back, and somewhere along there I lost my sunglasses, so if you find a pair of oversized ones, the type that fit over a pair of regular eyeglasses, let me know.

 

[pedxing]

TDawg. My sense is that either route is fine. People seem to usually take the snowmobile route from 7 dwarves and use the cross country ski trail closer to the river from the end of Little River Road.