Firewarden's Trail to Mt. Hale

[Mohamed Ellozy]

From the road status thread:

Is the "fire wardens route" an obvious path? Never used and sounds like it is fairly popular for many winter peaks. Just curious if you need to have GPS coordinates, local knowledge, etc or if it is well beaten and easy to follow.

I thought this was a road status update thread.

Let me reply in a new thread ...

The trail itself is excellent and as clear as any maintained trail.

The start, however, is not obvious if you do not know what you are looking for. Lord knows how many times I have gone up it, but I once missed its start and found myself at the third stream crossing There is a thread somewhere in which several experienced hikers describe similar experiences.

 

[summitseeker]

Thank you for starting a new thread, Mohamed. I have found a few interesting things while digging around online and I thought I would share them with some others who might be curious.

http://mattshikes.blogspot.com/2013/03/mount-hale-via-firewardens-trail-march.html

http://www.franklinsites.com/losthikingtrails/viewtrail.php?id=1

Z

 

[Raymond]

When I climbed North Twin back in September, I saw an obvious trail that curled away from the herd path between the first two crossings. It hooked to the left, back toward Haystack Road, then — I thought — switched directions again. To head in the direction of Hale, I assumed. I figured that that had to be the Firewarden’s Trail, but when I met two people up on the summit plateau who had just come over from having used the Firewarden’s Trail up Hale, they described the start of the trail as being in a different place altogether. And the second link above indicates that the start of the trail is after the third crossing. So I never noticed the actual Firewarden’s Trail, I guess, but what was that other path that I saw? An even higher-water bypass herd path?

Descending, I stuck to the actual trail, so I didn’t pass it again, or I might have examined it further.

 

[peakbagger]

Once you have made it to the North Twin Parking lot you are on the east side of the river. At no point do you cross it from now on. When you get to the first crossing where the trail goes to the west side of the river don't cross. There is a very obvious herd path typically used by FW hikers and winter users of the North Twin trail. Follow the herd path. You will cross one rocky brook at a perpendicular angle which is the drainage from the valley that FW goes up. Keep going south on the herd path and the terrain rapidly turns into a steep side slope, its easy to slide down into the river which has split into a parallel main channel and a side channel. You should still be on the east side of both channels. The steep slope flattens out quickly and the trail drops down to an open area adjacent to the side channel. Now look left and up, there is a slope and a well defined bench to your left. Head up to that bench and turn left following the bench upwards, there are small softwoods filling in the old road but an obvious path. Climb up through the softwoods and then start following an path up through the hardwoods. You are slabbing the south slope of the valley. There are at least 7 switchbacks. Once you get in the softwoods there is an obvious path to follow.