E
Explorer 61
Guest
Haven't seen anything about MacNaughton from Upper Works lately (could have used some help) so I thought I would post this attempt. My daughter and I got an early start and reached the junction from the trail to Duck Hole before 9:30. The start is "marked" with a couple of iron hoops hanging from a tree. If you miss this, the trail intersects the stream not much farther on. We got onto the herd path but found it difficult to follow and kept gravitating back to the stream where it would look enticing to walk in and then come to an impassable pool. When we reached the part where the stream ended we followed several different herd paths that all petered out. Every now and then for the entire bushwack we would come to some flagging - it would tell us we were on the right trail, but never gave a hint about what to do next. We figured we repeatedly got to about 3600 ft. At our appointed turnaround time we headed down. In hindsight we shouldn't have spent so much time looking for a herd path and just taken a compass bearing. On the return we found we could make better time by staying in the stream for the upper section and moving to the left (as proceeding down) and staying out of the stream for the lower section. I did take a relatively hard fall from a ledge into the stream, but all the body parts still worked and I got a chance to play with my first aid kit.
