Remember how I said I was on vacation this week? Well, I did have an itch to see if any fire damage was evident at Henry Coe State Park. Bottom line: yeah, if you walk a long, long way. Melissa and I did the Coe Monument-Frog Lake-Flat Frog loop on Sunday and saw no evidence of fire at all — only the bulldozer tracks on Hobbs Road.
I did a more vigorous hike on Monday via Middle Steer Ridge to Wilson Peak and down to Grizzly Gulch Trail, which I followed down to the Coyote Creek entrance and road-walked a couple miles back to the parking lot.
The list of trail closures is noted above.
The rest of my Flickr photo set is here. If you scroll through you’ll see a long zoom pic of a distant ridge taken from Willson Peak — it looks sorta gray but I can’t say for sure that there’s any burn damage.
Sane dayhikes from the HQ and Hunting Hollow should be fairly free of burn damage. Getting deeper into the park at places like Mississippi and Coit lakes is out of the question for now.
Damn, Tom, making us go to Flkr to see your Coe photos! Post some of those puppies! I love seeing new images of different times of the year at this park. Yeah, Coe’s so big that you can still hike for hours and miles and maybe not get to the fire ravaged areas – for a one-day outing, a mountain bike expedition would be ideal! I would have loved to tag along with you on either hike – but especially the allure of Grizzly Gulch Trail! Ever see it in lush, rainy days?
I hardly ever go to Coe unless I’m going to hike past Los Cruzeros and up either Coyote Creek toward Bear Mountain, or up Willow Ridge.
I guess I’ll have to put more time into exploring trails from the Hunting Hollow entrance for the time being.
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Did the falls get burned?