Trailhead condition requests, questions, alerts, etc.
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Sorry if I'm missing an obvious topic on this (did a search and found nothing myself) but has anyone who has hiked Kit Carson/Challenger recently have any status updates on Willow Creek, and specifically the state of that road?
The last report I see is from early July and reads:
sibyllec
2017-07-02 Easily made it to the trailhead in a Prius, which only has 5.5" of clearance. Mosquitoes are still insane right now. I suggest putting on bug spray *before* you exit the car, or at least immediately afterwards, and be quick with opening/closing the doors. Bring a lot of bug spray for the hike too, as the mosquitoes are present for the entire Willow Creek approach and beyond.
I ask because I'm considering making a go for these two this weekend, but am thinking with precip and traffic the road's condition could have changed––I have a low clearance Subaru sedan, so just trying to see if there's any additional beta!
I hiked Challenger and Kit Carson from the Willow Creek Trailhead this past weekend (August 19th). I drive a Subaru forester and I had no trouble getting to the trailhead. The mosquitoes are also not as big of a problem now.
I did the two peaks on Fri 11 Aug, caped at Willow Lake 10 Aug. TH is fine. I drive a 2wd sedan and it didn't have an issue. Slow down in a couple of spots and you'll be fine.
On an unrelated note RMFI is building a new trail up Challenger to skirt some of the slip and slide. It goes from about 12.1 to 12.7 right now. I realize this doesn't get anywhere near the worst part of the route above 13k, but it was still MUCH nicer to come down the new trail than the standard route. At about 12k look for some rocks that ave been obviously placed on grass recently. The new trail splits off to the right, gains ~20ft pretty quickly through some rock, and then levels out and starts winding up. If you can't find it going up don't worry, you'll definitely see it coming down.
