[Hesman]

Grasshopper, Grasshopper's friend and I met at the Carbon River Ranger Station for a walk up the closed road to Ipsut Creek this morning. The first mile of the road was pretty good until we reached a big torrent of water over the road. We wondered how to get across, since the water was about knee deep and moving very swiftly. Grasshopper and her friend started putting rocks in a shallow part of the water. I was able to hope across this section in order to scout out a possible way to get across the creek. After a few minutes of scouting I came back to where Grasshopper and her friend were. I explained that I couldn't see a safe way across and that we might find a log to cross on if we did some bushwacking. But we made the wise decision to not hike any farther considering the tragic event that took place last weekend. We didn't want to be the next people to drown. We began walking back to down the road and contemplating what to do next. About five minutes down the road we saw a trail leading off to the left and we decided to see if it lead anywhere. But, unfortunatly we found another creek crossing the trail that we could not cross. We next went to where we turned around and took a few pictures. There was a large group of boy scouts who also couldn't continue up the road. A NPS park ranger had driven up the road and he said that the water level wasn't that high yesterday afternoon and it was passable. The park ranger suggested that we hike up the trail that leaves the nature trail loop by the ranger station. We hiked up this trail about an hour (give or take a few minutes). We discovered that this is not a good trail to hike up or down when it is wet since the trail is steep enough to slip on. A redux of this trip is in the works since I would like to make it all the way to Ipsut Campground.

[grasshopper]

Yeah, it is pretty dangerous out there now folks. The ranger on duty saw all our cars in the parking lot and drove his service truck out because he was worried we would be trying to cross the new washout. Water, water everywhere! I still want to do an overnighter out there, about May, when drought season begins and the water drys up.