Eureka Peak Trail, Trail to Nowhere

[Sugar Pine]

Spent the night near Trillium Lake, so decided to hike the Eurkea Peak trail. I started on Sherar Burn Road, which was rough, rocky, and narrow, but passable in 2WD. Not sure why I chose this road other than my map showing the trailhead on is Sherar Burn Road. Starting at the bottom of the trail on Still Creek Road would be a better choice.
There was sufficient space for a few vehicles to park and turn around near the trailhead.

Trailhead on Sherar Burn Road

The trail is no-nonsense, dropping/rising nearly 1000' in 1.3 miles with no switchbacks along the way, but a fairly consistent grade. The forest consists of a mix of conifers, pacific silver fir, Douglas fir, western white pine, western hemlock, cedar and even lodgepole pine with an understory of rhododendrons, bear grass, huckleberry and bunchberry, which might be pictureesque in the right seasons. There were a few fall colors, including yellowed bracken fern and a large variety of mushrooms, although wooly chanterelles were most common.

Eureka Peak Trail

Eureka Peak Trail

Trailhead on Still Creek Road

Eureka Peak trail doesn't go to the top of Eureka Peak, it just connects the two forest roads. Back at the trailhead, I looked around for a possible footpath to the top but didn't see anything obvious. I considered bushwacking up the ridge, but the vegetation was dense with a lot of fallen trees and it was starting to rain, so turned back. Had I known there was an old crumbling shelter at the top, as mentioned in this trip report, I might have gone for it.

I'd love to know the history of the trail, it seems so odd to just connect roads. The trail is on the 1962 Government Camp Topo. Currently, it is a connector for mountain bikers according to the forest service, who I assume bomb down the trail.

[bobcat]

Never done this because I always needed some kind of validation that it would be worth bushwhacking to the Eureka summit, where there's a bit of a bald spot but probably few views. As the Forest Service says, it's now really a mountain bike connector. It first shows up in a 1962 topo but not before that, so it may not be connected to the lookouts that were on the ridge.

[Don Nelsen]

Thanks for the good beta. I have that one and a few more in the area on my agenda for next year.

[Charley]

I'd love to know the history of the trail, it seems so odd to just connect roads. The trail is on the 1962 Government Camp Topo. Currently, it is a connector for mountain bikers according to the forest service, who I assume bomb down the trail.

It's such an odd trail- I had always assumed it was a leftover leg of a longer, historic trail now obliterated by Sherar Burn and/or Still Creek roads.

I doubt the trail even sees much use by bike riders because it's neither fish nor fowl. There are two kinds of riding that are popular in the MHNF nowadays:

• Mountain biking: generally riding technical singletrack trails on bikes built for the purpose. On a MTB ride, it's normal to prioritize the trail riding- i.e., you'd want 50% or more of the time riding to be on a trail, rather than mostly a road ride with a short section of trail. Most MTB riders use a bike with suspension, which helps with bumps in the trail but makes riding on a road relatively inefficient and slow feeling.

• Gravel grinding: riding routes with a mix of pavement, gravel, and sometimes easier singletrack, on road bikes with fatter tires and almost always no suspension. Sometimes called "adventure biking," this has become really popular as cyclists seek alternatives to formerly rural roads that are now crowded with aggressive, fast car commuters. The aesthetic here is to move fast (relative to an mtb ride) and cover a lot of varied terrain with little car traffic, and less of a focus on enjoying technical trail riding, because with no suspension, it's like riding a jackhammer.

The Eureka Peak Trail might see some rider use, but I've never ridden it, and I doubt many people seek it out.

For MTB riders:

• It's too short to be a destination in and of itself, given its remoteness from other fun trails

• It's too steep for riders coming up from Still Creek

• While you could create a loop route to travel downhill on the trail, almost all of the rest of the route would be on relatively boring gravel forest roads. That's not terribly fun on a mountain bike built for technical terrain, so most riders find other trails to ride.

For Gravel riders:

• the trail does connect two roads that are good for long gravel-grinder style routes, but unfortunately it's too steep in either direction for most of those riders.

This is a pet peeve of mine: a National Forest or Ranger District can list a trail as open to bike rider access, in order to increase the mileage it claims to have open to bikes. That number of miles is inflated, though, because they'll often "open" trails that go from nowhere to nowhere, are practically unrideable, or are very short and discontiguous with other trail networks. Allowing MTB riders access to trails like this is easy on the FS's part, because the trails aren't even popular with hikers- so they'll have less pushback from hikers and less "user conflict" from people unwilling to share with other kinds of people.

Maybe that's too cynical- perhaps the Euraka Peak Trail was actually part of a larger, longer planned trail that never got funded or prioritized.