I had never hiked the Cool Creek Trail before and was pleasantly surprised, I was expecting a relentless uphill slog in thick tree cover but the trail is quite open with some great view points and though it does climb about 3200 feet in 3.5 miles it spreads the climb out evenly over the whole distance. Our first unobstructed view of Hood as we made our way up.
There is another great open area just below the Devils Peak summit at about 4800' with great views over in the direction of Hood.
We ran into our first snow shortly after this but there isn't very much left!
The peak itself is virtually snow free, the fire lookout was in good shape and based on the visitor log has been receiving a steady stream of visitors. We opened up a couple of the window shutters while we were there then closed the place up again before leaving.
Taking the short spur trail to the South you get get some great views of Jefferson, & the Salmon Huckleberry Wilderness
I believe this is the Devils Tooth?
So here began part 2 of the day the 8 or 9 mile hike along the Hunchback trail to Zigzag, this trail is not for the faint of heart! in fact the first 4 miles from the lookout should be renamed The Trail of 10,000 Blow Downs!
Most were easy to negotiate but they sure slowed us down and it seemed like an eternity until we reached this old sign just before the Great Pyramid, still 5 miles to go! To add insult to injury there is a relentless climb between this sign & the top of the Pyramid.
We took the now mostly overgrown Great Pyramid view point Spur trail & scrambled down a bit lower to get some views of were we had been, were we had to go & the Salmon River drainage.
We also stopped at Helispot 260 viewpoint but the trees are slowly growing up around it.
The final views were from the Rimrock viewpoint just before the trail finally begins its steep 2 mile decent into Zigzag.
The final downhill can be a bit brutal on already tired knees! By now you are beginning to forget about renaming the trail the TheTrail of 10,000 Blow Downs & naming it The Never Ending Trail!
Finally a map & profile of our route from Eric's GPS. The profile is a bit hard to believe but all the other GPS stats seem to be right on! We know we were going up and down a lot along the Hunchback trail & perhaps it was also counting those hundreds of downed trees we had to climb over too but if the GPS is correct the cumulative elevation gain for this 13.5 mile hike is around 6900'!!
So in conclusion I'd say the hunchback trail is a tough hike but I'd still urge you all to go out & hike it, it needs more boots on it.
More photos of the trip live here.
