Not to be confused with Bear Creek, Bear Creek, or the lesser-known Bear Creek, this trail has fallen under downed trees but remains a viable trail once a chainsaw pays it some attention. The journey starts on Drumhill Ridge with a beautiful view from the Forest Service managed Summit Guard Station, which is an out-of-place looking nice house accompanied by a few outbuildings and a cabin the public can book. These buildings look directly out on Spring Mountain with the Elkhorns view-able in the distance.
The trail is an old mature trail with a bed surface in solid shape. Only a few places need some ground work. It crosses the creek probably a few more times than it originally was supposed to, so early spring might be problematic. From my map, it appears that the trail will come out at a road at Meacham Creek and you might be able to take a climb back up Wilbur Mountain to make a loop of it. I heard there was some private land involved but I grew weary of thrashing through the jungle and bailed. I would only come back again with a hedge trimmer and chainsaw.
The Knob Trail comes into this trail at Hoskins Creek (currently the stop point of this track above), which might be an interesting super crazy freeride downhill if anyone wanted to do some trailwork to develop that trail too. The volcanic outcroppings create some rampage-style drops that could be reinvigorated into a gnarly descent.
I'm just guessing when I call this the "Bear Creek Trail" since I can't find anything that identifies this trail with a name or number. It might actually be called the Hoskins Creek Trail or something else. I'll stick with "Bear Creek" to stay consistent with the local practice of incessant redundant naming of close-by geographical places.
Trail Notes
- 0.0mi. Start down the road across from the Summit Guard Station that heads east off of Road 3113. The road goes through a closed gate (I think the original trail starts to the left somewhere in here). Continue down a short ways and the road switches back and then ends at the creek.
- 0.4 Find the trail on the other side of the creek.
- 1.8 Arrive where Knob Creek comes in. The trail gets even more overgrown after this.
- 4.4 Intersection with Knob Trail at Hoskins Creek. There is an old bridge here. End of the track shown here. The trail goes on but someone needs to do trailwork to see where exactly it comes out.
