A. F. canyon (forest Lake & mineral basin)

[Goose]

A. F. canyon (forest Lake & mineral basin) 5-31-08

so I noticed a couple guys on here had gone up to check the snow line & Ive been itchin to get up there myself. So thurs afternoon me & my son decided to head up & camp overnight.
We crossed the river & headed for forrest lake, Knowing the snow is still real low we opted to camp about 1/2 mile up the trail. got up the next morning, (by the way still freakin cold up there at night.) had some food & hit the trail.
IT didnt take long to hit snow, & as soon as you hit it it gets deep fast.
side note: I dont like going out on trails alone for the obvious reasons, & if I do I go prepared to camp & take plenty of recovery equipment.
anyway we hit snow about 100 yrds from camp, followed a few tracks for about 1/4 mile, few tracks turned into 1 set of 4 wheeler tracks, & they only went 100 yrds past the rest. I had already made my choice, I wanted to see if we could get to the top. so we started busting fresh tracks.

 

[Goose]

forest lake

It looked like we were on top of about 3 to 4 feet of snow in most places, & as long as I stayed up on top we did quite well (thanks to the 42" IROKS) we made it up the little twisty hill that has the one big boulder at the top. then came to the first tall hill & there was 2 big trees layed down, so we pulled the trees off to the side of the trail & hit the hill, it took a few runs but we got up & past it. from there we went about another 100 yrds or so & we just kept sliding towards the little creek, so instead of making a big mess I decided that we had gone far enough, I dont know how far we wer in maybey 1/2 way, there is still alot of snow piled up there. probably wont be able to get up there till the end of the month.

 

[Goose]

mineral basin

so we headed back down & headed up towards mineral basin, suprisingly we got up into the basin quite far. we went up through the little rok garden, then up thruogh the switchbacks, climbed up & over the little rok face that is on one of the upper right turn switchbacks. that thing was fun it was completely covered in about 2' of snow. we went up about another 100 yrds or so, Untill I felt like we better get turned around. After we got flipped around we found a pretty sweet hill to do a little shovel sleddin,(yeee-haaaw)
one thing I should mention, as we came into the lower meadows where the forest service had some of the area fenced off to protect the meadows & help regrowth from Idiot damage I was pretty pissed to see guys had busted down the fence, because they couldnt make it down the trail & they turned that meadow into a mud bog again, It just pisses me off when I see people blatently ruining trails, & risking trail closures. If anyone is up there & you see people doing that kind of crap, please report them, for all of our benneffit.
anyway, on the way down I stopped & pounded in the broken fence pieces & found the broken sign & pounded it back into the ground.
(I hate jackassedness)

 

[Pittfan4Life]

Great pic's! I'm heading up on the 4th for the weekend! I usually camp in the Dutchman Flat area and just play around on the wheelers or in the truck. Can't wait!

:wtf: I'm really pissed people have been tearing up the meadows again! I hope they are caught and charged with a felony of Destruction to federal land!!