avalanche on the vallecito trail

[ilanarama]

ETA August 7 2008:

Trails have been cleared through the avalanche zone on both sides of the river crossing, but the bridge has not been replaced and at this time there are no plans by the Forest Service to do so. There is a rope across the river to aid crossing; be aware that this rope crosses at a relatively deep spot (although the river is somewhat narrow and not as swift) - at the time we were there (August 5 2008) I would estimate the depth as ~40" at that spot. If you have no hiking poles, the rope is an important aid, but if you have sturdy poles I would recommend crossing a little downstream of the rope, just upstream of a few large rocks in the river and just upstream of where Dead Horse Creek joins the main Vallecito. The river was perhaps 32" deep at the deepest point here during our crossing. On our earlier trip we actually crossed even farther downstream, where there is a broad shallow spot (almost an island) near the west shore, but this trip the water there was very swift. Needless to say, the water is very, very cold.

Photo of Britt crossing the river.

In this relatively high water year, we estimate that the Vallecito was probably not fordable until just a few weeks ago. In any year, the earliest reasonable crossing would most likely not be until July. For any backpackers contemplating the Vallecito route, we recommend the following:

• Plan your trip for later in the summer.


• Bring good water-crossing shoes and hiking poles. A party we met said that two of their group, who were using sticks they cut from branches, broke their sticks during the crossing and they fell into the river.


• If you're doing a loop involving a one-way crossing, route your trip so you cross at the end rather than the beginning, so your pack will be lighter. Strapping hiking boots to the top of one's pack adds quite a bit of weight!


• Carry extra food in case a torrential rain raises the river to an unsafe level and you need to wait it out for a day or two. Big rains are not uncommon in late summer and early fall.

See the comments for information from other hikers. While one person reports staying on the west side of the river upstream to the Johnson Creek bridge, that means 2+ miles of difficult bushwhacking. The east side of the river between the crossing downstream to the second bridge is a shorter distance but over even rougher terrain.

Britt and I had been planning a really big backpack over the July 4th weekend, but I got sick, so we ended up just doing an overnight over the 3rd and 4th. We hiked up the Vallecito trail (the one we did with catbear when he visited) seven miles to where the swinging bridge used to be. It was taken out in an avalanche sometime during the winter of 04/05 and hasn't been replaced yet; the trail hasn't been restored, either, so anyone wanting to continue past the slide zone has to negotiate a 1/2-mile maze of tree trunks followed by a wade across a very cold and swift river, followed by another couple of hundred yards of tree-trunk maze. The destruction is pretty impressive - huge trees snapped off in the middle, flung every which way. We camped just below the slide area and took daypacks, which made it a little easier, but it still took us about an hour to cross through to where the trail picks up again.



More photos of knocked-down trees and bridge debris are here on my flickr page.

We'd also been planning a big backpack for this past weekend, but it poured rain, so we ended up driving around on jeep roads in the mountains north of Silverton with a couple of friends. We did a quick hike up Hurricane Mountain (13,447 ft, but we started from Hurricane Pass at 12,407 so it wasn't much of a climb), but pretty much it was just bouncing up and down in the pickup trucks and trying to peer at scenery through dense cloud-fog.