July 17, 2004

Vose Spur Bushwack

With a forecast calling for morning showers and afternoon thuderstorms we decided we would tackle a viewless peak, and one that had good tree cover - Vose Spur. This is a 5 mile hike with a bushwack of almost 1 1/5 miles. We started on on the Signal Ridge Trail turning onto the Carrigain Ridge Trail after @ 1 hour. The hike up to the start of the bushwack was gradual and quick. After reading several trip reports we opted to follow the directions from a recent one that recommended looking for a trail on the left just after the end of what is known as the "C" cutoff. We found the 4 foot high large rock all the posts mentioned, fouind the "C" cutoff, and 14 step later the recommended trail.The blue line is our route up to the peak. The redline is our decent. The green line is where we should have gone left when we lost the trail.

This is the profile of the first part of hike from our GPS. AS you can see the bushwack is very steep.

A close up of the bushwack part of our hike. You can see that the herd path follows a ridgeline. We lost it a few times but found it again. Eventually we lost it completely. In looking back we see our mistake of going to the right instead of the left. We ended up following a dry riverbed back to the main trail.

The herd path ends at the canister. There were only 13 sets of entries for 2004! The entires in the register date back to 1996 - not a whole lot of people attempt this hike.

Geri at the canister - a long tough hike. Overall we would rate this as tough as the PaTN bushwack due to the steepness, but we didn't have to fight the spruce any where near as much. If more people did the hike and followed the ridge line it would be much easier to follow.

This is what the herd path looked like as we started down from the summit - what path?

And a shot of how steep the upper part of the peak is.

Geri resting at the top of the talus field that is mentioned in many postings. This is where we had the best views of the day. The herd path brings you to the top of this, although you want to stay to the left (heading down) to stay on the path which runs along a ridge line which is difficult to follow at times.

Looking straight out from the talus field.

Looking to the right - the ridge line of Mt Carrigain is on the right.

Mount Lowell to the left.

The right side of the ridge of Mt Carrigain is almost vertical.

The final stream crossing before reaching the car. A good place to cool down before reaching the parking lot. Overall a fun hike that we could be talked into doing again, now that we understand the layout of the ridge and herd path.

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