TR- Forsyth to Oak Grove - Hike over Pine Valley Mountain

[nieder]

On Saturday morning, a friend and I dropped a truck up to Oak Grove, then took my truck around the Turkey Farm road past Yankee Doodle over and back up to Pine Valley. We hit the trail at about 8:20 and headed up the Forsyth Canyon trail. By about 10 we were near the top of the canyon and ran into a scout troop coming down, their leader said "You're not gonna make it to Oak Grove- the trail is gone- its covered with fallen trees and snow. We had to turn back" - We took that as a challenge and kept on trekking.
We hit the snow at around 8500 feet with another 1800 feet to go, but it was packed pretty well but not icy- just perfect for walking on with hiking boots, so I just grabbed a tree branch and walked through he forest, just kinda making our own trail for about 4-5 miles up the Summit Trail to the top of Burger Peak, then down between Burger and Signal Peak to Further Water. It was hard, but fun. My ankles were killing me.
We hit Further Water around 1:00 and ate lunch, took a small nap, and then back to the snow again up to the top of Oak Grove- we found someone else's footprints and followed them for awhile but they petered out, but it got us to the right drainage to the top, and then found our way along the ridge to the trail. It was snow free from there down, but there were a ton of trees all over the trail- a couple of times we had to backtrack to find our way back onto the trail.
We got to the car at about 4:00 so it was 8 hrs back to front. 12 miles I think-

Post Trip fun: We then drove back to Pine Valley and my battery was dead, so we got out some jumper cables and my friend hooked them up wrong and fried his battery. Screwed. We pushed my truck to the main road and got a jump, drove back up to his truck and towed it down to the highway with a tow strap but it broke when he tapped his brakes once, I then called another friend who gave me the idea to just jump it straight into the car bypassing the battery, and that worked, so he was able to get it running. We got back to St. George around 7:00- it was a long day! But awesome.


Looking up Forsyth Canyon


The trail from the top of Forsyth and most of the way to Oak Grove looked like this. No trail. Its gonna be years before they get that thing cleared off!


The "trail"



Bagging Burger Peak


Near the top of Burger


There was a lot of melting snow / flowing streams still in Further Water, but the trail to Oak Grove was completely covered.




Looking down Further Water


St. George view from Burger Peak


Oak Grove Trail Summit


Panorama from Oak Grove Summit

[jman]

I love the Oak Grove area, Thanks for sharing! Still incredible to see all the snow down there in July practically...

[accadacca]

Coolness!

[blueeyes]

Nice report! Gotta love post trip fun and car issues.