Treks and Adventures
Lori, Jeanette and I did a 4.5 mile hike in Forest Park. We started our hike from the Germantown Road parking lot. We did a loop by starting out on the Wildwood trail then took the Springville Road down to Leaf Ericson Road. We took Leaf Ericson back to the Cannon Trail and back to the car. After the hike we went to Double Mt. Brewing for lunch.
I got out for a short exploratory hike in Forest Park this morning. I first went down Springville Rd. to where it becomes a neighborhood. Then went back up on Springville Rd., Leaf Ericson Rd. and then the Hardesty Trail that was a new one for me. I found a number of user trail coming off of Springville Rd. and Nieghborhood along Springville Rd. place that need further exploring. The hike was only 3 miles with 780 ft. elevation gain in 1 hour and 40 minutes.
This time out I started at the upper Salzman Rd. Trailhead. Many of the trails in this section I have not been on in a long time. I started off going down Firelane 5 to Leif Ericson to get to the Maple Trail. From the Maple trail I switched on to Salzman Rd. and followed it down to the Lower gate. I then took Firelane 4 up to where it connected with Maple Trail and followed it up to Firelane 3. I then connected with Wildwood to Salzman and then back to my car. I covered 8.5 miles with 1450 gain in a leisurely 3 1/4 hours. The hike started out dry but kept getting wetter and wetter. I got back to my car before the worse came in.
I got out to hike some trails in Forest Park that I had not been on in many years. Part of the exploring was to see where a couple of fire lanes came on at. By the numbers – 11 miles, 2450 ft. total elevation gain and on trail for 5 hours.
I had planned on making this a conditioning hike on trails in the center section of Forest Park but once I went down a couple of new trails all training went out the window and exploring took over. I still got in 7.5 miles with 1850 elevation gain in 4 hrs. of trail time.
