Treks and Adventures
The forecast was for showers so I stayed close to home this time for a little hike. I had some short connector trail in the middle of Forest Park to do so today was a good day to fit those in. To get to the four connector trails I also had to use five main trail to get to them. So I was going up and down and all around on this hike. In spit of all of that not a real long hike at 3 1/2 hours doing 8 miles and 1100 elevation gain.
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.
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.
There was a break in the rain today so I went over to Forest Park for a hike. From Germantown Rd. Parking I did a route of Wildwood Trail south to Waterline Trail and went down Waterline and Tolinda Trails to Germantown Rd. Then back up Tolinda and all of Waterline up to Skyline Blvd. Then back down to Wildwood and hiked it over to Springville Rd. and down to Leaf Erikson Dr. and back to my car. Manage to cover about 8 miles with a 1700 ft. of Elevation gain. Tolinda and Waterline Trail area more rustic and more interesting to do. Wildwood and Leaf Erikson you can pick miles but are boring. There is a nice large grass area at the top of Waterline Trial by the water tower but there is no parking for it off of Skyline.
The middle section of Forest Park has a maze of trails and firelanes. I have not fully explored this section of the Park so I started today with my first hike to discover what is here. I started at the, never visited before, Springville parking lot. I head down Firelane 7 to the Trillion Trail. The Trillion Trail is a short steep rugged that drop quickly down to the Wildwood Trail. I headed South down the Wildwood trail to Saltzman Rd. I saw several bike riders heading up Saltzman Rd. as I was heading down. Where Saltzman meets Leif Erikson Dr. I headed down Quarry Trail, a little used and brushy trail that took me to the Maple trail and my lowest elevation point. I took the Maple Trail back up to meet the Leif Erikson Dr. and on over to Firelane 7a. The last stretch was Firelane 7a to Firelane 7 and back to my car.
I hike 7.5 miles with 450 ft. elevation gain.
