10.5 miles of hiking • 3000' elevation gain •
Did a real fun loop up that started up Catherine Creek, but then went right and followed Tracy Hill almost to the top. Then we just sort of rambled across game trails back over to Catherine Creek, which proved easy enough to cross, but a bit of a bear to escape! Sort of a scramble back up. We kept heading west, before descending down another game trail towards the Labyrinth, then went totally cross country across a cliffy face thing around Rowland Lake until we finally popped out over by the Vision Quest Pits. Very cool! Then just followed the regular trail back to the Catherine Creek trailhead. Excellent exploration!
We still had daylight left after the Tracy Hill loop, so we went east just a bit to explore the Lyle Cherry Orchard. Wandered along the convict road, around the bend, before climbing back up over the butte to return to where we started. First time I'd been here, and I'm definitely going to go back for longer explorations!
