Thursday, February 10, 2011

Camping season cometh

Taylor: living the dream. Yes those are 25mm tires.
It's still well under freezing every night. And the high rarely gets over 40F during the day, but it's never too soon to start obsessing about the pending camping season!

This year, my goal is to start in March. Maybe even early March.

My go-to no-brainer default quick over night spot has always been Badger Lake. But after the last trip there, where we were kicked out, I'm thinking about going legit. I love Badger because it's easy, close, flat, has a swim option, is hard for car people to get to, and requires zero planning. So any new default S24O destination will have to meet the same criteria.

I had coffee with Patrick, of Scoop fame, this morning and he noted the fact that DNR has a lot of land around here and camping is mostly legal on DNR land.


The dotted lines are non-motorized access only.
Score-a-rooni!

The first place to explore will be the Fish Trap and Hog Canyon areas. These are about as close as Badger; you ride to Cheney, then instead of heading SE out of town, you head SW. Looking at the Fish Trap map (pdf), which covers Fish Trap and Hog Canyon -- there appears to be lots of space to explore that are accessed by non-motorized paths. Sweet!

7 comments:

Jonathan Eberly said...

I have camped at fishtrap. I enjoyed it and thought it geologically fascinating, my girlfriend who grew up in the area thought it was boring and noted the lack of trees. I will be keeping my eye on this thread as I am real interested in the s24o concept.

Twin lakes, also BLM land, is a neat destination as well with better hiking and more diversity of terrain.

Anonymous said...

I have done a fair amount of cycling and hiking in that area. There is a large population of rattle snakes so be prepared.

Pondero said...

I like your thinking. I too am scouting future overnight opportunities. Got at least one that looks like a winner. Bring on camping season.

Andre said...

Just this week I was pondering that spring is only ~6 weeks away and last year, on a rare warmish March 22 Alex, Andrew and I set out for our first bike camping of the 2010 season.

By now there are old favorites, and staple destination but there is always the desire to find something new, and perhaps better.

Anonymous said...

Hey John,
I've looked at Hog Canyon briefly on the maps and it looks promising. Wade

EvilElf said...

I've been on a DNR jag too. Been thinking about a place I fished at on Crab Creek. Saw an otter there. That was 20 years ago. The last few months I've been trying to figure out where it was. I think it was near Edwall. Dave Axford are you there? Do you remember where this was?

lazyeye72 said...

We explored the north end of Hog Canyon/Lake/Waterfall last month. Looks like there are plenty of trees along the east shore for camping. Can't say I know how much of a bikable trail there is--lot of rock in the area.
http://lazyeye72.blogspot.com/