Not to beat this to death, but, hey, we are mostly all locked down, the local mall is closed, and Trader Joe's ran out of dog food, so let's continue to beat it to death.
Daisy, I did not plan the route, I went along when Paul said he wanted to go off-trail the first day. I did not care, I just wanted to get out, and how bad could it be? (Don't answer.) I also was not paying attention and let Paul lead to where he wanted to launch, as he kept muttering about his friend who told him there was a use-trail.
But I have to say that a post-mortem supports most of our decisions. It is often the case that small trails near streams lead only to small streams, as Paul mentions, and they die there. So other than taking a particular trail because it might be a propitious place to cross a stream, there was nothing obvious that it was THE use trail for the canyon.
The topo supports that interpretation. The route we started on, shown in red, seems a plausible path. The blue shows the parts of the use-trail that are obvious from the satellite view. Just looking at the topo only, (which in reality one never does, but this is an
academic discussion), one could easily suspect that the blue line would lead one to a steep place in order to avoid a mucky marshy area. Both the red and implied blue paths maintain the same avoidance distance from the creek and its rocks and growth. From the topo and boots on the ground, the red seemed about right.
My main criticism is that we did not re-evaluate and look around harder for the trail sooner, like about where the green arrow is, when the trees and brush open up a bit. Usually when you suspect a path is nearby, it is indeed only 20 feet away.
trail discussion.jpg