by iainmacdonald » Mon Feb 14, 2022 1:30 pm
Date Hiked: February 12, 2022
General Condition: Wilderness Freeway (Heavily used and well maintained)
I hiked the entire Pine Ridge Trail from China Camp to Big Sur on Saturday, February 12 and am happy to report on the trail conditions. Of course these are just my opinions. While I haven't hiked in the Ventana and Silver Peak Wildernesses as much as some people on this forum, I have spent about 10-20 days and hiked maybe 200-ish miles on the trails in both of these beautiful wilderness areas. Hopefully that provides some context for this report.
From China Camp to Church Creek Divide the trail is clear and easy to follow. I would rate it as a wilderness freeway even though it is not "heavily used." It is in very good shape and it appears someone has been in recently and trimmed the brush back for a couple of feet in both directions away from the trail tread. There was only one section of maybe 100' just before Church Creek Divide where brush was encroaching on the trail, but it was only a few bushes and quite easy to avoid.
From Church Creek Divide to Divide Camp the trail condition was a little bit worse, I would rate it as Passable. There was some overgrowth but nothing difficult. I don't think there were any blow-downs in this stretch but I can't remember exactly where the first one was.
From Divide Camp to the junction with Black Cone Trail the trail is a bit more difficult. It is not hard to follow the tread, but there are several trees down across the trail (maybe 10-20 total), some of them quite large and requiring effort to climb under or crawl beneath. Additionally, there is brush growing over the trail in many places, occasionally requiring some ducking and there are one or two spots were we had to push through brush. I would rate it as passable because the tread was obvious the whole way and there were only a couple of places that required pushing through brush, but it was on the more difficult side of the passable rating, so maybe it's a bit of a toss-up. I found this section of the Pine Ridge Trail easier than either the Black Cone Trail (which I hiked 3 years ago) or the southernmost section of the South Fork Trail (which I hiked 2 years ago), both of which currently have the same "Difficult" rating as this section of the Pine Ridge Trail, hence my recommendation to downgrade this stretch to Passable. As additional evidence, we only slowed from ~23 minutes/mile to ~25 minutes/mile through this section which suggests it was a little bit more difficult but on the whole not that bad.
From the junction with the Black Cone Trail to Pfeiffer Big Sur Campground, the trail is in excellent condition. I would rate it as a wilderness freeway, though the area east of Sykes receives much less traffic.
Sykes was a bit of a zoo on this beautiful, warm, winter Saturday. There were a dozen or so parties at the camp and making their way back and forth to the hot springs. Don't expect much solitude on the western half of this trail. The beautiful, rugged eastern half has plenty of opportunities for that, though. On the whole, this makes an awesome full-day outing across the Ventana Wilderness if you can manage the car shuttle.
In case it's helpful there is a GPS recording of my hike on Strava, here:
https://www.strava.com/activities/6680193754
[b]Date Hiked:[/b] February 12, 2022
[b]General Condition:[/b] Wilderness Freeway (Heavily used and well maintained)
I hiked the entire Pine Ridge Trail from China Camp to Big Sur on Saturday, February 12 and am happy to report on the trail conditions. Of course these are just my opinions. While I haven't hiked in the Ventana and Silver Peak Wildernesses as much as some people on this forum, I have spent about 10-20 days and hiked maybe 200-ish miles on the trails in both of these beautiful wilderness areas. Hopefully that provides some context for this report.
From China Camp to Church Creek Divide the trail is clear and easy to follow. I would rate it as a wilderness freeway even though it is not "heavily used." It is in very good shape and it appears someone has been in recently and trimmed the brush back for a couple of feet in both directions away from the trail tread. There was only one section of maybe 100' just before Church Creek Divide where brush was encroaching on the trail, but it was only a few bushes and quite easy to avoid.
From Church Creek Divide to Divide Camp the trail condition was a little bit worse, I would rate it as Passable. There was some overgrowth but nothing difficult. I don't think there were any blow-downs in this stretch but I can't remember exactly where the first one was.
From Divide Camp to the junction with Black Cone Trail the trail is a bit more difficult. It is not hard to follow the tread, but there are several trees down across the trail (maybe 10-20 total), some of them quite large and requiring effort to climb under or crawl beneath. Additionally, there is brush growing over the trail in many places, occasionally requiring some ducking and there are one or two spots were we had to push through brush. I would rate it as passable because the tread was obvious the whole way and there were only a couple of places that required pushing through brush, but it was on the more difficult side of the passable rating, so maybe it's a bit of a toss-up. I found this section of the Pine Ridge Trail easier than either the Black Cone Trail (which I hiked 3 years ago) or the southernmost section of the South Fork Trail (which I hiked 2 years ago), both of which currently have the same "Difficult" rating as this section of the Pine Ridge Trail, hence my recommendation to downgrade this stretch to Passable. As additional evidence, we only slowed from ~23 minutes/mile to ~25 minutes/mile through this section which suggests it was a little bit more difficult but on the whole not that bad.
From the junction with the Black Cone Trail to Pfeiffer Big Sur Campground, the trail is in excellent condition. I would rate it as a wilderness freeway, though the area east of Sykes receives much less traffic.
Sykes was a bit of a zoo on this beautiful, warm, winter Saturday. There were a dozen or so parties at the camp and making their way back and forth to the hot springs. Don't expect much solitude on the western half of this trail. The beautiful, rugged eastern half has plenty of opportunities for that, though. On the whole, this makes an awesome full-day outing across the Ventana Wilderness if you can manage the car shuttle.
In case it's helpful there is a GPS recording of my hike on Strava, here: https://www.strava.com/activities/6680193754