Horton Creek Trail

[srlatty]

I have to admit, after taking quite a long time off from hiking, this was probably one of the best places to start back! I had looked at this trail description several times and thought it would be a nice relaxing place to go. I was very right, even if it was Saturday on Labor Day weekend.
Tracee, Annie and myself along with some friends and their 4 year old started this trek. The kids did great! We stopped a couple of times to play in the creek and made about 2.2 miles in the first hour and 45 minutes. Then we parted ways: the dad's continued on and the mom's and kids started back. We all knew that the kids couldn't make it to the spring and thought that we would catch up to them on the way back and carry the kids back to the truck. After all, they are only 4 & 5!
To this point, we had passed too many people to keep track of. Every group that passed us had at least 10 people in it. And it seemed as if we passed a group every 5 minutes. This was one of the reasons we kept going to the creek, to keep out of their way. The other reason was to keep the kids occupied and enthusiastic.
Shortly after we parted ways, the sky started to darken. Suddenly, there were no more people on the trail. We did pass one group of about 10 that were trying to follow the creek. I heard one of them say "the trails up there, not down here".
We made it to the spring and filled up on water. While we were filling up, the dark sky decided to open up. It poured hard for about 10 minutes. Living here, I haven't seen rain that hard that wasn't going sideways for quite a while. It was incredibly refreshing and made the pine forest smell alive!
On the way back down, we saw the group that was following the creek setting up camp. Other than that, we didn't see another person. We made it back to the trailhead and found our wives and kids playing in the creek below the bridge. The kids had hiked the entire way back, 4.4 miles round trip, by themselves. This may not be a great accomplishment for some, but my daughter has a history of cutting hikes short. This was, far and away, the farthest that she has ever hiked. Hopefully I can keep that hiking fire alive!
Now that I know this trail, I see this as a great place to backpack into and camp with my daughter. I'm just starting to backpack and she's too small to hike too far. Sounds like the perfect family weekend!
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Steve