Return to the Mallard Larkins Pioneer Area - Part I

The Mallard Larkins. I've been to this area three times before and it has always been some of the most rugged hiking I've done. It'll test you in many ways and when you venture into these mountains be prepared. All right well we are back out again back at Sawtooth Saddle. I was here last year finished up a hike here where a timber got hurt and so this trip we're starting from Sawtooth Saddle. I'm back out with Dan again. That's Dan back there and we're going to try to complete this loop this time. It's a challenging one and you know the Mallard Larkins is just rugged country and nothing's easy here but it's beautiful and it starts beautiful right away. Headed down to the trapper's cabin tonight. I'm gonna try to get down to the little north fork of the Clearwater. I'm pretty excited for this one. Things were off to a rough start from the beginning. I realized on my way to the trailhead that I had forgotten my trekking poles. While I don't use them all the time they are an essential tool for me when I'm hiking. When I met up with Dan he told me that he too had forgotten his trekking poles. Now for Dan this is even more an essential piece of gear because not only does he use them while hiking but he needs them to set up his tent. We were off to a hell of a start. All right just took our first break there closing in on four miles in. Fairly nice day for hiking. Temps aren't bad. We're on the shaded side of the mountain so that's nice. The first few miles of the trail were in pretty good shape but as we got further down the trail the worse it got. At separate times Dan and I both stepped off the trail and Dan ended up banging up his knee a bit. I was tired and frustrated by the time we made it down to the bottom. Okay just linked up with trail 50. I'm so glad to be done with the Surveyor's Ridge trail. I much prefer going up that than coming down and we think some horses, well we know some horses are ahead of us they chew the hell out of the trail, but figuring they are down here at the trapper's cabin but we'll go check it out. Sure enough they were down there. Dan and I backtracked and pushed towards Sawtooth Creek. If we didn't find anything there we'd have to push to Larkins Creek and make something work if we couldn't find a campsite. That is half a mile can't be the right thing. Looking for a camp now. Anything with water will do. Well now we need a flat spot I'm hanging with a ground dweller but next decent anything we see is the one. We ended up having to hike and make the big drop down into Larkins Creek. The sun had already set on the little north fork of the Clearwater when we made it down there and we lucked out and found a campsite. Well good morning, morning day two from the little north fork of the Clearwater River. Oh yesterday was pretty tough on me going uh eight or nine miles downhill wears on my knees and kind of hurts my body but we made it made it a little extra. There are folks at table camp so we had to or at the trapper's cabin so uh we pushed down here and luckily Dan was right there was a campsite here but today we got the meat got to climb up 3,500 minimum today so we'll see ready to get it going. There's Dan's stick and it goes perfect length and he's got another one over there. Well I've made it up to the switchback where the uh trail up to mud and Larkins Lake takes off. There's a trail but it is right off the bat it's faint but it's definitely there so the adventure is about to really start. The climbing's already started. As it turns out we were off trail from the beginning. The trail we started on dropped us all the way back down to the creek before it died out. When we checked our GPS we were way off course. Well just had to take a break. Uh we've been off trail almost the whole time. Ended up clearing the bottom of the drainage and now we're going straight up. Tough going. That's another Larkins. I'm not even a mile in yet. Point eight. All right well we have found the trail. I'm sitting on it. I don't know how far we climbed straight up but it was a long ways. That was all elevation we didn't have to do. Hopefully we can just walk for a while now. The climb was relentless. Soon we found ourselves in a burn section and having to search for the trail. Not long after that we lost all sign of the trail and ended up on the wrong side of the drainage. Once again we were bushwhacking to try to find anything that looked like a trail. Back on trail. You're just walking on what seems to be the trail and then all of a sudden there's nothing. That was a big detour. Energy sucking detour. Now we're starting to get close to the junction to Hero Lake. Hopefully we can make some more ground once we get that far. A ways from the turnoff to Mud Lake we ran across some hikers who were trying to find Larkins Lake. Unfortunately for them, they had already passed it, would have to backtrack uphill to get to the junction. Since the Mud Lake junction was in the same place, they followed us up there. I was glad they ran into us because they were about to drop into a drainage where there was no camping spots until you hit the bottom where we started the day. All right, well we have made it Mud Lake. It was a battle getting up here today. Maybe it was a success. We only got off trail twice. Seems like a good average. But we got a few hours here before dark and we are just gonna chill. Try to rest up. It's looking like a 10 mile day tomorrow to get over to Fawn. But that's tomorrow. We'll worry about it then. We'll get some rest tonight. It had been a tough day of hiking. Both times when we lost the trail we had really rough bushwhacks trying to find it again. But we did find it again and we pushed through to make it up to Mud Lake. The next day we would be on to the main attraction and the views on the ridge. We had a couple of days of tough hiking to get to this point and I went to bed that night thinking that we had made it past the crux of the trip and we were about to get on to the good stuff.