Swamp Lake
by Terry Grimsley
On Saturday morning most of the group met up in town at 8 AM and headed out for the Swamp Lake Jeep Trail with Andrew as the Wagonmaster for the day. One couple, who shall remain nameless, didn’t get the memo and hadn’t gassed up yet so their XJ needed to back track to the gas station to top off. After a brief delay we met up with the rest of the group that had gone ahead to pick-up Johnny whose tow rig was parked about two miles down the Dinkey Creek road. We scooped up the rest of the group and continued on with a total of eight rigs (everyone but Doug). SCE is on top of forest management so there were many logging trucks on the mountain all week. When we reached the Dinkey Creek area we turned onto McKinley Grove Road and continued in a westerly direction for a couple more miles before turning north on an old logging road. After traveling this road a few more miles we stopped to air down less than a mile from the trailhead. While airing down Frank decided NOW was a good time to properly torque the bead lock bolts because he had recently gotten new tires. Of course, he could have done it on his own time the day before but why not hold up the entire group instead (just kidding Frank!)? We were finally on our way again and almost immediately turned onto the Swamp Lake trail.
The trail gradually climbs up the mountain while the rock gardens along the way progressively get more challenging. After a left hand turn at the Muddy Lake intersection, the trail started to become legit as we climbed over and through sizeable rock gardens. At one point the trail appeared to end at the base of a shear granite face. Andrew and Josh scampered up the face and confirmed that the trail did in fact climb this very steep wall. As Andrew’s JK transitioned to this face his forward progress was initially stopped as his tires barked out in disapproval but they finally hooked up and drug the JK up the face. Most everyone experienced the same until we were all finally up. After a little more climbing we broke out into a bowl-shaped feature containing Grouse Lake.
We stopped and had lunch while Andrew and Josh tested their fishing abilities. Andrew caught a small trout but Josh struck out. Andrew provided additional entertainment when he almost fell into the lake when he slipped off of a slimy log. Not to be outdone, after fiddling for what seemed like forever, Johnny wielded his fly-fishing rod and immediately caught a small trout just a couple throws in. After lunch we continued the climb up the mountain and up to a ridge with views of the lake we had just visited as well as Swamp Lake. Dropping down to Swamp Lake we passed by a mine with a horizontal shaft that went about 75 yards into the mountain side.
We continued down the west side of the mountain and came to one of the more challenging obstacles of the trail. This was a pinch between two large rocks with a shelf about two feet tall. At first it didn’t look too bad, but that was before Andrew dug some really deep holes with his 40” tires. Five out of the eight rigs needed to winch this obstacle because we couldn’t get our front tires to climb the shelf. As expected, Frank and Johnny were able to crawl up without any problem and much to our surprise Dennis was able to pop up it but I was told that he hit it pretty hard with the front end. Perhaps this impact took some life out of the front end. We experienced a bit of a shit show at this obstacle when a group met us traveling the other direction. We continued dropping down the mountain while dropping through many substantial rock gardens while eating our own dust along the way. This trail would definitely be challenging traveling the other direction. We finally reached the end of the trail and after regrouping I volunteered to lead the group out to the pavement because I had a GPX file for the shortest route out. As it turned out shorter was not better as the road deteriorated considerably and was beating on our already tired and weary bodies. Fortunately, the road improved and we ultimately made it back to Shaver Lake around 6:30 PM. This was definitely a long and tiring day! Next time this will be an over-night run so we can enjoy it more.
