Dinkey Creek Trail

[grampy]

[c9h13no3]

I’m fairly familiar with the dinkey creek area (been car camping there with family for 35 years), and I dont recall any trail along dinkey creek.

It's on the FS maps, so it certainly existed. And there's several photos in the area on Google Earth. And there's sporadic rock climbing on Dinkey Dome, so there'll probably be cairned/use trails around that area.

dinkeycreek.PNG

[AlmostThere]

Bald Mountain is a trail you can hike fairly early. The trail around Shaver Lake is another, tho no backpacking. The trails in Kaiser will likely be on the trail maintenance schedule in late May tho the upper side of the Kaiser Peak loop will still be under some snow.

There is a trail from Badger Flat through the cow camp toward Dinkey Wilderness - crosses the wilderness boundary right after Weldons cow camp, and continues on over to Coyote Lake. I've maintained it so it is there. The key is not to turn and walk along the fence but go through the gate, past the cabins, across the creek and continue on the trail.

Garlic Falls trail is up the river from Pine Flat - drive to the end of the dirt road past Kirch Flat and the trailhead is there. It's steep, and currently inaccessible due to rocks in the road.

[robbrandt]

Bald Mountain might be a good option. Doesn't appear to have handy water sources though? At least on the upper part of the mountain. Looks to be about 7000ft; where would I expect the snowline to be in late May in a year like this? Could be fun to sleep in the fire lookout

Badger Flat is about 8000ft, Coyote Lake at about 9000k. Seems pretty dicey to me regarding snow. But we'll know more by early May I guess. But it seems interesting. My original idea was Twin Lakes out of Badger Flat, but I think there's way too much snow for that to be a possibility on Memorial Day.

I think Garlic Falls is too far from my base in Shaver.

[AlmostThere]

You can sleep AT the fire lookout perhaps, would not lay odds on sleeping in it. They lock them up and you can't climb up to the deck.

Melting snow is always an option that early, but you need water to do it. Otherwise you scorch it.

[calarn]

I'm also poking around for early season backpacking options, so when I saw your post, I checked out this area on the NatGeo Trails map in GaiaGPS. The Dinkey Creek Trail does show up on this map, and I also noticed there is a "Dinkey Creek Inn" on the map right in the area of the trail you're discussing. They do have a website: https://www.dinkeycreekgeneralstore.com/ and a phone number (559-841-3435) that the website says can be used over the winter. My guess is that the folks that run that inn/store will have the best available information for you on that area. If you end up getting in touch with them, I'd be curious what you find out. Hope that helps.

[robbrandt]

Thanks! Great idea.

[fromheretowhere]

There is a trail that goes up to the quarry. There is also some interesting info on kayaking and canyoneering to be found online. I have fished the area many times, and just came down from an investigatory trip to check flows and snow levels. I am hiking upstream from camp fresno this weekend for my first overnight trip.

[robbrandt]

Great! Please post a report when you return. I am primarily interested in downstream from Dinky Creek Road - so if you have a chance to check that I'd be grateful - but if upstream is clear then that's an option too.

[fromheretowhere]

Trip Report cinco de mayo 2019
We travelled up past dinkey campground and down to the corrals at camp el-o-win. Parking at the fisherman site near the historic bridge there was one other car in the lot. An animal, had strewn a great deal of trash around the vault toilets. The river was still raging but my friend and I packed our rods anyway. We crossed the bridge and began to hike up. As we explored the trail it was clear that the amount of water would limit trail access, fishing, main creek crossing, and viewing pools. We hiked down to Moro pool and it was completely blown out. We decided to hike up trails end and encountered a couple of nice waterfalls. On the way back we high tailed it through camp on the road and crossed the bridge at McKinley Grove. We only encountered two day hikers on trail but ran into a man that had a beef with a guy in the day use area over music volume. We hiked off the main trail again and hiked down river towards the gaging station which had a nice vault toilet. We cooked up some tacos shared some tequila and hit the hammocks. The next day we hiked back up to the car taking a more direct line away from the creek. The forest has recently been involved in a controlled burn plan so there is not a ton of undergrowth to get through and around. This did make for some pretty lose and dusty trail conditions.
Overall it was great to get out there and do some walking despite the lack of fishing and shortness of the trip. Do not expect to cross dinkey easily without a bridge. Navigation is easy as long as you keep the main creek near. Most of the creeks feeding into dinkey were easily crossed. We used downed trees twice and never had to get wet. Didn't see any poison oak. We both sprayed bug spray around 7pm and didn't see another skeeter or get bit.