Abandoned trail between senger creek & pass north of 10822 near turret peak

[erutan]

Anyone have any history on this? I assume it's either an old sheepherder or army trail. We saw what we assumed was a game trail where turret creek flattens out before dropping NE of this, though there was a modern fire ring, rusty tin can, and some obsidian shavings so multiple eras have visited it before.

The pass itself had a single track path at the top (what we assumed was a game trail coming up from the east) and some old stonework dropping to the west. We lost it when the trail flattened out then picked it back up again later. It was comically cairned near senger creek - I wasn't sure whether to keep them up out of historical interest or destroy them and decided to let them stay as in a few spots it seemed there had been some simple trail work and it wasn't just some rando stock user marking their way back.

Screen Shot 2022-01-05 at 9.18.27 AM.jpg

IMG_2721.jpg

IMG_2764.jpg

IMG_2765.jpg

IMG_2766.jpg

IMG_2772.jpg

IMG_2773.jpg

[druid]

The CalTopo "Historic" base layer shows a trail heading up from Piute Canyon from just below the Turret Creek junction to the 10882 pass. Instead of heading directly to Senger Creek, the trail switchbacks down from around your "Bear scat" waypoint to near the Blayney Meadows hot springs. But it's not hard to imagine someone heading for Selden Pass extending this trail to the west to avoid some unnecessary elevation loss.

[erutan]

Hmm yeah, it shows up on the 1900 and 1930 maps, 1960 is missing for that region, and it's gone on 1980.

Interesting that the bench with a fairly strong single track and signs of past camping is well off route, though it's an obvious sort of way up to the turret lakes from there. What an odd choice of official trail to just go up and down that little pass. I wonder if it was bypassing some portion of the gorge around piuite creek that didn't have an earlier trail amenable to stock?