Rattlesnake Canyon Trail followed along the riverbed, so I figure we can do the same and hook up with Bootlegger Trail up ahead. Unfortunately, I fail to hear the trail gremlins rolling on their bellies with laughter at this idea. Hiking up the creek bed is rough going. Football-sized cobbles fill the bed and move treacherously underfoot. Before long we come to entire groves and hillsides charred to a crisp.
Tremendous erosion continues here.
In some places all the pine needles and top soil are stripped away, leaving vast tracts of a semi-dried mud slurry. Welcome to acid rain's version of paradise. Any evidence of Bootlegger Trail was washed away with the rest of this hillside sometime last year. I look up a drainage I think could have been the trailhead, but no indication of any kind waits there. We continue hiking, but it soon becomes clear any trails going through here were completely erased and we will have to depend on large topography to navigate.