Hy Hunt

June 26, 2015 - HIKE

   The hike from Britts Meadow up to Big Flat is my new favorite hike to do with a group of people.  Forest trail #228 goes right up Hy Hunt creek on a gentle grade, the tread is wide, the temps are cooler, wildlife is abundant, and you can leave one vehicle at the far end of the trail to make one way mileage only 3.5 miles.  Drive time from Beaver to either starting point is 45 minutes and both have 2 to 3 miles of dirt road. To drive to Britts Mdw, go up Beaver Canyon and turn south off state highway 153 at mm 17 towards the Scout high adventure base.  This is Forest Road 135 and at the bottom of the hill at Three Creeks Res. keep left to follow around the reservoir’s east shoreline.  The road gets pretty rutted and skinny high above the lake's surface, but this used to be the main state highway up to Puffer Lake, so it is doable in most cars.  Lake stream, or the middle fork of Three Creeks, enters the reservoir through an awesome box canyon lined with orange and green lichen covered ledges.  Proceeding east above these ledges, Britts Meadow opens up before you and is recognized by the zig-zagged log fences across it’s pastures (called log-worm fence).  The turn down into the meadow is so tight that you have to pass it, turn around at the dead end(where PST 27 begins) and approach the turn heading the other way.  Or like me you can park here at the ATV 27 trail and use the historic trail down into the meadow’s east end, which was recently rediscovered.  It is the southern most section of trail 176A and joins the Hy Hunt trail right where Lake stream and Hy Hunt Creek  converge.  Walk about 2000 feet up the ATV PST 27 route and cairns will indicate where to drop off into the meadow, approaching the log worm fence and parallel it upstream another 1000 feet.  Right here is where Lake stream(from Puffer Lake) and Hy Hunt Creek from Big Flat Ranger Station converge.  Cross both of these streams to the south and you will be right on the trail 228, the old road they used to install the telephone wires from Britts Meadow up to the Big Flat Ranger station.  In several spots up Hy Hunt the communication wire is on the ground, partially buried from a century of erosion and criss-crossed by fallen tree’s.  There used to be a Forest Service Ranger Station in Britts Mdw called the Delano Ranger Station and the phone line ran north along the Tushar’s spine dropping down in Joe Lott’s Canyon crossing Clear Creek, then easterly to Richfield, connecting several other guard stations along the way.  I have seen old photo’s showing a CCC camp at the Delano Ranger station and the LDS church ran a summer camp for girls here also, called “the Girls Home”.  The only things remaining from these early times are short rock retaining walls from driveways and a cold-storage dugout room near the corral’s watering trough. If you can make the tight hairpin turn, you can follow the road to the meadow’s southeast corner, which is where the Delano station actually stood and the 228 really begins.  

   To hike the 228 from the top down, pass Puffer Lake on state highway 153 .  After three miles of dirt road, you’ll park just south of the Big Flat Ranger Station where there is a sign for the Skyline National Recreation trail.  Across highway 153 to the west, look for a cairn and the 228 begins here, just outside the new pasture fencing at the Ranger Station.  Meander westerly through the boulders across the swampy meadow and just past the round water trough, the trail enters the forest.  The canyon gathers up all the swampy spring flow from above to form Hy Hunt Creek, which accompanies you the 3.5 miles down to Britts Mdw.  

   I have really appreciated all the positive feedback from my hiking articles.  Here is a website my wife created to catalog all the articles and present even more photo’s of fun times we have out there in the hills : mcmullins.wix.com/intothetushars .  Compliments are wonderful, but the most flattering thing you can say to me is that you were inspired enough and you actually got out there “Into the Tushars!”