Serviceberry Creek Tr 049

July 18, 2018

Wildfire is good. Wildfire is bad.  You must be the judge of this subjective debate and fire means many different things to different people,  depending on where you live, what you do for a living, and your personal relationship with the lands around your home.  This week’s hike will take you to a very problematic spot, from a trail maintenance point of view, on Forest Service land that burned in 2010 during the Twitchell Canyon Fire.  The Serviceberry trail from Sawmill Bench down into Fish Creek (Tr. #049) has caused me a roller coaster of emotions since 2011 when I started cleaning trail for the Beaver Ranger District.  Early on I was naive and unaware when Brent Yardley and I hiked in signage warning the public of dangerous conditions. Later came hope, when I was charged with planning a reroute of this trail because the bottom half of it became a gash in the landscape 15’ deep!  Next was sympathy, for the poor Utah Conservation Corps camping at Sawmill Bench who, while working on the rerouted trail, had to run for their lives during a July monsoonal downpour and trees were falling around them and the flooding ravines were rolling boulders like toy marbles.  Then the anger and denial phase lasted 2 years. “Dang You Water and Gravity!” In 2016 I went for a stroll down Serviceberry to assess stability and was flabbergasted to see that major erosive events were still occurring, cutting deeper and depositing cobbles and boulders across meadows further and further up the drainage. Cattlemen asking when we would address this area caused me feelings of shame and helplessness,  but not enough to require counseling thank goodness. And now, eight years since Twitchell, a cattleman has again inspired me with courage and curiosity. So let me present to you a slightly dangerous hike, that offers great views of Belknap, Fish Creek, Tip Top, and is absolutely brimming with flora and fauna, geologic wonder, death and rebirth, and witness first hand the Yin and the Yang of our Fire Cycle.

Sawmill Bench, a huge beautiful flat between Shingle Creek and Fish Creek is the only place to access this hike for now, and only the first 3\4 mile down is safe enough for me to recommend  visiting. Also, you must wear tall boots and thick pants to protect your skin and socks from the zillions of pokey grass seeds and thistles abundant on this trail. Elderberry Creek would be a more fitting name for this drainage now,  it is everywhere in the burn scar. Lewis woodpeckers love the hollow standing dead aspens for homes and a magnificent owl took flight just 20 feet from me in the shady canyon bottom. 3\4 mile down this trail from Sawmill there is an amazingly cold spring to drink from on the right side of the trail.  I call it Raspberry Spring and it is already offering a few ripe morsels. Just below this spring is the last flat-ish meadow and is now a rocky field and the new route will cross the drainage to the north here and remain on that side to the bottom at Fish Creek. You should turn around here at Raspberry Sp. Flat.  Total mileage from Sawmill to Fish Creek is 2.1 with an elevation loss of 1500’! Don’t go down anything you can’t get back up, and DO NOT follow a GPS route from here down, you’ll end up at a 30’ cut bank, a dead end in the old trail that I now call “suicidal cow X-ing”! Driving directions: Take Exit 7 on I-70, turn left down Clear Creek Cyn Rd., drive 1.5 miles, turn right on F.R. 114, (which is dirt and a bit rougher and steeper than the Big John’s road) drive 4.7 miles and park here, at the southeastern end of Sawmill Bench.  Look for and follow the brown sign blades, called Carsonite, across the flat until you pick up the 049 trail heading east down Serviceberry Creek. There is no doubt that wildfire comes with danger, damage and change, but we as humans can adapt a trail, replant a forest, repair a road, and marvel at the rejuvenation of an ecosystem. Go hike, carefully, into Serviceberry and see for yourself how fire burns its way, “Into the Tushars!”