From Somers Point I was hiking down into the canyon on the Cougar Creek Trail, to a trail alternately known as the Bench Trail and the High Trail, and then back up to Warnock Corral, where I hoped the ice chest would still have cold beer after 3 days. There was a sign indicating where to head down, but the trail was not visible at that point. I headed down steep grassy slopes, eventually finding the trail near the Cougar Creek bed.
Looking down the canyon with Cougar Creek from near Somers Point
At the bottom is a place called Kneeland Place, presumably the Kneeland Family lived there. There was a huge herd of elk.
There were a few remnants of Kneeland's place, including some steps and such; here is the pipe coming from a spring - so essential after the dry camp the night before
I had assumed that the bench trail would be well-defined, but here at the sign indicating the junction of the Cougar Creek and Bench/High Trails, there was not trail visible at all. Fortunately the continuation was visible on the hillside a few hundred yards away.
Unlike up above, the trail frequently disappeared in meadows. In this shot, the grass simply is a different color on the trail, though it is as thick as elsewhere.
Once across the meadow and on a hillside, it was usually easy to find the trail again - usually.
After a long 10 miles on the Bench Trail, I got to the site of my next camp - the Wisnor Place. This included a very nasty section of thistle that I neglected to get a photo of below Hominy Saddle.
It was hard to find a decent place to camp, but I eventually found this. It took over 8 hours of hiking from Somers Point.
