...then this peak is for you!

Trailhead: Parking lot on the left immediately past the town of Shawnee
Route: Northeast ridge (for lack of a better name)
Length: 8.5 miles
Vertical: 4000 feet
Partners: Solo

I was only able to find one TR on Shawnee - One that Derek had done 10 years ago and naturally, he did a whole string of peaks and it's a very worthwhile read here. I think I saw something on Summit Post about going at it from Bill Tyler Gulch but that appears to be mostly private property now. Studying a topo map made me think that Gibbs Gulch might work. I tried this route in early spring and was on snowshoes and only got about half way up - the bushwhacking was difficult (understatement) and I decided to give it a shot in dryer conditions.

The trailhead is easy to find. Go past the town of Shawnee and almost immediately on your left (if going south on 285) you will see a rather large parking area.

I seem to recall that this area is used by the BLM? for some sort of horse management but I couldn't find that when I put together this report. There are also a number of named ditches that were used in water management but appear to be out of service now - pictures on that later.

On the left side of the gate, there is a personnel passage but with the large gap in the bars, it's pretty easy to duck under the crossbar.

Just past the intersection with the Brookside trail, there was a camp set up - one large mess tent, two porta-potties, a pickup and equipment trailer and several small dome tents. Nobody was around on my way up nor was anybody there on my way down. There were no markings on the truck but I believe the license plates were US government.

At about the one mile mark, there is an old bunkhouse, I think. And electrical power has been added. Not sure what it's used for now...

By this point, I was really wishing I'd brought along my mountain bike. It is about 2 miles to where the good road turns back and one starts following an old logging road and a bike sure would have saved some time.

And what looks like is the end of the road in the above picture actually is the end. From there on, it is bushwhack hell.

The rest of the hike was mostly bushwhack. Every now and then a clear path would go for a bit but it never lasted. It would not be a good idea to wear shorts on this hike - I had on thin long pants and managed to get pretty scratched up.

I took the above picture at the spot I turned around when I first attempted this. I didn't realize that the bushwhacking actually got worse after this point.

Not too long after this, I came across the following. At first, I thought it was a miner's sluice but with no water source, I ruled that out. As there was some evidence of old logging operations (old large tree stumps), I am guessing this was some sort of setup to facilitate moving the logs down?

Not too far above it (maybe 10 yards) was the following. I'm not sure what the bands are but they ran parallel for about 10 feet beyond the lower righthand corner of this picture.

Other than a couple old rusty tin cans, I found no other evidence.

I think Shawnee Peak is a seldom visited summit and it affords some nice views - which would have been even nicer had the smoke from the forest fires dissipated.

Summit views...

And a short 360 vid from the summit.

I decided to do a little loop on the way down and continued on the road until it meets up with the original road near the bunkhouse.

I was surprised that all the signage for the ditches seemed to be new when the ditches themselves were obviously old - the first Callahan ditch didn't have a culvert under the road.

And what would a summer TR be without some wildflower photos?

And my Strava link that will show the route I took.

https://strava.app.link/QLQOKVbz6hb

And - as always - thanks for taking the time to read this and please be careful out there!