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Day Hike - Hex Mountain

Socially distant hike up Hex via it's eastern ridge.

Brian Carpenter Brian Carpenter
June 13, 2020
  • Road rough but passable

  • Used the Corral Creek trail #1340 to ascend Hex via its eastern ridge.  Note that Cal Topo mislabels the trail # as 1348.1.

    Corral Creek trail is used by dirtbikes and the first mile or so has a lot of erosion and is mostly straight up.  Higher up it turns into more of a traditional trail.

    Trail passes through areas burned by the Jolly Mountain fire of 2017. Still lots of standing dead trees so be careful if it's really windy. 

    No water on this route.

Ran into 2 hikers and 3 dirtbikers today, so escaped the Hex hordes on the traditional route.  The Corral Creek trail starts off of FS 4305, which departs from 903 just past The Last Resort.  There is a veritable maze of logging roads, bike trails and old bits of road on the south slopes of Hex. 

Trail is south and southeast facing and passes through mostly burned areas from the 2017 Jolly Mountain fire.  There are views down into the West Fork Teanaway River valley and up the valley towards Jolly, Elbow and Humerus.  Views to the south and southeast as well.  Lots of new herbaceous growth among the blackened, dead trees.  Flowers were out in force today, including lupines, scarlet gilia, penstemon, phlox, larkspur, arnica and silvercrown luina to name a few.

Some wind, a surprising amount of sunshine and just a few sprinkles so we found the lucky sunhole today.  From the top of Hex I could watch the cloud deck from the west heading straight for me, which was a bit unusual.  The next ridge to the west, Kachess, was mostly socked in and it looked to be raining to the north but all was relatively mellow on Hex.

Watch your footing on the descent, there is loose rock and steep sections where the dirtbikes have eroded the trail.