(Or at least as much adventure as a four year old can take between the hours of 9am and 1pm when he has to be in bed napping.)

I thought about going somewhere up by the Pass, but the forecast scared me enough to prefer the safety of the forest. Since I hadn't been on the Middle Fork trail in AGES I figured that'd be a good spot.

After crossing the river (on a bridge, don't freak out) I looked downstream. Hmmm... they're building a new trail that way. I wonder how far it goes. Certainly, we can't get into any trouble going that way.

The trail is actually in really, really good shape. For a little way anyway. A solid bed with gravel on top. Perfect for running if you're Treen. To keep Henry from insisting she stay close I informed him Treen was our scout. He dug that, but then wanted to be the scout, too. So I had to let him run ahead. Next time I'm telling him Treen's our pack mule.

From really, really good it degraded to something closer to pretty good. No gravel, but still well packed.

Then it was down to passable with patches of sticky mud.

Primitive came next. This was mostly where they'd done some clearing, but it was pretty sloppy.

We decided to turn around when it became craptastic. I didn't relish the idea of carrying him most of the way and it was getting harder to follow the flags marking the future route.

Still, it will be a great trail when it's done. It'll lead to the Pratt River "trail" and from there you could, theoretically, go all the way up to Pratt Lake.

Of course, you want to know how far we went, right? 2.4 miles and about 575 feet of gain.