Phelps Canyon Trail

I went up horsetail with the plan to come down Phelps in a loop.. There was no trail to follow about 300 yards after the fork. It got so bad I was checking GPS ever 20 yards or so.. I ended up turning back and coming back down horsetail.. I would not recommend this trail going down unless you have done it before as it would be really easy to cliff out if you get too off trail.

I’m re-posting here my review I originally wrote for Horsetail Falls/Dry Canyon. We did a loop from there down the Phelps and it terrible. Confirms the earlier reviews. ———— Very nice and wide trail to Horsetail falls. We did a short side route to the lower falls, quite near the trailhead. There are several trails down when you hear the water. The actual falls can be viewed from the bottom and above. They look really beautiful. Easily 5 stars, possibly the prettiest hike we have done. We continued towards the Box Elder peak. Our plan was to make a round trip via Phelps Canyon trail back to trailhead. We did complete this, but the upper part of the ”trail” was completely overgrown. There were a lot of fallen trees and it was completely impossible to recognize the trail almost half way down. Our tracker shows how we crossed the ”trail” several times without recognizing it. We used All Trails all the time and were not able to follow it. Fortunately there was phone coverage with T-Mobile to check Google Earth and more All Trails layers. Seems Our downloaded Horsetail Falls maps did not cover that part any more. Coming down the first 1/10 was fine while the trail was on top of the ridge. Then it turned into dangerous conditions. DO NOT TRY TO USE THAT PART OF THE TRAIL!! It should be removed from All Trails. It’s not a trail or even passable terrain. From middle to the trailhead the trail was again mostly in good condition, just pretty steep. So, do not follow our route even though it in theory makes a nice roundtrip.

Probably not the best day to hit this trail. Heavy rain & wind, but then the hail and lightning just stuck around. Temps dropped and it was muddy and slippery. It’s a decent, hardly traveled, never ever see a soul, overgrown, leg scraping, at best deer trail in some spots, but I like that sort of thing. At mile 1.6ish when you hit the tall trees there are tracks that go right off the trail up to the steep ridge. Not a time saver and some sketchy ridge sections that if you want to avoid you’ll spend a lot of time backtracking and down climbing to go around on the north side of a super steep section. South side of ridge 3/4 up is pure drop offs so you can’t bypass that ridge section either on the south side. Best to stay on the “trail” and keep letting the overgrowth whack your shins and cut up your thighs:) Enjoy the solitude!

Did this from doing dry creek to box elder and Phelps down. The upper half of Phelps is gone especially the upper 1/4 there is no trail to follow, and heavily over grown in the scrub oak sections. It is do able if your alright with doing a fair amount of off trail steep down or up hill travel.

trail is destroyed

Only hiked a little over two miles. The snow was deep enough that we didn’t experience any brushwacking as mentioned in the other posts have indicated. However I could easily see that with no snow it could be wry brushy.

I should have read the prior reviews. I planned a loop up Dry Creek trail and then down Phelps. Phelps Canyon trail was probably somewhat obscure before the fire 3-4 years ago. It is now completely gone and covered with numerous blowdowns. My 8.5 mile loop turned into a 12.5 mile slog when I decided the best course of action was to retrace my steps. It is really pretty and should/could be a fantastic trail. Avoid this trail until maintenance is done.

that trail is death. no way to go it...

This trail becomes a dadgum bushwhack after 2 miles.