This was my fourth trip to Boulder Top and it was pretty lackluster. On a trip there with Chris one year earlier we hiked to a cabin shown on the USGS topo map at Torgerson Lake. This time I wanted to hike to another cabin shown on the topo southwest of Riddle Flat. I drove down to the area on Friday evening and found my usual camp spot near Pine Creek occupied, so I backtracked about a mile and found an even nicer spot I hadn’t noticed before. There was a wonderful sunset as a storm hovered to the west and north, but it never rained on me. I read until bedtime then turned in, sleeping in the Jeep.
Thousand Lake Mountain looming darkly above Pine Creek
Camp spot along Pine Creek
Sunset clouds above Thousand Lake Mountain
Rain to the west
In the morning I drove onto Boulder Top and checked out a few corrals I’d noticed in the satellite imagery. The first one, which I called “round corral,” was almost perfectly round and made of the rounded sides of logs cut off using a sawmill. There was previously a lot of logging in the area and surely this corral was built from the scrap lumber.
Round corral
Round corral
Round corral
The next two corrals seemed older. The first (“old corral”) was quite deteriorated, although judging from what’s left it probably wasn’t very substantial to begin with. The second one (“square corral”) is about 500′ long on each side. It was similarly rotted but has more recently been surrounded by a barbed wire fence. I also stopped at Twin Lakes and walked around them both.
Old corral
Old corral gate
Old corral
Mound of white flowers
Inlet to lake 11,073′
Square corral
Dandelions everywhere
Twin Lakes
Twin Lakes
Boulder Draw Exclosure, Established 1983
I continued driving south and reached a place to park along the road nearest to the cabin shown on the map. It was a straight shot west across fairly level terrain from there to the cabin. It took me about 1.5 hours to arrive in the cabin area, and there was absolutely nothing to be seen there. I hadn’t been able to see the cabin in the satellite imagery, but there were thick pine trees so perhaps that was to be expected. On the ground, however, it was clear to me there never, ever was a cabin there. From the very edge of the small lake where the map shows the cabin, there’s a steep and heavily wooded hill for several hundred feet to the top of a small hill which is also heavily wooded. Nowhere in that area was there a large enough and flat enough spot for a cabin to have ever existed.
Supposed cabin on the USGS topo
Beginning of the hike
Faint game trail
Trees along the way
Small lake
Reflections
I hiked back to the Jeep and contemplated the rest of my weekend. My only other plan was to hike to South Point the next day, which would complete my goal of visiting every named point on Boulder Mountain. But I also knew that was going to be a boring hike through the trees with no good views or anything else interesting to see. The cabin was supposed to be the highlight of the trip and it turned out to be a figment of the imagination of some USGS employee. Before I even got back to the Jeep I’d made up my mind to drive home. It’s boring out here alone and even more so when your plans don’t pan out.
Photo Gallery: Boulder Top IV