Spent my Sunday running around in the hills. Started from The Tarbell/Chinook intersection. There's no official trailhead, just a small pull out if you know where to look. The road through there must be a fairly new extension of L1180, since its not on the DNR map past Kloochman Butte, or designated as an official DNR road by Google maps. If you switch to satellite view, you'll be able to see it. I haven't had a chance to follow it all the way to see if it meets with any other roads, but it sure is a handy way to get to the north end of Silver Star without having to do the first four miles of Tarbell.
The climb up Chinook was breath-taking as always, (physically and spiritually), with the classic fog-in-the-valley-sun-on-the-mountain morning of a PNW summer. Only saw one other group the whole day, coming up from Grouse Vista.
I was really glad I decided to take the loop clock-wise. I had always assumed that coming down Chinook would be far more ankle-friendly than coming down the rock slide that is Grouse Vista. After running mp 10.5-4 of Tarbell for the first time, however, I can officially say that clockwise is the better idea, since climbing up from Hidden Falls to Grouse Vista would be a sun exposed death march. There is extensive clear cutting in some very steep areas particularly around mp 7. A little bit of trail intuition is needed to flow through some of the road intersections.
I'm happy to have another section of Tarbell under my feet. All that's left now is Larch-Rock Creek. I'm also glad to have finally stepped up to a challenging route that has been eluding me, for various reasons, for quite some time now.
Red = Total milage ~ 12.5 (map) but it felt a lot longer. My GPS watch had a low battery, so I'll verify next time. Would also be nice to compare accuracy with the Tarbell mileposts.
Black = rough guess of where the new section of road goes.
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