Canyon Creek hike outside Junction City, CA is a popular place to access the Trinity Alps. Most of the hikes are long and overnighters but we did a shorter 6 mile version into the wildernes.
We got an early hike one weekday and drove out to the Canyon Creek Trailhead. The drive is up a narrow canyon that dead ends at the wilderness. Trinity Alps Wilderness is the second largest wilderness area in California after it doubled in size when the 1984 California Wilderness Act was passed. The landscape of the Trinity Alps is quite diverse. Creek drainages drop as low as 2,000 ft and surrounding summits top 9,000 ft. Dotted throughout are immaculate alpine lakes and rugged granite peaks. The trail network is intricate and well established…and tough.
Don’t let that intimidate you though. We did a shorter out and back and still got to see plenty. They trail is pretty mellow for the first mile or so and then starts climbing steadily. Steep downhills seem to bother my knee the most so we turned around when it got too steep. The forest is amazing with massive conifers and bigleaf maple. We reached a split and took the left fork down to “the sinks” which normally have water flowing in big pools. The river was low enough when we were there that the sinks were drained. This was our turn around spot.
Coming back down we saw a few groups that were heading out for multi-day hikes up to the alpine lakes. If that’s your thing, go for it!
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