You Are Here: Mowglis Trail

I've had the completion of Mowglis Trail on my radar forever.. initially I had wanted to do it as part of a car spot. The descriptions of this trail that I have previously read didn't make it sound overly enticing, so if I could just do it in one direction, that would be great. As it turns out, my car spot buddy has been otherwise occupied for a while.. I miss hiking with her, but life first always. So with options running low as I near the end of this project, and a concern about limited fitness having not been out so much of late, I decided to just go ahead and do an out and back of the 3.5 mile section I needed to complete Mowglis Trail. From what I could gather, parking at the Sculptured Rocks Rd end of the trail was limited, if not non existent. I know you can park at the actual Sculptured Rocks area, but that adds roughly a mile road walk in each direction, which I was not interested in. So I decided to try driving in on New Colony Road all the way to the Mowglis Trail intersection. Having hiked it as Orange Cove Trail last year, I felt this might be doable. Once on the unmaintained section, it was definitely rough in a couple places, but overall not so bad and I was able to get all the way in. The section of Mowglis Trail I would be hiking was a Class VI road for the entire length. Starting at this end effectively means it's downhill first, then uphill back. The road started out somewhat eroded, and I can imagine it would get quite wet and muddy if there had been a lot of rain, but another reason I chose this weekend to hike this was because we haven't had any rain in quite some time.. so although I did encounter some dampness and mud, it was not bad at all. After not near as much erosion as I had expected, the road smoothed out and was more like a dirt or gravel road for the most part. Way better than I had expected! I passed a driveway, which I wasn't expecting and a little further down the road, a man in an ATV passed me by, he must have come from that driveway. He would be the only person I saw all day.. and he passed me again going in the other direction a little while later, perhaps he had gone to check the mail! As the road got closer to the end it followed alongside a relatively dry brook, but it was actually kind of pretty. There were also glimpses through the trees of the ridge up where Elwell Trail is and the Fall colors were starting to pop. Once I reached Sculptured Rocks Rd I just turned around and retraced my steps. The uphill was tougher at this point in the hike and I felt it but overall, this was nowhere near what I had anticipated, and I didn't hate it at all! A really pleasant surprise!

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