Sagara Trailmaster

Thunderdome 2022-23 Sagara Trailmaster, Horween CXL Color 8 I do a daily 3-6 miles on Spokane’s South Hill Bluff trails. The Bluff alternates between forested draws and sage steppe open hillsides. With snow, mountaineering skiers run the fall line down and skin back up the trails. I drop from the top at High Drive to the bottom trail along Hangman Creek and follow the benches. This year we got in 856 trail miles, 80 plus days with snow. At 72, that’s pretty good. Kahtoola micro and nano spikes are the ticket, but the TPU harness darkened the leather. They are very well-made boots. I chose the CXL this year, as last year’s veg tan got stiff. The CXL was exemplary. This leather loves a beating. Scuffs and scars just seem to heal over with a good daily washing, a little brushing and perhaps a light Bick 4 each month. And they stayed very flexible. We got in a couple of trips: The So/Cal coast in January. The Great Basin along the Oregon/Nevada border is home to pronghorns, Sagehens and literally thousands of petroglyphs (rock art). Some are covered with ash from the eruption of Mt. Mazama (think Crater Lake National Park), which was deposited over 7,000 years ago. 16,000-year-old campsites have been dated. The petroglyphs are in very remote locations along basalt rims at 5-6,000 feet and dry lake beds. So, we busted through big sage, juniper, cactus, and rock hopped basalt. We waded through alkali dust and ash from ancient St Helens eruptions, Mt. Mazama, the Newberry Craters and more. It's a hoot to research arky reports from 1935, 1963, old maps, current satellite, imagination. Hiking every day with downloaded maps. Scrambling to a possible location, and seeing where I might camp if the lakes were full and filled with waterbirds, as they were. And looking uphill from lithic scatter. They made a lot of points and the obsidian chips drift downhill. No collecting!