28 miles from Georgetown. 2-8 moderate miles. MAP
This trail is one of the newest built by the USFS in the Georgetown District. The trail was built to circumvent private land and to detour the steeper Frey trail with a longer but gentler grade. The trail is mostly unused as no one seems to want to go that way but it is a better way to access the ranch site and also access the Belix Trail.
Directions: Take Wentworth Springs Road 23 miles to turn L on Eleven Pines Road (sign says Hell Hole 28). Drive 5 miles to Ellicott’s Bridge and park along the road on the NW side.
The trail is not well marked but begins right away as you go up-stream on the unpaved road towards the Hunter’s trail. It climbs on the Left as a 4WD road. There’s a carsonite stake post here for the trail.
The trail climbs using long switchbacks to reach the Belix trail in about 1 ½ miles. The Belix is a prehistoric Indian trail that connected a long chain of Indian settlements that were perched along the canyon rim of the Rubicon.
Going L on the Belix you can hike four miles to FS 14N22. Watch for the new Belix that leaves north from the old Belix (now road) not far from Eleven Pines Rd. That trail swivels left/west, crosses the paved road, continuing west and paralleling the river until it ends at a junction with 14N22.
The Belix used to continue to Pigeon Roost village and then on to the Dad Young Spring village.
Going R on the Belix takes you on the prehistoric trail for about a mile where it junctions the Frey trail. Left climbs steeply to become FS 14N11 in a mile. Straight ahead at the junction goes into the Ellicott ranch site where there is a spring and a few ancient apple trees and grape vines. A forest fire consumed the old ranch structures long ago. The Ellicotts’ lived here in 1890.
There’s a maze of trails in the Rubicon canyon and Nevada Point ridges mostly made obsolete after the Eleven Pines road came here in 1964. Logging erased many old routes and logging roads were built over some other trail routes. Shucks.
Get Off Your Gass 