Buck Prairie – Fawn Hollow Loop

The Buck Prairie Trails are traditionally for x-country skiing, but the web of Forest Service roads up here are great for all the virus proof social distancing you might want to do.

Driving 

– Drive up Dead Indian Memorial Road to Howard Prairie Lake and turn right before you get there. It is 18 miles and about 30 minutes. For today, we are driving past the “Formal” Buck Prairie entrance and 2 miles further on is Buck Prairie 2 on your right.

Parking

– It is wide open. Lots of dirt pull out areas but nothing seems super obvious. For our purposes park just off Dead Indian Memorial Road. Be polite and park like a human, not like the orangutan in the jacked-up Dodge Ram I saw there last week. Oh, you can drive this entire trail and just pull off anywhere you want to start your personal adventure, but let’s start off like a normal person and you can get weird another time.

The Adventure

– Fawn Hollow Loop is a nice 4 mile lollipop route along the Forest Service roads up here at Buck Prairie. Let’s start up at Dead Indian Memorial Road and walk downhill toward the creek. Cross the creek and at the first intersection, instead of continuing forward along the creek take the uphill section to your left. That stretch along the creek dead ends into a cattle fence pretty quickly but you can check that out to add a half mile.

Back to the uphill where you will quickly hit another intersection. The left fork heads down to the creek in about a mile so take the right fork continuing uphill.  At about 1.5 miles in total you will hit the Fawn Hollow Loop intersection. You can go either direction obviously, but let go to the right. Counter clockwise.

As this road loops a number of logging roads come and go from the right, the outside of the loop if you will. Alway stay to your left and you will reconnect with your loop and can find your way back to your car. If you miss a turn, you can find yourself turned around very quickly.  Don’t get too cocky just because these are roads and not trails.

Be aware, if you have your old Buck Prairie Nordic Trails map with you, those “trails” don’t often follow the Forest Service roads. They just cut through sections of the woods. Oh, you can follow the Blue Arrows if you wish, but trust me… it’s way less interesting without snow.