Trip Report
Day Hike - Dirty Harry's Peak Trail, Dirty Harry's Museum
Discover Dirty Harry’s Museum. There are multiple viewpoints along the way. We’ll follow the road-to-trail conversion of the Dirty Harry's Peak trail to Dirty Harry's Balcony. Then, continue to Dirty Harry’s Museum and beyond.
Roseanne Lorenzana
- Wed, Nov 1, 2023
- Day Hike - Dirty Harry's Peak Trail
- Dirty Harry's Peak, Balcony & East Balcony
- Day Hiking
- Successful
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- Road suitable for all vehicles
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As always, the trail to Dirty Harry’s Balcony is interesting by virtue of its diversity: the varying pitches of elevation gain, the varying forest (sometimes open floor, sometimes ancient decaying stumps amongst new, sometimes cedars, sometimes hemlocks), the varying type of tread (sometimes roots, sometimes rocks, sometimes soft forest duff) and the varying views of its I-90 neighbors. The boot path to Dirty Harry’s Museum is its usual rustic self; first, parting aside cedar boughs and maneuvering through roots and the rubble of a logger's road.
Museum Creek, which can sometimes be a whitewater rush, today was a trickle and easily crossed with no rock hopping required. After the Balcony junction, Dirty Harry’s Peak trail is a steep and obvious road-to-trail conversion with abrupt forested slope dropping below the road and high cutbank on the uphill side. IMO this is the least interesting portion of the route.
Along trail to Dirty Harry's Balcony, the forest is varied and vine maples still provide autumn color. 
Trail to Dirty Harry's Balcony offers a variety in types of trail tread as it meanders up the slope.
To this trip, we added even more spice by including a trip to Dirty Harry’s Museum, as well as to the hewn log viewing bench further up the trail toward Dirty Harry’s Peak. Stepping along the rocky rubble of the logger's road toward the Museum, just when we wondered if there’s anything interesting in this tangle of forest, voila, around the last bend loomed the impossibly perched derelict vehicle. Here, we had our lunch and signed the log. The earliest date is 2009 and the paper is waterlogged. The book is too fragile to explore it for information about who left it. So cool that someone added this artifact to the existing artifact.
After the Balcony junction, Dirty Harry’s Peak trail is the least interesting part of the trail. Still, it's amazing that such a road could even exist given the sloped conditions. Here, the destination is the gem that awaits. Finally, beyond the passage of alder trees and blackberries we encountered an immense block of wood which portended the mighty log with its hewn benches sufficient for at least 12 cozy people and views of McClellan Butte along with the Duke and Duchess of Kent. Surely there’s a story here regarding how the log came into its current shape. Another logging artifact, maybe?? Today, this was our turn around point: 7 miles, 2300’ gain, ~5 hr with a lot of sightseeing stops.
