Rick and I had an absolutely gorgeous day on some new-to-us trails!!!!
We were there during the ideal time of year. The leaves were starting to fall off, making the Soup Can trail between Cook Hill and Augsberger Summit easy to find. Too bad the thorns on the rose bushes don’t fall off in autumn!
Previous FKT setters have not described the Cook Hill Trail and we think it might be helpful to future FKT setters to point out that about 2 miles up the Cook Hill trail there is a fork. If you take the right (east) fork, the trail goes up and over the Cook Hill summit then continues northwest to the radio towers. If you take the left (west) fork, the trail skirts the summit and goes straight to the radio towers. You can see on our GPS track that we took the right fork and summited Cook Hill directly. The route description indicates that all 3 summits are necessary for route completion, so future FKT setters should also be certain to summit Cook Hill. We do not wish to flag or invalidate any previous FKTs where the runners missed the Cook Hill summit due to taking the left fork on Cook Trail.
We carried all the food and water we used and did not get supplies from anyone.