Barton Creek Greenbelt – Full Length 4/14/19

Sunday, April 14, 2019

Barton Creek Greenbelt – Full Length

Perfect weather – sunny and 70s

Ian, Court, Brian, Biff, and Finn

8.9 miles

I have never done the full Greenbelt end to end so we decided to tackle it with my buddy Brian this weekend. The Greenbelt is overly crowded these days, so we tried to avoid the most traveled paths as often as possible.

I also hiked with my full pack (Osprey Exos 58) that I will be using for my thru hike of the PCT next year. I don’t think I’ve officially announced that on the blog, but here we go! Planned start date is March 9, 2020, subject to permitting of course. I packed everything I will be taking on the trail, minus a few odds and ends, and ended up with a pack weight of just over 21 pounds. This includes 2L of water and food for roughly 2-3 days. Pretty happy with that, but will refine my pack and gear more over the next year.

We met at Brian’s house off South Lamar and his wife dropped us off at the trail at the absolute western end (yes Mom, WEST) that I didn’t even know existed. I had always thought it started at the Hill of Life, but you can KINDA start a little further at Lost Creek Blvd. It’s a little bush-whacky to start, but we made it through.

The water was flowing great and the trees are green. Perfect spring weather in Texas. We passed Sculpture Falls, Twin Falls, the Mopac bridge, then the 360 bridge.

We crossed over the creek several times, most of which Biff had to be carried over, which was sometimes tricky whilst carrying a full pack. Finn was not a huge fan either, but the water felt good and our shoes dried fairly quickly.

We got down past Gus Fruh and took a side trail out that led up to Barton Hills Elementary so we could make the walk back to Brian’s house. We skipped about the last mile of the trail, but the road walk made up for it.