Fiery Gizzard // Feb 2025
Backpacking through the Fiery Gizzard
SUMMARY 🔴
DISTANCE/ELEVATION
12 miles, 1600 ft elevation
DEPART: 4PM on Feb 7
RETURN: Afternoon on Feb 9
COST: $35/Scouts, $14/Adults
WHO: Scouts who have been on at least 2 Troop outings and are prepared for a very challenging hike.
ELECTRONICS REMINDER 📱🕹️
One of the great benefits of heading out on any of our trips is that we’re able to unplug from our digital world for a few days. Electronics are allowed while traveling to our destinations, but we have a longstanding rule that Scouts are not allowed to use electronics while on our trips (i.e. if brought they’ll be left in vehicles and not used during the trip).
ITINERARY
The Fiery Gizzard is a very technical trail with some amazing rock formations, waterfalls, bouldering, and unique trails. We’ll leave at 4 on Friday afternoon to give us a little bit of daylight when we arrive at the Grundy State Forest trailhead and hike about 0.6 miles to a group site for the night. On Saturday we’ll hike a challenging ~7 miles to the Little Cove group site, and on Sunday we’ll hike about 4 miles out to the Foster Falls trailhead.
The first several miles of the trail meander along the Fiery Gizzard creek, over/around/under boulders. There are multiple points where the trail “disappears” from the ground because it’s all rocks - the painted blazes are your guide through. After slowly descending into the gorge over several miles, we’ll make a steep climb practically straight up to the top of the gorge. From that point on the trail will be much more “traditional” through the woods.
It’s staying lighter later as winter marches on, but we’ll need to leave a little earlier on Friday to give us a little bit of daylight to hike in the short distance to our campsite for Friday night. In order to have enough daylight we will not stop for dinner on the way down - so please either eat something before you come or bring something that you can eat on the way or when we get into camp. The benefit of this approach is that we’ll have the full day available to us on Saturday when we’ll have the most challenging hiking ahead of us.
We’ll also need to do some car shuttling before we set out on Saturday - we’ll figure out logistics of that when we get there (whether we do it Friday night or Saturday morning).
MEALS
The has trail tested recipes ready to go. See for additional inspiration. Cooks should complete the Backpacking Meal Planner.pdf linked on the as they plan their meals.
Cooking Budget
$21 per person
MAPS
This embedded link can't be shown.
WHO’S COMING
RSVP list current as of 8:00AM Feb 4.
