Coe question: Poverty Flat to China Hole

The climb out of Poverty Flat is pretty steep - a lot of people don't get it clean the first time (or two or three).

If you want to stay somewhat dry (as in not have sopping wet feet), at the Poverty Flat road creek crossing you can hop rocks on the downstream side of the hole. If you ride the road across, your feet will get drenched. Your feet will probably only be a bit wet from the two rocky (but shallow) creek crossings at the bottom of Middle Ridge.

Approaching Los Cruzeros, if you go down the Mahoney Meadows road to the creek you can stay fairly dry by heading just to the right of the creek crossing - you go through small rivulets and gravel bars and bushes, instead of the deep water of the crossing.

If you take the Schafer Corral trail, you can do a fairly shallow crossing, scramble over some rocks (rideable by some, but very technical with slick moss), and it stays to the left of the stream (on some really cool, narrow singletrack) the rest of the way.

Either way, don't go up the very steep road on the south side of where the Mahoney Meadows road crosses the creek. Take the singletrack to the right instead, and you go around the hill with cool riding instead of up then down a pointless steep short hill. The singletrack branches, stay left (the right goes into a gravel stream bed that leads nowhere). The left goes to the sign at Los Cruzeros. Then there is another sort of deep water crossing right before the Mahoney Meadows wall, but again if you cross just to the right it's pretty shallow (you'll get wet feet going straight across on the road).

The Mahoney Meadows wall is short, but steep. The steepest part is fairly muddy right now.

And if you forget all the other advice, remember this: take the Lost Spring trail, NOT the road - the road is ugly steep, and the Lost Spring trail is a fun singletrack trail that's not too bad going up. There is a restroom at the top where it intersects with the China Hole trail, so you can't miss that intersection.