The wildfire smoke has impacted many of the views. This makes this section less enjoyable.

The HRT (High Rock Trail) is awesome and is a great replacement for the ATV road. It’s well designed and nice to walk.

The campsites are sometimes oddly spaced.

People love to break the rules and ride motorized vehicles where they should not.

Elk Lake is amazing; I wish the official route skipped the road and took the ridge or even in the trees. Maybe the Coral Pass Alt is worth checking out or improving? What’s nice about the road is the rec sites and let’s face it; this is decent road. I’m curious about the horse trail that goes through a lot of the rec sites here; maybe there is existing tread close to the road.

You can walk on trail to Boulton Creek instead of the road. This skips the last few kms of the Elk Pass trail but is direct. You can also walk from Boulton Creek back to the GDT using another bike/hiking trail but this one is currently closed due to bear activity.