White Rabbit & Mike Uhtoff Trails

January 7, 2018

We began our 2018 hiking year by heading over to Ashland and hiking at the Oredson-Todd Woods and Siskiyou Mountain Park.

And we're off....let the 2018 hiking year begin!

In looking back, it has been over two years since we last hiked here.  There is a network of trails, much like the Jacksonville Forest Park, Jacksonville Woodlands, and Cathedral Hills Park, that offer you multiple choices for your hiking route.  Katie also enjoys that it is dog friendly.

Where the clouds and the hills meet.

One very large boulder along the White Rabbit trail

Many of the trails have names from the story of Alice in Wonderland.  We mainly hiked two trails -- the White Rabbit trail and the Mike Uhtoff trail.  The White Rabbit is from Alice in Wonderland, Mike Uhtoff is not.  Mike was the Portland Audubon's first managing director and later moved to Ashland where he helped the city acquire Siskiyou Mountain Park as open space parkland. Thank you Mike!

Proof that there was blue sky.....for a few minutes.

We began our 5.4 mile loop hike at the Lupine Drive trailhead and quickly made our way through some forested sections of the Oredson-Todd Woods.  We then crossed Clay Creek and began hiking up, up, up and up the White Rabbit trail.  That climb sure got our heart and lungs working in the cool air.  Even the sun came out, but only during our climb.

White Rabbit trail along the crest

Once we got to the "crest", the White Rabbit trail wandered through the woods of Siskiyou Mountain Park until we came to the Queen of Hearts trail which was our turnaround point today.  This short connector trail took us to the Mike Uhtoff trail which we then hiked back along and down the crest to return to Clay Creek and the trailhead.

Low bridge on the Queen of Hearts trail

 The Mike Uhtoff trail has many switchbacks (next time we will count them) while descending from the crest and also offers many opportunities to stop and view the surrounding Ashland Hills.

View along the Mike Uhtoff trail on the way down

From our experiences, we would recommend that you hike the Mike Uhtoff trail up to the crest, take the Queen of Hearts trail to connect to the White Rabbit trail, and hike that trail back to the trailhead.  For a shuttle hike you can also hike through the Siskiyou Mountain Park all the way to Lithia Park, but we have never tried that.

One last view of the surrounding Ashland hills.

Well, we never ran into anyone named Alice during our hike nor did we fall down a hole.  But we did enjoy getting out into the woods and hiking these trails, despite the cold and cloudy weather.

Trekking Together
Glenn & Carol

Oredson-Todd Woods Trails

For our third hike in a row, we tried a new trail - or in this case, a new set of trails.

We drove to Ashland and the Oredson-Todds Woods trailhead on a beautiful sunny Sunday. We started by hiking the main trail, which is only a half mile in length and follows Clay Creek. Various trails branch off from this main trail, but we hiked the half mile to the end to see the Clay Creek waterfall. It was pretty, but had much less water than the picture they show on their website.

Carol and Katie leading the way down the main trail towards Clay Creek Falls

There is set of connecting trails that lead from the Clay Creek area up to the crest and it is known as the Creek-To-Crest trail. We didn’t follow this route, but you can by looking for the Creek-To-Crest Logo on the various trail signs.

The Creek-to-Crest trail marker.

Our main trails up to the crest were the Mike Uhtoff and White Rabbit. The key word here being UP!

We were treated to beautiful views of the surrounding mountains and Ashland as we took our frequent breaks on the upward trek. They were lots of people out today enjoying the sunshine and since these trails are dog friendly, there were many four-legged hikers too. Yes, we did bring Katie.

View from the Mike Uhtoff trail

Typical look of the trails, except most had a more uphill slant.

View of Ashland and surrounding hills

The map we had showed the Hiker-Only trails, so it was somewhat confusing when we came across the multi-use trails that did not show on our map. We managed to ask a few joggers & hikers for guidance on our way back down from the crest to Clay Creek since we wanted to take a different route but still end up in the right place.

All in all we enjoyed the new trails and after we did further research, we may go back and try a longer hike up to the crest and then work our way across the crest towards Lithia Park. That way we could hike the Alice In Wonderland trail, White Rabbit trail, Cheshire Cat trail and the Looking Glass trail all in one day. Hopefully we won’t run into the Queen of Hearts if we do.

Trekking Together

Glenn & Carol