March 25, 2017
The town of Jacksonville here in Southern Oregon has 2 trail systems. The Jacksonville Woodlands trails cover around 16 miles and are located within blocks of downtown. The Jacksonville Forest trails are about 2 miles from downtown and now have over 30 miles of multi-use trails. Since we typically hike the Woodland trails more often, we decided to visit the Forest Park and hike for a couple hours. What we found was that the Forest Park has made numerous improvements and upgrades and has many new trails either completed or in the works!
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| Time for some hiking! |
For our hike today we trekked along the Rail, Ponderosa Snag, Norling, Canyon Falls, Boulder and Ol' Miners trails to cover around 5 miles. We didn't know anything about the new trails, but while hiking the Ponderosa trail we saw a trailhead sign for the Siskiyou trail which we had never seen before.
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| What? A new trail???? |
Not knowing where this trail led or how long it was in length, we continued on the familiar trails we noted enjoying the Fawn Lilies, Houndstongue and even a few Trillium wildflowers that had made their Spring appearance.
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| Our first Trillium sighting |
Our favorite trail of the day was the Canyon Falls trail and one we would recommend you hike before summer gets here and the creek is down to a trickle. Even though the trail is less than a mile long, you hike along Jackson Creek and are treated to many small but beautiful waterfalls that beg to have their picture taken.
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| One of the many small waterfalls along Canyon Falls trail |
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| View of Jackson Creek from Canyon Falls trail |
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| A small waterfall squeezes between rocks in an effort to be seen. |
We did have a few trees to clear along our hike, so here is the largest one that we encountered. No problem for Katie, but us humans aren't so agile and it took us a little longer to get by.
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| Wind and rain have taken their toll on trees this year |
When our hike was over and we arrived at our parking area, we visited the kiosk and picked up one of the new map/brochures on the park. These list each trail, it's length, difficulty and notes new trails recently finished and/or in progress. We counted 6 new trails added or being added since we hiked this time last year. There are also 7 parking areas located at various trail junctions throughout the park. Each parking area has loop cards that correspond with various colored diamonds that mark trail loops within the park and you are encouraged to take these cards with you on your hike - just return them when you are done. They've also added shelters and overlooks on some trails and have a list of Points of Interest within the park. So stay tune for some more Jacksonville Forest postings as we plan to go back and do a couple of new hikes this year. Better yet, get out and hike there yourself if you live in the Southern Oregon area.
Trekking Together
Glenn and Carol
