High Lakes Trail to Fish Lake

It's the Labor Day weekend and what better thing to do than labor on a trail.

Our first stop on this holiday weekend was a trip back to the Cathedral Hills Trails in Grants Pass.  We hiked the same trails as noted on our March blog posting plus a few new ones. Of course all of the spring flowers are now gone.  Rather than do a posting on that hike and bore you with pictures of brown plants, brown trees and the brown trail, we recommend you go back in time and see the flowers from that March hike with us.

When we recently hiked the Brown Mountain Lava Flow trail, we met another hiker who was just starting out on the trail and found through our conversation that he was hiking down to Fish Lake via the High Lakes Trail, eating lunch at the lake, and then returning to the Summit Sno Park parking area.  That sounded like a nice hike for us in the future and sure enough, the future is now.

In addition to our dog Katie, our sister Karen joined us for this relatively easy 5.6 mile hike.  From the Summit Sno Park parking area we hiked the access trail to the PCT and then hiked the PCT across highway 140 to it's intersection with the High Lakes Trail.

The High Lakes Trail from here to Fish Lake is just 2 miles.  The entire High Lakes Trails runs from Fish Lake to Lake of the Woods, and if you include the Fish Lake Trail and Great Meadow Trail at either end, the entire length is over 12 miles one-way.  The trail is for hiking and biking and today we came across a good number of bicyclists, including our auto mechanic Jason and his family.

View of the High Lakes Trail - nice and wide for hikers and bikers

The trail is well maintained, has a few ups and downs, and provides views of Mount McLoughlin and some of the Brown Mountain Lava Flows.

View of the Brown Mountain Lava Flow and Mt McLoughlin from the trail

After hiking a little over an hour, we arrived at Fish Lake and took a break to eat and drink and enjoy the quiet.

The lake itself is very low this year (see pictures below) and as a result there were not a lot of people around despite being a holiday.  Fish Lake, much like Lake of the Woods, does have cabins for rental which makes hiking or biking this trail an ideal activity when visiting or staying at either location.

Very low Fish Lake

Looking towards the boat launch and dock areas of the lake

After we finished our snacks and Katie took a dirt bath, we hiked back along the High Lakes Trail enjoying the views from the other direction.  Despite cool temps when we started, we were plenty warm by hikes' end and especially thankful for a car with air conditioning!

Katie after her "dirt" bath --- one dirty dog!

Having completed these last two hikes, we have now surpassed our previous personal best for hiking miles in a year -220 miles - and are currently at 228 miles.  Just 72 miles away from the big 300!  Hope you join us as we hike on through the last third of the year.

Trekking Together
Glenn and Carol

P.S.  Many times while hiking we take pictures of the sky with the tree tops as an outline.  On the High Lakes Trail hike Glenn took the following picture and after viewing it, we think the outline of trees forms a dog silhouette.....what do you think.  The two ears are at the top with the dog nose to the right. Are we losing our minds and seeing things???

It's a bird, it's a plane, no it's a dog????

Brown Mountain Lava Flow Trail - PCT

August is our least favorite month of the year here in Southern Oregon due to two things -- heat and smoke.  As a result, August tends to be the month that we hike the least and this year is following that trend.  Since our trip to Cape Blanco back in July, we have hiked a couple times locally -- Jacksonville Woodland Trails and the Roxy Ann Loop.  With August almost done, it was time to head for the mountains and get back to more hiking!

Time to hit the trail again......

So off we went early one morning up highway 140 to the Summit Sno Park between Fish Lake and Lake of the Woods to hike a portion of the Pacific Crest Trail known as the Brown Mountain Lava Flow.  We did this hike a few years ago and it was quite memorable.  That was due to the fact that Glenn forgot to put Carol's hiking shoes in the car - a fact not known till our arrival at the trailhead.  As a result, Carol hiked the trail in flipflops  -- true story -- see picture below. This time Glenn remembered Carol's hiking shoes, so all was right in the hiking world.

Proof of the famous "flip-flop" hike!!

From the parking lot it is a short hike along an access trail to get to the PCT.  It is then another short hike along the Fourmile Lake overflow stream till you reach and cross (carefully) highway 140.

The trail proceeds through a nicely forested area and passes the intersection with the High Lakes Trail - another great hike between Fish Lake and Lake of the Woods. Eventually the trail emerges from the forest and begins crossing the lava flow.  The entire Brown Mountain lava flow covers 13 square miles, but for today we would be hiking through four different portions of that lava flow. It didn't take long for us to notice the very strong fragrance from the Chinkapin bushes along the trail.  Other than a few trees, the Chinkapin was the only vegetation along the various portions of the lava flow.

Chinkapin blossoms and berry

One of many large Chinkapin bushes along the trail

These bushes can grow up to 10 feet tall and were loaded with blossoms and berries.  Eventually the chinkapin grows a spiny fruit known as "porcupine eggs" which contain three sweet edible nuts that the local pika and squirrel population consume.

Chinkapin "porcupine eggs"

We had great views of Mount McLoughlin (no snow) along the trail and even had a quick glimpse of Fish Lake. When we hiked this trail in June 2012 there was still snow on Mount McLoughlin (see below), but either way the mountain is still a beautiful and awesome sight.

Mt McLoughlin last time we hiked this trail.....

...and Mt McLoughlin on this hike.....

We also enjoyed blue skies and a light cool breeze throughout our hike and made our turnaround at the "high point" of this segment - just over 3 miles in on the trail.  It is hard to describe how beautiful the views were as  we hiked along this trail, so we will just let a few trail pictures do the talking.  

After crossing highway 140 to get back to the access trail, we noticed a forest service notice posted on a tree.  It stated that due to fire danger, this portion of the PCT would be closed to hikers today.   So we quickly hiked back to the access trail to avoid arrest and deportation, stopping only to let Katie take a few celebratory dips in the stream.

Now that autumn is getting closer, we are looking forward to getting in more hikes as we try to set a new personal hiking mileage record and maybe even reach the 300 mile mark!  Stay tuned.

Trekking Together
Glenn & Carol

Cape Blanco State Park

"Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost" as J.R.R. Tolkien stated in his poem.

However on our camping trip to Cape Blanco State Park, wandering and lost seemed to go together almost every time we hiked!

Our first adventure started well as we hiked from our campsite through the horse camp and onto the Coast Trail.  This trail took us through thickly wooded areas with a glimpse or two of the beautiful ocean.

View of North Beach from trail

View of North Beach looking back toward Cape Blanco

Eventually we came to a gate which directed us straight ahead to continue the Coast trail, but alas, there was no trail straight ahead!?  There was a trail (sort of) going right (uphill) and left (downhill).  We chose uphill first and ran into another fence, this one without a gate.  So it was downhill we went.  It didn't take long to run into the local residents of this trail, a good sized herd of sheep who were just as surprised to see us as we were to see them.  Since we had our dog Katie with us, the sheep were probably having flashbacks to their past "herding" days and began quickly moving down the trail ahead of us.

Part of the sheep herd making a run for it as we approach!

We eventually made it through the sheep (and their droppings) and continued our loop hike.  The next gate had a sign for the Castle Rock Trail which we took since it led to the beach.  With the river to our right, cliffs to our left and the ocean in front of us, we continued along and after passing through one last dune, came upon the North Shore beach of Cape Blanco.

North Beach and Cape Blanco in the distance.

We hiked along this long stretch of beach enjoying the sound of the ocean and the large pieces of driftwood on the shoreline.  Between the sun, wind and hiking in beach sand, we were pretty tired out when we arrived at the North Shore access trail and had to look UP to the  viewpoint we needed to hike to.

Some of the driftwood along the North Beach shoreline

Carol and Katie along North Beach

Sea Stack along North Beach 

Once we arrived at the viewpoint along the lighthouse road, we connected back with coast trail and hiked the trail through the dense thickets along the South Beach cliffs till we connected with a short trail back to the campground. Whew - for a two and a half hour hike, we were tired and proceeded to take an afternoon nap.  Yes, required naps are another benefit to hiking.

On the following day we took another hike that involved wandering and being lost.  We decided to hike a "horse" trail to the beach and then loop back around through the horse camp.  A 7 mile trek that didn't seem difficult on paper.  The fact that it was a horse trail should have raised some red flags.

The first part of the hike to the beach access was easy to follow and allowed for some great views of the South Beach coastline.

South Beach view from Horse trail

Another view of South Beach from Horse trail

What remains of the last person to attempt a hike of the Horse trail??

But once we connected to the trail back to the horse camp, the horse part of the trail took over.  You see horses are much taller than people, have 4 legs and their rider really doesn't care what they run into below the saddle.  We on the other hand were under six feet tall, had two legs and we do care about plants, bushes, mud and so forth on the ground. After an hour of bushwhacking and hiking this evidently seldom used trail, we turned around and backtracked to our starting point since where we were and what the map showed did not seem to match up.  Add to that the 30-40 mph winds whipping through the trees and all the branches along the trail from past winds storms and you get the picture of two hikers and a dog making a beeline back to the safety of the campground.  Time for another nap!!

So after those two adventures, our last hike was along the safe and well marked South Beach shoreline. Instead of hiking south along the beach, we hiked north back towards the end of the cape.  It was low tide, but not low enough to hike around the entire cape.

Hiking the road down to the South Beach

Sea Stack on South Beach

This hike was awesome as we got to see a large Sea Stack with nesting cormorants, tide pools with plenty of Sea Stars (starfish), and near the end of the cape we watched and heard a pair of Peregrine falcons, a first for both of us.

Sea Star in the tide pools

View of South Beach from inside one of many caverns

Cormorants on Sea Stack - can you see the young cormorants?

We enjoyed our 4-day stay at Cape Blanco State Park which is one of our favorite Oregon State Parks. Plus the temperature was in the 60's for our entire stay - sure beats the heat back in Medford.  Including all the hiking we did on this trip, we are now at 200 miles for the year.  Since our best yearly hiking miles is 226, we are excited that we have five months of hiking left in the year and have set our sights on the 300 mile mark.

Trekking Together
Glenn & Carol