Badger Creek

We combined our latest hike with a bit of reconnaissance hoping to check out some possible camp sites for an overnight trip this Summer. The plan was to hike the Badger Creek Trail from Bonney Crossing 7.7 miles to it’s junction with the Badger Creek Cutoff Trail looking for possible tent sites near the junction. This was our first visit to the Badger Creek Wilderness which is located just to the east of Mt. Hood in the Mt. Hood National Forest. Badger Creek flows from Badger Lake through a forested valley before joining Tygh Creek and eventually emptying into the White River. From Bonney Crossing the trail heads up the valley through a diverse forest as it climbs from an elevation of 2200′ to Badger Lake at 4500′. We turned around at just under 3650′ for our hike.

For once we were not one of the first cars at the trailhead, in fact we wound up having to park a little bit up the road as the few spots at the trailhead were taken. After walking down to the trailhead we were quickly greeted by a wilderness sign signaling the edge of the Badger Creek Wilderness.

Not a lot of sunlight was finding it’s way down into the valley in the morning but it did manage a few highlights.

There was an interesting mix of both trees and flowers along the trail. Various types of pine, cedar, fir, and oak trees could be seen with a number of different flowers. The most interesting of the flowers was an odd yellow flower on a tall stalk that we kept seeing. After doing some research I discovered that it was silvercrown.

Some of the other flowers present were balsamroot and lupine:

Columbine

Larkspur

Prairie Star

Fairy Slippers

Arnica

There was also large patches of Vanilla leaf and skunk cabbage which were both really fragrant on this day. The vanilla leaf was much more pleasant. 🙂

While the trail stayed fairly close to Badger Creek there really weren’t a lot of opportunities to get down to the creek. Steep banks and dense vegetation limited access but there were a few places where camp sites had been established that allowed access to the creek.

Shortly after the Post Camp trail joined up with the Badger Creek Trail was the only real discernible waterfall that we saw.

Being down in the forested valley meant that there were not many views up. The best views came at our turnaround point at the cutoff trail junction where we could see the top of Lookout Mountain and a couple of the other high points of the surrounding hills.

As the day went on it got quite warm on the trail and the wildlife started to come out, especially the butterflies. We had seen a couple of deer on the drive in but on the trail we didn’t spot anything larger than a snake.

One of the more interesting sightings was a butterfly that had been caught by a camouflaged spider.

We were surprised that we didn’t see more people on the trail on the way to our turnaround point based on the number of cars that were at the trailhead when we’d set off. We were even mores surprised by the large number of hikers we encountered on our way back to the trailhead. We just kept passing groups heading in the whole afternoon. I’d seen conflicting reports as to the popularity of this trail but apparently on Memorial Day weekend it is rather popular. We found plenty of new cars at and near the trailhead when we got back and as we were packing up at 4pm cars continued to arrive.

We wound up getting a pretty good idea of where we’ll aim to set up camp when we do our next trip to the Badger Creek Wilderness and are looking forward to visiting Lookout Mountain on that trip. Happy Trails!

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