Oregon Hikers Field Guide – wanderingyuncks

We had our first heat advisory of the year issued for the weekend which prompted us to think twice about the 12 plus mile loop with over 3400′ of elevation gain that we had on our schedule for this week. I went looking at some of the hikes I had on our schedule for future Junes hoping to find something a little less strenuous and landed on the Rogers Peak Loop. This was another Oregon Hikers Field Guide entry. That entry described a 7.1-mile loop with 1065′ of elevation gain and an optional visit to Blue Lake which would add about 1.25-miles and 450′ of extra elevation gain. At 3706′ in elevation Rogers Peak is the third highest peak in the Coast Range behind 4319′ Mt. Bolivar and 4097′ Marys Peak (post).

The hike is located on private timberland using logging roads for almost the entire route. A big thank you to Hampton Lumber for allowing walk-in recreation to the public. Because this is private land access can be restricted at any time so, please check with Hampton Lumber before heading out and be respectful when visiting. They have a web page devoted to recreation here. Also note that weekdays may not be the best time to visit to avoid logging operations and log trucks using the roads.

We followed the Oregon Hikers directions to the trailhead which is just a small pullout before a yellow gate on Gilmore Creek Road. The roads to the trailhead were in good shape, but sections of the final 3.5-miles are very steep and windy.
The pullout only has room for two cars, a third might be able to squeeze in but it would be tight. DO NOT drive past the gate if it happens to be open as motor vehicle use by the public is not allowed beyond the gate.

Again please respect the private landowner’s rights and property. They have no obligation to allow the public access.

Before we started hiking we got distracted by the various wildflowers blooming near the gate.

Thimbleberry

Paintbrush

Lupine

Vanilla leaf

Inside-out flower

Iris

Starflower

Bunchberry

Trailing blackberry

Once we started hiking the road split shortly after the gate with the right-hand fork being the shortest route to Rogers Peak but being short also means steeper. We followed the field guide route and forked left.

The roadbed was fairly level as it traversed along a logged hillside which provided views of the Coast Range.

Cedar Butte and Triangulation Peak in the distance. (post)

Closer look at Cedar Butte

The roadbed also provided the open conditions that many wildflowers prefer.

Paintbrush and penstemon

Beargrass

Unsurprisingly the road passed a number of clearcuts but there was some intact forest along the route as well.

Thimbleberry and blackberry blossoms along the road.

Raspberry

Thistle

Lupine

Rosy bird’s-foot trefoil

We arrived at a saddle 0.8-miles from the car where we stayed right along the hillside.

A section of intact forest.

Coastal monkeyflower

Window to a clearcut.

Window to green.

View across the Rogers Creek drainage.

Columbine and thimbleberry

False lily-of-the-valley

Bunchberry bunch

Valerian

Another thistle

Fairy lanterns

Chipmunk

Anemone

Paintbrush, lupine, and iris

Junco

Clover

Salmonberry

Buttercups

Iris between a thimbleberry (green) and vine maple (reddish).

Scouler’s corydalis

Stink currant

California figwort. This one was driving us crazy trying to ID it on the hike. There was quite a bit of it along the route.

Another stretch of green forest.

Candyflower

At the 1.9-mile mark we came to a second saddle where we again stayed right along the hillside.

Views now were to the north where Saddle Mountain rose above a sea of clouds.

Humbug Mountain and the aptly named Saddle Mountain (post) rising above the clouds.

Saddle Mountain

Paintbrush

Self-heal

The view ahead. The route thus far had been mostly shaded due to the hillsides shadow which was helping to keep the temperatures down.

Youth-on-age

Bleeding heart

Plumed solomonseal

At the 2.8-mile mark we passed a road leading off to the left past a large pile of gravel.

Just 0.2-miles beyond that road (the 3-mile mark of the hike) another road forked off to the left, but downhill. The road to the left led down to Blue Lake, the optional detour. We decided that we should go down and visit the lake at least this one time to say we’d seen it.

The road lost approximately 450′ of elevation in 0.6-miles to a saddle above the little lake where a user trail next to a pole led down to the shore.

Blue Lake along the North Fork Wilson River. There were a few rough-skinned newts swimming in the lake.

After visiting the lake we made the relatively steep climb back up and continued on the loop.

Heading up. The shade was becoming more sporadic as the morning progressed.

A mustard

Another junco

Best guess is slender phlox.

A tenth of mile from the junction, or the 3.1-mile mark of the loop, we came to another fork. Once again we stayed right, and now the road began to climb.

Fork ahead.

The shade was abandoning us, and it was getting warm fast.

In person this was one of the best bunchberry displays we’d seen.

We’d been keeping an eye out for Mt. St. Helens on the horizon, but someone missed it the first time it should have been visible. We did however spot Mt. Rainier as we made our way up the road.

It was just hazy enough that the snowy peaks blended in on the horizon.

Mt. Rainier

We passed a gravel pit as the road rounded a ridge where we had a view toward Rogers Peak.

There were some wonderful clumps of penstemon at the gravel pit.

Saddle Mountain from the gravel pit.

The road continuing to climb past the gravel pit.

At the 3.9-mile mark of the loop we came to yet another fork where we again stayed right to continue up to the ridge below Rogers Peak.

Taking a left at the fork would have put us onto the road seen below.

Dandelion (non-native) in the penstemon. There were surprisingly few non-native wildflowers which was nice.

These little guys might be some sort of speedwell.

Variable-leaf collomia (pink) and slender phlox (white)

Looking back after having made it onto the ridge. The loop route is the road seen on the right cutting along the hillside, not the roadbed straight ahead going up the knoll.

From the ridge we finally could see Mt. St. Helens (and Mt. Adams).

Mt. St. Helens (post) to the left and Mt. Adams to the right of the hill.

More zoomed in shot of Mt. St. Helens.

Closer look at the recently more active Mt. Adams.

In addition to the two Washington volcanos Oregon’s Mt. Hood was visible to the east.

Again the sun angle and haze made it hard to make out the snow peaks.

We actually stayed left at a fork along the ridge and at the 4.5-mile mark of the loop came to the spur road up Rogers Peak.

Don’t go right here, one of the few times we stayed left. This road would take you back down to the other side of the loop near the second saddle we passed through.

Violets

Oregon grape

Black currant

Spur road up Rogers Peak.

When the field guide entry was written this was an abandoned track but at some point recently the road was restored. Heather decided to skip the somewhat steep 0.2-mile climb up this road as the summit is relatively viewless due to trees. I however wanted to tag the summit and find the summit register so up I went.
Lomatium

Wide area at the end of the road below the actual summit.

The summit was a short scramble up this hillside to the right (NE) of the road.

The mossy rocks at the summit where the register is located.

Sourgrass

The summit register cans below the rocks.

I signed the register and left a Wanderingyuncks card in the can then had a quick snack and headed back to the loop to work on catching up to Heather.

While there wasn’t much of a view from the summit on the way down the road I had a pretty good view of Mt. St. Helens.

Back on the loop. You can see the road to the summit on the right heading uphill.

The only mushrooms I noticed all hike.

An alumroot

Penstemon and beargrass.

A clodius parnassian on arnica.

Looking out on the horizon I spotted another faint snowy peak on the horizon. The hump in the center foreground between the two trees is Kings Mountain (post).

Low quality due to how much I had to zoom and the poor visibility, but this is Mt. Jefferson.

Arnica

A half mile after rejoining the loop a short spur road on the right led to a nice viewpoint and where I found Heather.

Rogers Peak to the right of the spur road.

The two higher peaks to the right are Angora (post) and West Onion.

Mt. Rainier

We returned to the loop and began to descend.

The wildflowers had been good all day, but the stretch of road after the spur up Rogers Peak was spectacular.

Penstemon clumps with Saddle Mountain in the background.

Four tenths of a mile beyond the summit road we passed to the left of a small knoll.

The road steepened here as it dropped down to a saddle in another 0.4-miles.

We made a sharp right turn at the saddle and got a brief respite from the steep descent as the road passed above Morris Creek.

Robin

My guess is that this is a non-native species given it was growing in the roadbed, but it was pretty.

The road eventually steepened again as it dropped down to the fork near the gate where we’d gone left earlier in the morning.

The road junction as we decsended.

The gate from the junction.

My GPS showed 8.5-miles total including the side trip to Blue Lake, visit to the summit, and the viewpoint on the spur road. Total elevation gain was approximately 1525′.

This wound up being a very enjoyable hike. The wildflower displays and variety was impressive, we got to see five Cascade volcanoes along with several familiar peaks in the Coast Range, and we only saw one other person all morning. (Shortly after setting off we’d spoken with a Hampton Lumber employee who was driving out.) Again I wanted to acknowledge how much we appreciate when the lumber companies offer recreational access to their land. Happy Trails!

Flickr: Rogers Peak Loop

September has always been a bit tricky for planning hikes. Historically it seemed there was always at least one weekend where snow returned to the mountains while other weekends might see rain or 90 degree temperatures. In recent years extreme wildfire behavior has entered into the mix resulting in some devastating fires and some very unhealthy air quality as was the case with the Labor Day fires in 2020. A rare east wind event that year caused a number of wildfires to explode.

A similar, but not nearly as strong, wind event was forecast for Friday & Saturday which coincided with our third attempt at using a Central Cascade Overnight Wilderness Permit. We had planned on trying to reach Goat Peak in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness after having failed to do so in September 2018 (post) but the combination of extreme fire danger and forecast for wide spread smoke resulted in our once again deciding not to utilize the permit we’d obtained. (An early snowstorm in 2021 and thunderstorms in July of this year were the reasons we’d changed our permit plans.)

We were still hoping to sneak some sort of hike in so I started looking for another idea. We didn’t want to go too far from home due to the potential for fast spreading fires but at the same time the Saturday forecast for Salem was a high in the mid-90’s and widespread haze/smoke. I turned to the Oregon Hikers Field Guide for inspiration and noticed the Spring Valley Loop in the Willamette Valley State Parks section. It was less than a 20 minute drive from home and at less than four miles would allow us to be done hiking by mid-morning and avoid the warmer part of the day.

Prior to leaving in the morning I checked up on a fire that had started the day before in South Salem along Vitae Springs Road and stuck my head outside to see if the air smelled of smoke. Everything seemed okay so we proceeded to get ready and headed out at about a quarter to 7am. While the air didn’t smell of smoke the sky had a familiar hauntingly orange hue to it. As we prepared to set off on the first of three short loops from the Spring Valley Trailhead we remarked at how dark it still was due to the layer of smoke overhead. (The majority of the smoke was likely from the Cedar Creek Fire near Waldo Lake (post) which had grown rapidly overnight toward Oakridge and Westfir prompting evacuations although there was also a new fire to the NE at Milo McIver State Park (post).)

For the first loop we walked back up the park entrance road approximately 400 feet to the Rook Trail on the left.

We followed this trail as it wound through the woods for nearly a mile before ending at the entrance road a short way from Highway 221 (Wallace Rd NW).
The combination of low light and orange hue made for some poor photography conditions.

Approaching the entrance road. The gate is for the road which is only open during daylight hours.

We turned right onto the road and followed it for a tenth of a mile to the unsigned Generator Trail (there was some pink flagging present) and took a left onto this one-way trail.

The Generator Trail.

The 0.4 mile Generator Trail brought us back down to the entrance road between the trailhead and where we had turned onto the Rook Trail.

As we followed the road back to the trailhead we were discussing which loop to try next. That decision was made by the couple having an intimate moment in the back of a pickup parked at the start of the Perimeter Trail. We turned right, away from the show, and cut across the mowed field surrounding the vault toilet to pick up the also unsigned Upper Spring Valley Trail.

Spring Valley Creek passing under the entrance road.

The mowed field.

Upper Spring Valley Creek Trail.

The 0.7 mile Upper Spring Valley Creek Trail simply loops back to the trailhead so we hopped that by the time we had finished the short loop the couple was finished as well.

A few Autumn colors starting to show, now we just need some Fall rain.

Brief glimpse of the Willamette River.

The tailgate was up on the pickup, a good sign for us.

Some of the various non-native wildflowers in the area.

Before setting off on the Perimeter Trail we decided to make the quick detour down to the Willamette.

Mile 74.2 of the Willamette Water Trail.

We didn’t quite make it to the river though as the couple had apparently decided to switch locations, but at least they were taking turns. We made a hasty retreat and set off on the Perimeter Trail.
The Perimeter Trail begins to the right of the gate.

The Perimeter Trail loops around another mowed field but after 0.2 miles the signed TCC Trail splits off to the right into the woods (assuming you are hiking counter-clockwise).

Invasive common tansy but the beetle was cool looking.

We were initially fooled by this side-trail at the 0.1 mile mark which was not the TCC Trail, but did provide access to the Willamette.
Willamette Mission State Park (post) is located on the opposite side down river.

There’s the TCC Trail.

After just a tenth of a mile on the TCC Trail it appeared that we were going to be led right back out to the field but the TCC Trail made a hard right and stayed in the woods for an additional four tenths of a mile.

Back to the field after half a mile.

At the field we turned right onto what in theory was the Perimeter Trail following it another 0.4 miles back to the trailhead.

Invasive Canadad thistle.

Common toadflax – non-native.

Moth mullein – you guessed it, non-native.

The Sun behind a layer of smoke.

Pigeons (or doves) in a snag.

The three loops came to a grand total of 3.5 miles with a little over 200′ of elevation gain.

While the conditions weren’t ideal there was a cool (mostly) breeze and it never smelt like smoke. Early Spring would be a much better time to visit or maybe a little later once more of the leaves have had time to change color but given the circumstances it was a suitable destination. It was nice to find another option so close to home too. Happy Trails!

Flickr: Spring Valley Greenway