For our last hike during this vacation in Southern Oregon, we decided on a short, steep one up Grayback Mountain (7,048 feet), the highest point in Josephine County. It’s supposedly named after the lice {“graybacks” 😯 } that infested the miners during the 1850’s gold rush. This is hike #71 in Sullivan’s 100 Hikes in Southern Oregon (3rd Edition). (Update: Parts of this area were burned by the 2017 Bigelow and Creedence Fires.)
The unpaved forest roads were a little tricky – potholes mostly – but we were soon heading up the O’Brien Creek Trail (USFS #900) – from the upper trailhead – through thick, old forest.
Along the way, we surprised a junco that was sitting on a nest she’d built in the sidewall of the trail!
We kept on until we reached the Boundary Trail (USFS #1207) and then followed it south to Grayback’s southeast ridge. (We would later learn that it’s much easier to reach the summit by going north on the #1207 to Windy Gap, gaining the ridge from there, and then following the open, rocky ridge south.)
Sullivan suggests you can go directly up a meadow to the summit ridge, but that looked pretty daunting, so we went up the southeast ridge instead. There was some worry about brush – manzanita can be vicious – but there wasn’t much we couldn’t work around and there were a good number of open boulder fields we could use to keep us out of the brush.
Looking south, we could see Buck Peak which towers above Azalea Lake, our destination from two days before.
There was even on open area, carpeted with bunches of small lavender phlox flowers.
From the summit, we had big views that were somewhat obscured by the haze. From what we could see of it, Mount Shasta looked pretty melted out and we were told the ski area there never opened this winter. 😥
After lunch on the summit,
we retraced our steps part way down the ridge,
then descended directly down the meadow (lumpy walking, but still much easier going down than up as suggested in the guide).
At the bottom of the meadow are the remains (an old stove) of the Krause Cabin (a line shack from when cattle were grazed here in summer),
and little to the north of that is the Grayback Snow Shelter which is used by snow survey crews in the winter (but less so now because of satellites and snow models).
After that, it was back to the trailhead.
This was a short (5 miles round-trip) but steep (2,400 feet of elevation gain) hike in beautiful country with great views under full bluebird conditions! 😀
BOOTS on the TRAIL 