Northern Oregon – BOOTS on the TRAIL

Mark O. Hatfield Trail ~ Oregon (June 2010)

2021-09-252022-02-10Posted in Backpacking, Northern Oregon, Oregon Wilderness Areas8 Comments

The Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness covers some 65,436 acres (26,481 ha) along the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. It hosts numerous named and numbered hiking trails (including a piece of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT)). Linking these various extant trails into a continuous west-east (or east-west) route may have occurred to someone in days past. But my first awareness of such a possibility came in 2009 when Beer Town Bill explained how he’d backpacked through the wilderness from Starvation Creek to Multnomah Falls. The next year, Tom Kloster floated a proposal to formalize a similar route – to be called the Mark O. Hatfield Trail.

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Lake Siskiyou Loop (Mount Shasta, CA) 22-Jul-2021

2021-07-222021-07-23Posted in Hiking, Northern OregonTagged Caldera Brewing Company, Day Hiking, Hiking, Lake Siskiyou California, Mount Shasta, Northern California, Sacramento River4 Comments

For our third and last hike in the Mount Shasta area, we needed something scenic but not hard. No big elevation gains or ceaseless ups and downs. While exploring our options, we came across the loop trail around Lake Siskiyou (“Lake Sis”), which is just west of Mount Shasta. At just under 7 miles (11 km), with no appreciable changes in elevation, it was ideal for our purposes (and our diminished leg muscles). The LovedOne had determined (after extensive calculations) that, if we got started early enough and hiked energetically enough, we could reach Ashland in time for lunch at Caldera Brewing. Another pure genius moment on The LovedOne’s part. 😁

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Visiting Oregon’s Wilderness Areas (July 2017)

2017-07-202022-01-30Posted in Central Oregon, Eastern Oregon, Hiking, Northern Oregon, Oregon Coast, Oregon Wilderness Areas, Southern OregonTagged Central Oregon, Day Hiking, Eastern Oregon, Hiking, Northern Oregon, Oregon, Oregon Wilderness Areas, Southern Oregon

In late 2015, as we were assembling our hiking to do list for 2016, it occurred to us that we had yet to at least visit all of Oregon’s 48 established and open federal wilderness areas. Two of the 48 (Oregon Islands and Three Arch Rocks) are closed to public entry (and would require amphibious operations even if they were open). Of the remaining 46, we had, as of 2015, hiked or visited all but 18. So we planned some trips to visit these. [Update: When we started this project in 2015, there were 47 wilderness areas in Oregon. One more, the Devils Staircase Wilderness was established in 2019 and we did a drive-by visit to it in 2020.]

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