Since we moved to Southern Oregon, our hiking card has been pretty much filled with hikes on established trails (with varying degrees of maintenance), all of which were essentially new to us. Hence there hasn’t been much motivation to search out lost trails and cross-country routes. For one thing, going cross-country down here isn’t easy given the steep slopes, thick brush (manzanita – ow!!), choked watercourses, and gobs of poison oak. I did manage to find one lost trail – the #908 to Steve Peak – and also follow a now well decommissioned road down the Scotch Creek drainage in the Soda Peak Wilderness to make a loop involving the Lone Pilot Trail.
Recently, however, The LovedOne and I did a shuttle-facilitated hike along the Payette Trail (USFS #970) on the shores of Applegate Lake (post). Despite the fact that Applegate Lake is actually a reservoir of varying depth, this is a pretty nice, low-altitude hike and one to keep in mind if you want something snow-free to do in mid-Winter. But, as I was tracing our track on the map, I noticed another “trail” paralleling the #970 a little upslope. I suspected that this “trail” was actually an old road connecting the Manzanita and Payette trailheads of the Payette Trail, since you start the Payette Trail from these points on short stretches of old road. What it turned-out to be was the Witcome Stock Driveway, which worked in conjunction with a barbed wire fence to keep errant cows away from the reservoir. Today’s cloud-shrouded and hence viewless weather was perfect for exploring the nature and extent of this old road.
Continue reading “Witcome-Payette Loop (Applegate Lake) 03-Dec-2016” →
BOOTS on the TRAIL 