Dead Indian Plateau – BOOTS on the TRAIL

Beaver Dam Trail (Southwest Oregon) 10-May-2020

2020-05-102020-05-12Posted in Hiking, Southern OregonTagged Beaver Dam Campground Oregon, Beaver Dam Trail #1001, Daley Creek Campground Oregon, Day Hiking, Dead Indian Plateau, Hiking, Southern Oregon, Wildflowers5 Comments

We first came across this little trail on the Hiking Project, then found a description of it on the Forest Service’s website (#1001). This description is one of the longest and most effusive we’ve seen recently on a USFS website, so we decided to go see this trail for ourselves. We also hoped that now we’d miss any lingering snow (there was none) but still be in time for a few wildflowers (we were).

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Vulture Rock Loop (Southern Oregon) 28-Sep-2017

2017-09-282022-01-30Posted in HikingTagged Ashland Oregon, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, Day Hiking, Dead Indian Plateau, Geocaching, Hiking, Old Baldy Lookout Oregon, Oregon, Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), PCT, Southern Oregon, Vulture Rock Oregon

The promise of unsettled weather in the near future pushed us toward one more “summer” hike before we’re hit by wet and cold (and before there’s enough snow for snowshoeing!). Thanks to the Hike Mt Shasta website, we’d had a great hike in California’s Shasta-Trinity National Forest a couple of days ago. Although other hikes in the Marble and Russian Wilderness areas beckoned from our never diminishing list of hikes to do (our way of bringing the myth of Sisyphus to hiking), the thought of one a little closer to home (that is, one that didn’t involve a four-hour roundtrip drive) was more appealing. Two that we’d done in 2016 about this time – Old Baldy and Vulture Rock (Point 6054) – seemed like good, close choices that could be fashioned into a loop hike. With the LovedOne begging off to set-up (after the bomb threat had been cleared) the now monthly library book sale, I was on my own for this one. I argued that bears and chipmunks rarely try to blow you up, but to no avail.

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South Brown Mountain Shelter (Oregon) 29-Dec-2016

2016-12-302022-01-29Posted in Snowshoe Hiking, Southern OregonTagged Brown Mountain Oregon, Brown Mountain Shelter, Day Hiking, Dead Indian Plateau, Hiking, Mount McLoughlin, Oregon, Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), PCT, Snowshoe Hiking

In February of this year, I snowshoed to the summit of Brown Mountain, a relatively small shield volcano located in Oregon’s Klamath and Jackson counties, directly south of its more prominent neighbor, Mount McLoughlin. Then, later in the summer, we circumnavigated the mountain, on a combination of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and other local trails (post). While planning for these trips, I’d come across mention of the South Brown Mountain Shelter, lying just west of the PCT about two miles north of Dead Indian Memorial (DIM) Highway. Unlike the Appalachian Trail, which seems to have a plethora of shelters, they are few and far between on the PCT. Which, of course, made a visit to this one all that more attractive. So we waited until it could be done as an early Winter snowshoe and then drove – carefully – to where the PCT crosses the DIM at Pederson Sno-Park. This is an informal Sno-Park (with no amenities), so no permit is required to park there.

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Old Baldy on the Dead Indian Plateau 03-Nov-2016

2016-11-052022-01-29Posted in Hiking, Southern OregonTagged Day Hiking, Dead Indian Plateau, Hiking, Howard Prairie Lake, Old Baldy Lookout Oregon, Oregon, Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), PCT, Rogue River - Siskiyou National Forest

On Fridays, the Mail Tribune (our local paper) publishes an Outdoor section which usually includes an account of one or more local hikes that might be of interest. While we were driving U.S. Route 20 back from the East Coast, the Tribune came up with five nearby hikes to view Fall colors. Four of these we’d already done but the fifth, a hike on a relatively flat section of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) across the Dead Indian Plateau, was new to us. The paper described the attractions of this hike as …the raspberry-colored leaves of the knee-high huckleberries under the big fir-tree canopy… and …a diversity of Fall mushrooms… After 11 days in a car, being outdoors on this hike sounded like a GREAT idea, so we went for it!

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