When our friends Wayne and Diane came north to join us on our recent raft trip of the Rogue River (Rogue Rafting), we looked around for a short dayhike to give them a small taste of the hiking opportunities here in Southern Oregon. While doing so, we came across a delightful little guide to local hikes (Favorite Hikes of the Applegate, Diana Coogle and Janeen Sathre, Laughing Dog Press, 2013) which described what the author’s called the “Silver Fork Trail” along the Siskiyou Crest west of Mount Ashland. If you miss the wildflowers at lower elevations earlier in the season, then the high, flower-rich meadows scattered along the crest offer a chance at floral redemption. Using the Silver Fork Trail as inspiration, we took Wayne and Diane on a short out-and-back dayhike along the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) to Kettle Lake, where we were greeted by a mighty frog chorus. This short hike was just a teaser and we planned to return and attempt the loop described by Coogle and Sathre. We had to bide our time as some truculent El Niño-inspired weather passed through the area but then we were off. One plus of this hike is that it’s accessible on paved and good gravel roads.
Continue reading “Observation Peak (Siskiyou Mountains) 18-Jun-2016” →