Southern Oregon Happy Trails (details) is the meet-up group for hikers in our area. We learned of it shortly after relocating here but, being unfamiliar with the meet-up group concept, thought we’d watch and wait until we’d gained some of our own experience with the trails in this area. Time passed. Then this week we finally decided it was time to give “meet-up” a try when a hike to the summit of Grayback Mountain was posted. At 7,048 feet, Grayback Mountain is the tallest peak in the Josephine County, Oregon. Back in the days of the Gold Rush (1850s-60s), miners were often hygenically challenged and thus irritated by lice, which they referred to as “graybacks.” The mountain is composed of a Paleozoic schist (formed by the metamorphosis of mudstone, shale, or some types of igneous rock) that is gray in color so, from a distance, it has the appearance of a lice-like gray lump – hence the miner’s name for it (oh, those romantic devils!). We’d been there before, via the southeast ridge (post), it was short enough so we’d be done before the day got really hot, and the group size was small (some meet-ups are just too big for our taste). When we signed up, there were seven people going. By the time I got to the meeting location, it was only myself and the hike organizer (the LovedOne having bowed out because of the heat). Still, the organizer – Joe – was keen to do the hike, as was I, so off we went.
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BOOTS on the TRAIL 