Today’s hike was mostly intended to get the two dogs out to wear them out a bit. The weather was supposed to be nice and I had the day off (President’s day), so it all seemed to line up. Since I couldn’t dedicate a whole day, I wanted something close, so Fish Creek fit the bill.

We headed out after lunch and got to the trailhead a little after 1:00. I was surprised to see another car and and a truck there. The truck had a guy getting out of it, getting ready to hike it appeared. I was amazed there was so much interest in this “trail” on a Monday. But I guess it was nice weather and it was technically a holiday. The Clackamas River trail parking lot had quite a few people in it as we passed by.

The man in the truck headed out before us, and since there were others on the trail, and I haven’t really hiked by myself with Otis, I decided to keep them on the leashes. We soon headed down the trail, with Thor and Otis in the lead:

That didn’t last too long as Thor seemed like he felt it was his “job” to lead, and would growl at Otis if he got ahead. So Thor lead, and Otis followed (mostly).

It wasn’t too far when we met a group coming back – and I heard another dog bark, so we got off the trail and let them pass – both Otis and Thor barked at them but they passed without incident. We continued south down the old road and soon saw the man who headed out before us. It wasn’t too long before he said he needed to remove some layers and let us go by. The dogs were pulling me hard, so we were making GREAT time. We passed him and a little farther down the trail I let them off leash since there shouldn’t have been anyone ahead of us. They loved that and did the usual running around with me having to remind them not to get too far ahead. They did pretty well off leash, though.

It didn’t take too long (a bit over an hour I think) to get to the first bridge, which I thought would be a good turnaround point for the day. Just short of the bridge there was a tree across the old road, so I sawed off some branches to make it easier to step over. We then got to the first bridge, with Fish Creek rushing underneath. Here is the view looking north:

And then looking south:

We stopped, had some water and ate a little bit – the man soon caught up to us and the dogs started barking at him, but once they saw he presented no danger they stopped. We chatted for a bit – he said his dad was a logger who had cut out a lot of the roadways in the drainage back in the 60’s. He had been coming down there regularly and liked the area. I wish I had gotten his name, but we were chatting about all the history in the area it never came up.

After a bit, he decided to continue further south. We shortly packed up and headed back north, back to the truck. I don’t think we really stopped at all on the way in or the way out. As I said, it was a pretty short hike by design, but we did end up hiking over 6 miles! It was a nice day out in a beautiful forest along an gorgeous creek.