Today’s hike was to kind of expand on the hike I did last week. After hiking part of the Huxley Lake trail last week, Kirk noticed some comments in the old Trail Sheet talking about a campsite and an old Cabin location – we thought we’d explore those a bit and also try and make it all the way to the beginning of the trail at Lookout Springs. In addition, we were going to start from an old abandoned trail (I believe it was part of the North Fork trail). Based on some old data I found, it appears to start from the 4611-136 spur road near the end. The 136 spur does not appear on most maps – it seems like part of the 4611 road was re-routed many years ago and most maps show the old route. It does show on the printed copy of the Clackamas district map (but not the electronic version of the Forest Service map from either 2013 or 2016). Kirk and I hiked most of this trail back in 2022 in the snow, but we started off the 4611 road near the Winslow pit.

We headed out at the usual time and made our way up into the forest. One thing Zack commented on was that we hadn’t seen any other vehicles all day long – it was kind of odd since it is Memorial Day weekend, which is kind of the beginning of the summer season, and more people are usually out. We headed up 4611 and took a guess at where the 136 spur was since things didn’t quite match up with the district map either.

We chose well – we almost turned around, but we continued on until we found the VERY obvious trail popping out of the woods:

I turned around and was able to park in kind of a wide/cleared spot on the road just in case anyone else came down the road (no one drove down that road all day). This is where we parked on 4611-136:

We headed up the trail – It looked significantly different than I had remembered it from two years ago, but there was a fair amount of snow on the ground. I had also not remembered it going downhill as much as it did – we lost almost 500′ of elevation from the start to the junction with the Huxley Lake trail.

Once at the junction with the Huxley lake trail, we headed up. When we got to the junction to the lake we decided to continue heading up instead of going down to the creek. When we got to the strange area at the end of the 4612-120 spur road, we looked around a bit for a campsite as mentioned in the old trail notes. I found this area that looked pretty open and flat and thought it might have been the campsite, but when investigating it, it was VERY wet – wondering if maybe this is the headwaters of Boyer Creek:

There were a few disturbed rocks at the end of the 120 spur that a log had fallen onto which kind of looked like they could have been a fire pit. I’m thinking the campsite might have been at the very end of the old road, but that was about all we could find.

After exploring at the end of the 120 spur, we continued up. It is just past this point where the trail gets MUCH steeper. I think part of it is because the ATVs that used this trail quite a few years ago just went mostly straight uphill, bypassing the switchbacks on the real trail. There are areas where you can see where the actual trail kept going on a much easier grade, but the ATV track (now the trail) just pretty much went straight up the hill. We made reasonable time up the hill, but it was tough going due to the grade.

As we were going up the hill we got intermittent sunbursts thru the trees, although it didn’t show up too well in the pictures:

We continued up the hill and soon the trail mostly levels off for the remainder of the route up to the Lookout Springs campground. It was somwhere in this area where we saw the first little bits of snow, but it was just a dusting here and there. The trail was clear. We continued up the trail and soon came to the junction with the Corral Springs trail. We headed north from there and soon arrived at the old campground. From there, we walked out to the 4610 road, where we found probably 18″ of snow on the road:


It was interesting – the snow appears to have started right at the quarry just north of the campground – there were a couple of trucks that had stopped there – we saw fresh tracks trying to go farther but they didn’t go too far before they backed out. We looked around a bit, Thor played in the snow a bit, but it was getting late for lunch, so we decided to try and find a spot in the campground to have lunch. I wasn’t sure if there were any picnic tables left or not. We walked around a bit but didn’t see much of any remnants of the campground – no picnic tables and no fire rings. We found a couple of rocks to sit on and had lunch.

While we were eating lunch, Zack said to me to look behind me – this is what it looked like:

But if you looked the other way, it was sunny. It was a very odd day. We didn’t get rained on much, just a few sprinkles here and there really, but once we got higher (the campground is at about 4000′) the fog and clouds were coming and going pretty quickly. Things changed from sun to overcast, to foggy pretty quickly.

We ate a pretty quick lunch and then headed back down. As we headed down, Zack noticed the Wilderness sign for the Roaring River Wilderness:

We continued down the trail, making pretty good time – it was a lot easier going down than up. We soon got to the end of the 120 spur and the weird turn – while we went down, we looked for where the trail used to (all the switchbacks) and felt like we found several old routes. I think it would be kind of a neat effort to try and recover some of those old switchbacks.

When we got to the side trail to the lake, we headed down to the lake – we didn’t go around the lake like Kirk and I had done the prior weekend but we headed to the main campsite there and looked around. After exploring a bit, we headed back up and soon got back to the trail. We continued down the trail and soon got to the junction with the North Fork trail. It was getting kind of late so we decided to skip the exploration for the old cabin site and just headed back. Along the way we did trim some of the vine maple that was encroaching on the trail, but overall, the North Fork section of the trail was in really good shape. It could use a little more trimming in a few places though. The Huxley Lake trail is not in bad shape but it could also use some trimming and more work in a few places.

We got back down to the truck – I headed down the 136 spur to where it ends. I was looking for the spot where we popped out on the road 2 years ago – I believe I found it – it was near the end of the road. We packed up and headed out. I kept my track going for a while so I could see where the 136 spur went as well as the “new” route of the 4611 road. I think technically they blocked 4611 where the 4612 road joined it – but then you take 4612 up to another junction where 4611 takes off again – so maybe that in between section is actually still 4611 and 4612 doesn’t start until it splits. It is honestly very confusing now, and the fact that the maps are all wrong don’t help matters at all.

We capped the day with burgers and a beer at Fearless. It was a great way to end the day!