After hearing that there was a way to get up to the Fish Creek Mountain trail relatively easily, I’ve wanted to explore this trail after the fire. Today was the day. We headed out a bit early since I needed to get back early. We made our way up 63, to 6320 and then onto 6322. At the end of 6322 is the “orphan” section of 4620. We turned right on this and the plan was to drive all the way to the end. On the way, across from an old quarry, we got this great view of Mt Jefferson:

We continued up a bit farther until we came to the first log across the road. (I didn’t get a picture of most of the logs we cut). We cut out that log and continued. We probably cut out about 20 logs or so. I only brought my electric saw since I wasn’t planning to do any cutting – I bring it just in case of emergencies. I only had the one battery and after all the cutting, the battery was just about used up. This was where we had to stop cutting, near the 4620-230 spur road:

We parked the truck, let the dogs out, suited up and headed down the road. While most of the area was pretty well burnt, along the way we did find some green areas along the road:

After a little over a mile, we got to the end of the 4620 road. A long time ago (looks like sometime before 1980), it used to connect to 4620 which comes up from the Clackamas River near the Sandstone bridge. The road washed out somewhere around the head of Rod creek. At the end of the road there is another spur that headed off of it – the 210 spur. We took that road and followed it. After about seven tenths of a mile, this intersects the 290 spur, which runs along the ridge. This is the road that the old trail headed up to and then linked up to the original trailhead. Here is what part of that road looked like:

When we got to the spot where the trail comes up from 4620 (the other 4620), we looked around a bit. This area of the trail was in pretty rough shape. This is a segment of the old Cold Springs trail.

After a short bit of walking down the 290 spur, which was in pretty good shape, we got to the old trailhead – the original trailhead before the ’96 floods:

We started up the trail and were pleasantly surprised to find the trail sign mostly intact – only a bit of the right side burned:

Here is a picture of almost that exact same spot from 2010 – you can see how much more open it is now:

We continued up the trail and found that the trail was pretty good at the start – while it was burned, the tread was still in good shape and easy to follow:


It was getting to be about lunch time so we stopped at a shady spot that had a nice breeze. Since we had to get back, we tried to eat a quick lunch – we were still hoping we could make it up to High Lake. After a quick lunch, we continued up the trail. After about a half mile up things start to get worse:

We starting hanging some flags in places to help guide people on the trail as it became indistinct in some spots. Here the trail is following the ridge but you can see there is a lot more fireweed and hotter burn – but the trail was still reasonably easy to follow:

At one spot there was a nice view to the southeast where you could see Mt Jefferson and Shreiner peak pretty well:

As we headed up, I started looking at the time. We weren’t making as good of time as I was hoping and I realized we were not going to be able to make it to high lake. We walked up to the ridge and looked at the views. There was this beautiful open spot of of Blue thimble flowers:


This was our turnaround point. When we stopped to asses the time, I was going to give Thor a drink and realized I didn’t have his bowl. I had used it where we ate lunch and I figured I had accidentally left it there. We headed back down, and looked for the spot where we had lunch. Kirk found it and then I started looking for his bowl. This was a sharp ridgeline and there was a breeze blowing. I saw the bowl WAY down the hill – a gust of wind must have picked it up and blown it down. I carefully made my way down the steep hillside and retrieved it.

As we headed down, I wanted to capture some pictures of some of the flowers we’d seen on the way up. Here is some columbine that was growing on the 290 spur road:

And a big field of lupine on the same spur road:

A little farther down was quite a few bunches of penstemon:

We finally got to the end of the 210 spur, back on a real road (4620). We headed back down to where we parked. When we came across areas where water ws flowing we let the dogs get a drink and lie down in the water. At one of these spots there was this solitary cottonwood tree which looked interesting to me:

We made it back to the truck and the A/C in the truck felt really good. The thermometer said it was only 74 but it felt a lot hotter in the sun (which we were in a lot of the day). One thing I neglected to mention was that we saw quite a few signs of wildlife, especially along the road. We saw several piles of bear scat, one of them really fresh. We also saw several areas of Elk scat. The elk and bears seem to like the burned areas!

It was a great day out and I was pleasantly surprised at the condition of the trail. I really want to see High Lake – that will have to wait for a future trip, but I think we will try and do it soon.