This was kind of a spur of the minute hike. We were on our family vacation at Lake Creek Lodge in Camp Sherman. There are a variety of trails thru the property that also connect to various trails on Forest Service land. I thought I’d do a little exploration in the cool of the morning just to see where things went and to give the dogs some exercise.

We started at the cabin – there was a “willow trail” right below our cabin that wound around the property. As we got not too far from the cabin, there was a meadow/garden area. It was here that we saw a deer – he didn’t seem to be bothered by us at all. We continued and shortly came to a nice bridge across lake creek (the creek that runs thru the property). From there, we followed the trail back past several cabins and then headed south over to the fishing pond. We walked around the pond and then headed down to the southern property border. When I had walked part of this earlier I thought I had remembered seeing a “trail” sign – and some notes in the info in the cabin that this connected to a forest service trail. We got to the border and sure enough, there was a sign that said “Trail” with a trail heading east. We followed it and soon saw an interesting “mound” (not sure what to call it). I was hoping we’d be able to climb it. Even if there wasn’t a trail, it was pretty open so I figured we could climb it either way. The trails and brush in this area are pretty sparse, making it easy to go cross country.

We got to the base of the mound and the trail went both ways. We went left and followed the trail around the mound. On the opposite side of the mound we found a trail heading up. It was a bit steep, but we made it to the top. This is what the top of the mound looked like:

This was the view from the south end of the mound – you can see Black Butte thru the trees:

There was this weird structure someone had built at the top of the mound – not sure the purpose of it:

After looking around a bit, we saw a trail heading down the west side of the mound and went down it. It was a lot easier than the trail we came up on the east side. We then followed the trail south, which intersected another trail heading east. I’m pretty sure this trail headed over to the Metolious river. There was a small parking/trailhead area here:

From that point, we turned around and headed back the way we came.

The trails in this area are VERY flat, with the exception of that mound. I think most of the trails are used by horses (we saw some trail apples on the way in). It was an interesting spur of the minute exploration in a new and different area.