Today’s hike was to take advantage of some gorgeous November weather and to burn a vacation day. Zack and I had been thinking about heading up to Baty Butte the weekend before but it looked AWFULLY wet so we decided to pass. After seeing what I saw today, I’m really glad we did. It would have been pretty miserable.

Since the days are pretty short now, we headed out early. We got to the 160 spur road a little after 9 and headed up. The beginning of the road was clear, but we soon started seeing snow. There were tracks, so I continued up, but at some point the snow got deeper and the fresh tracks stopped. Since I was by myself, I decided to be ultra careful and stop and park and walk the rest of the way. I think I ended up parking about 3/4 mile down the road from the trailhead. This is where I parked:

As we were walking up the road, you get a nice view of Baty Butte:

And also got a good view of Thunder mountain rising above the fog:

We soon got to the bend in the road where the 160 spur heads back south and where the trail takes off. This connector trail was actually part of the Stroupe Creek trail (it continues across the road – a few segments can still be found). This looked a lot different than it used to – what I realized was that they created a dozer line for the recent fire and started at the old logdeck – more on the dozer line later:

This is what it looked like before (from 2015):

We proceeded over the mess that was there and eventually found the trail. The tree the signboard was on got cut down I think during the fire.

Once on the trail, it was reasonably easy going, but there was a lot more snow on the trail than I was expecting. I thought there would be 2-4″, easy enough to walk thru, but there was 6″+ in some spots and the postholing was pretty exhausting. As we were walking up you could see the dozer line below the trail. At one point the trail crossed the dozer line and it was tough to follow the trail. We eventually were able to re-find the tread and continue up. As we approached the connection of the connector trail to the actual Baty Butte trail, you could tell things had changed quite a bit. It was pretty open above the trail:

We got to the junction and headed west. Just a bit west of the junction, the dozer line crossed the trail again – it kind of looked like they might have fixed this piece but it was hard to tell due to all the snow. Here is waht it looked like (you can see the dozer line just past Thor):

We crossed the dozer line and I knew the trail took off south pretty quickly but I had a hard time finding the connection. We wandered thru the woods and I was looking at an old track to try and follow where it went, but pretty soon, it popped out onto the dozer line. The line went along the bluff, which is exactly where the trail went – the dozer line took out the trail in this area it appears:

I guess the positive of this is that this part of the trail was extremely brushy and was hard to navigate – it is now like a road so that shouldn’t be a problem for a long time now. We walked the dozer line south to the spot where it ended where there was another huge mess:

We struggled finding where the trail continued south but eventually found it and continued south. Once past all the fire damage, the trail is as I remember it. Steep in places, brushy in places, but gorgeous views and a slight breeze much of the time.

At one point, there is a nice open viewpoint on the trail where you get some great views. Here is Olallie Butte and Mt Jefferson:

And here is Mt Hood and Thunder Mountain:

We continued past the viewpoint, coming to a sidehill meadow that has beautiful flowers in the spring and summer. The trail mostly follows the ridgeline, snaking back and forth between the Clackamas and Molalla drainages. You don’t get a lot of views of the Molalla drainage, but you get quite a few of the Clackamas drainage.

At some point, I saw this cool old triple blaze (boundary trail blaze maybe?):

A little farther down the trail is this rather open area – this goes on for a bit – I think somewhere in this area I found another blaze wondering if there was another trail junction in here at some point back in the day:

We continued following the trail and the snow continued to get deeper and deeper (we kept getting higher). At another open area, there was a sunny spot so I decided to stop for lunch. I decided this would be our turnaround spot- the snow was knee deep in places and consistently up to my calf. This is where we turned around:

We ate lunch and then turned around and headed back down. The trip down for the most part was uneventful, except for a few spots where route finding was a bit difficult (due to the snow).

As we approached the end of the dozer trail, I decided to poke around for tread to see if I could figure out where it went. I found this pink flagging from the fire crews that said “trail” on it – sure enough, under all the crap they left, there was the tread:

I hung a few flags to try and help when we get back to this trail next year.

At this point the trail transitions to the dozer line for a while. I tried to find where the trail exited the dozer line. I didn’t find it exactly, but I did find some pieces of tread and hung more flags. That section will need to be fixed up for sure. As it approaches that east/west trail over to Lost Creek Meadows, I couldn’t find the junction on the way in, but I did find it on the way out – the junction is almost completely hidden due to a big downed tree right at the junction:

I hung some flags to hopefully jump start the recovery process next year.

We got back to the junction with the connector trail and Thor started heading north (towards Baty Butte). Since we were early, I thought “why not”? We didn’t get too far when the snow was just too much – I got tired of all the postholing, so we turned around and headed back. We got to the connector trail and headed south, back to the 160 spur. At the point where the dozer line crossed the trail, I think I found the crossing point and hung a few flags – hopefully they will be helpful – once the snow is gone, we will be able to see the tread a lot better to know for sure.

Got back to the 160 spur and headed down the road. We got back to the truck about 1:20, which was about an hour earlier than I had planned. We packed up and headed back down the road. When we got back to 7010 I thought I’d go up and explore to see if they did any work on it. When we got back down there, it was obvious no work had been done. The nice brushing on 7010 abruptly stopped at the 160 spur road, so I decided we’d just head back down. On the way down, I drove down a few spur roads that were gated to see what was up with them. It appeared they were gated because they went out to the powerline corridor – that is the only reason I could see for putting a gate on them. They didn’t go anywhere else – there is a whole series of spur roads out to the powerline corridor – I’m sure it is to do maintenance to the powerlines.

After a couple of the side trips, we headed home. An absolutely gorgeous November day in the woods!