This week, I dipped into my grab bag of Trails Never Hiked and pulled out Snag Creek. Doing some research, I found that Pablo had done a write-up on this loop in August 2008:
http://www.portlandhikers.org/forum/vie ... snag+creek . I will attempt to update pablo’s posting. Although about half of the trail is fairly easily traced, it has definitely been abandoned and may not be long for this world. The route is also written up in Douglas Lorain’s
Afoot and Afield: Portland/Vancouver, of which I have the first (2003) edition.
The trail begins on Washington DNR land, specifically the Yacolt Burn State Forest. Most of the gravel road (CG 2000) leading up Rock Creek was snow-covered and everything below about 1,800’ was socked in by valley fog. I turned up CG 2070 and parked where the Pacific Crest Trail crosses this road. The PCT begins in replanted forest, but soon enters a lush pocket of ancient trees and crosses Snag Creek. It rises to the junction with the Snag Creek Trail, where a large sign details the history of the track, first carved by the Civilian Conservation Corps and rebuilt by Boy Scouts in 1981. Before the advent of intensive logging in the area, it had begun a couple of miles farther east on Rock Creek (see pablo’s posting of the 1963 GPNF map).
The trail heads up along a steep bluff above Snag Creek and then exits the old growth at a bulldozed pullout. Lorain’s “washed-out jeep road” has been upgraded to a major logging track. I walked about 200 yards up the road and looked for the resumption of the trail. On pablo’s visit, the sign was in decent shape, but now all that remains are the posts:
I left the road and entered a recent clearcut. Obviously, the DNR does not care about this trail and no attempt was made to recreate its path across the cut. Cat tracks and debris have obscured everything. I headed for an island of trees in the middle of the clearcut and found the trail winding through it. There was more clearcut after I exited this grove but I headed up a shallow ridgeline and picked up the trail at a handwritten Timber Sale sign. From, here one rises along the ridge crest and then along the edge of an older clearcut. Most of the former views have been partially obscured by the growing plantations of Douglas-fir. The trail switchbacks to a viewpoint looking south - Three Corner Rock and Mt. Hood can be seen through the trees; the planks here are what’s left of Lorain’s “wooden benches.” Now you’re on a rather expansive bench and the route rapidly becomes obscure in undergrowth of vine maple and huckleberry. I reached the DNR boundary sign (illustrated by pablo) and resolved to pick up the old CCC track (I am pretty sure the Boy Scouts’ renovation had not extended into GPNF territory). For a while, I was able to follow cuttings through old logs as the trail veered west and then east across the bench. Some of these were marked by flagging.
When I headed up a steeper rise, I kept to the east side of the ridge, which was also pablo’s track. However, I lost all vestiges of the trail at this point. I pulled out my Yacolt Burn State Forest map, not the most reliable source since it shows a fully intact trail all the way up. The map indicates the route crosses a draw to the west and heads up from there, so I made my way west through a tangle of huckleberries, continuing to cross-section to pick out signs of a trail. I found more sawn-off logs, but nothing consistent as I wended my way up the slope. The forest is more open and I was plodding on, or rather in, about two feet of crusty snow. No matter - I had risen above the valley fog and it was a beautiful day for postholing and generally thrashing through the vine maples. Eventually, I picked up some more flagging and came out at Mowich Camp, right on FR 41.
I trudged east on the forest road and was soon passed by two trucks, whose occupants stopped to chat. They explained they were on a bear-grass gathering outing. FR 41 continues along the ridge, but is blocked by a berm in a hollow below Mowich Butte. Here, I caught up with the bear-grass gatherers as they were heating up an aromatic repast of tortillas, refried beans and salsa - sumptuous fare for a cold day in the outdoors!
I continued past the berm to the spur that leads up to Mowich Butte. When I was last here, I had taken the Sedum Ridge Trail up, but since then, the woods up most of the slope have been “partial cut.” There are views of Mt. Hood through the trees now as you go up, and from Mowich Butte’s old lookout site there are still expansive views north - down to the Trout Creek valley and with the snowy volcanoes dominating the skyline.
I descended Mowich Butte and hiked farther east along the decommissioned section of FR 41. After about half a mile, the Pacific Crest Trail appeared below me (It parallels the road for some distance in this section) and I dropped down to it. The PCT descends the drainage of the North Fork Rock Creek in forest all of the same age that has grown up since the Yacolt Burn of 1902. Standing amongst the Douglas-firs and hemlocks are the rotting snags of trees incinerated in that conflagration.
As usual, the trail told its stories. FR 41 had been a thoroughfare for coyote and deer. On the PCT, a bobcat had padded up the trail, perhaps in hope of happening upon a plump grouse, and had taken a morning constitutional in the middle of the path.
I made a bushwhacking detour down a steep slope riddled with mountain beaver burrows to visit a couple of twenty-foot falls on a tributary of the North Fork.
Lower down, the PCT runs above the alder-shaded bottomlands of the North Fork with some huge remnant Douglas-firs that had survived the Burn. It cuts below basalt cliffs in an area frequented by elk - prints in the snow indicated a herd of about 7 - 8 cows and yearlings. Soon I was back at the car with the valley bottom still socked in by the fog.
About 10 ½ miles; 2,300’ total elevation gain
