The day started out horribly but ended up okay. Let me explain. We travelled west on Hwy 26 towards the coast and then turned north on OR 103 (I'm guessing a dozen miles before the Saddle Mt. turnoff). We then turned right on OR 202 and headed toward Jewel, which is the way to the Northrup Creek Horse Camp. On our way toward Jewel we were stopped by a large number of emergency vehicles and OR State Police for a fatal motorcycle accident. The body of this man was covered in white sheets and on the southbound side of the road. This was a sad moment that we hoped to change as soon as we could, but left us with a pit in our stomachs!
Having started out late, at about 12:50pm, we reached the gate of the Northrup Creek Horse Camp and found it was still locked for the winter closure. Not a great start but we parked off to the side of the gate and headed out down the road toward the trailhead.
We kept walking and walking and finally reached the Horse Camp after about 1.5 miles! We went off to the left and found a very nice TH sign for the .5mile Big Tree Trail, which is still under construction but very nice!
We decided to explore along this trail and found it to be a pleasant walk, and without other people!
We came upon several views of Northrup Creek, which has quite a few bends.
We then came out of the Big Creek Trail and started looking for the loop trail. We only had to cross the road to the other side of the horse camp where we found a trail that led to the loop trail.
Please note that this is a very big horse camp and you can walk north on the road for at least a few more blocks (we didn't see the end of the road). I should mention that not only were there no people but the camp and trail were immaculately clean as we saw NO horse droppings the entire day! There were also no smells associated with horses. I'll bet this will change in the coming weeks after the gate opens for the season!
We hiked down this trail entry point a couple of blocks before we hit an Equestrian Loop trail sign and turned right on it. As I said the trail was not only clean, it was superbly marked with little orange flags and ribbons. There were also trees spray painted
to show the correct trail route!
Hiking through both natural and younger trees (but still under a dark canopy) there were still some Trillium to admire!
We kept walking around clockwise on this loop and went over a few small wood bridges. There were some muddy areas but for the most part this trail was soft and felt like a padded carpet! Soon we came to Cow Creek and found what looked like a new bridge with steel girders and nice side rails! It would have been an overkill except that horses would be using this.
Cow Creek is quite beautiful and the view high above it on the bridge made it look even better! We stopped to watch the creek flow and breathe in the fresh air with no other people there detracting from the moment!
And we soon intersected with an old forest road (that is the trail) and continued hiking. We saw some Skunk Cabbage in some flooded areas along the way.
After about 5 miles it happened! We came across a new clearcut that sort of ruined the mood. It just makes me a bit angry when an area is logged right up to the trail!!! Up until this point this was a great trail with very few flaws.
We kept hiking down the trail, which at this point was a combination of newly gravelled road that transitioned to older abandoned roads. We were coming around back toward the road when we finally had a view of the surrounding countryside.
We finally reached the road and turned left to find the trail that continued along Northrup Creek. After only a block or two we reached a serious impass! Where was the bridge? The creek here is about 20-25ft across with a fair current, and it looked deep!! However, you can see that there is a trail on the other side, which is probably made possible when horseback riding (although the water was somewhat clear and it looked at least 3-5ft deep to me!). We ended up turning around and walking back up the road to our car.
The trail is estimated to be about 8.5miles long. There is an entire stretch of trail that extends on the west side of Northrup Creek that reaches the north side of the horse camp, which isn't shown. Our hike was only 7.5miles but this includes probably ~2 miles of road. The elevation gain/loss is minimal and probably not more than a few hundred feet! Despite the clearcut and walking on roads, I would probably still recommend this hike assuming the horse camp isn't crowded. We saw nobody the entire day and encountered no horse droppings.
Good Hiking!
