Wildcat Basin (Strawberry Range) 06-23-17

[bobcat]

I had never hiked into the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness from one of the southern trailheads before, so I motored up Indian Spring Road, which has two of the highest trailheads in Oregon. I began at the lower of the two, Road’s End (7,870 feet), and hiked up the old lookout road, which still sheltered deep drifts of snow in places. Then I headed west on the Pine Creek Trail, which I lost in places going down across snow patches in the woods. As the trail dropped, however, it became clear, and I crossed sections of the 1996 Wildcat Fire and came to the first of the “badlands”, exposed ash deposits from volcanic eruptions 14 million years ago. Sullivan calls these the “White Badlands.” There are also the “Yellow Badlands,” and in-between the two are smaller formations I’ll call the “Cream Badlands.”

The White Badlands rise above Wildcat Basin, a small alpine cove with campsites and a spring. The only hiker before me this year had come this far and turned back (wisely, as it turned out), judging by tracks anyway. I continued on up to the ridge which extends to Indian Creek Butte. The Pine Creek Trail here should continue west, but the tread has been wiped out by the 2015 Canyon Complex Fire. I was doing a loop anyway, so dropped into the Indian Creek Basin and passed the Cream Badlands before taking an unmaintained cutoff trail. Increasingly, I began to experience the Curse of the Blues, dry deadfall tumbled like matchsticks across the trail. I reached the onion marsh, the source of Indian Creek and also the location of the Yellow Badlands. From here I negotiated deadfall as the trail steepened, and I encountered a vertical snowdrift in which I had to stab toeholds for about 50 feet, glancing nervously below at the various impalement options among the sharp deadfall should I slip. Once over the ridge, I picked up the Pine Creek Trail again and returned to Road’s End.

With a couple of hours left in the day, I motored up to the High Lake Trailhead at almost 8,000 feet. My vehicle seems to have been only the second this season to have laid tracks across the snowdrifts on the road. Below me, High Lake did not look very inviting in its scorched bowl, so I opted for a summit jaunt to Indian Spring Butte, at 8,529 feet the third-highest peak in the Strawberries after Strawberry Mountain and Slide Mountain. This was mostly on snow, slushy enough on a warm day but not post-holey. I saw the tracks and droppings of a single mountain goat. Once at the summit, there were views in all directions, including northeast to the Wallowas, with Strawberry Lake sparkling below and Little Strawberry Lake out of sight in its niche below the Rabbit Ears.

[Aimless]

That is an informative and delightful trail report, Bobcat. Thank you. How was the air temperature, what with so little shade anywhere?

[bobcat]

How was the air temperature, what with so little shade anywhere?

It was not hot at those altitudes (and this was just before the mini-heat wave came over from the west), and there was a slight breeze. The whole hike was pretty exposed though. Here's a satellite view - somewhere in there is the Indian Creek Cutoff Trail!

That night, I camped at Little Crane Creek in the Malheur N.F. It dropped to 30 degrees by dawn, and I got to experience a heavy freezing dew!