Sawtooth Rock and Mt. June - 7/4/11

[justpeachy]

The 4th of July, and day 4 of our trip. (Also see Day 1, day 2, and day 3.) We headed up to the Mt. June Trailhead to hike the Sawtooth Trail, which promised to take us to both wildflowers and views on yet another gorgeous day.

From the trailhead the first 3/4 mile is through the forest before you reach the junction with the Sawtooth Trail. Going right will take you to Mt. June. Going left will take you to Sawtooth Rock and eventually Hardesty Mountain. We turned left.

The trail followed the ridgeline, which meant lots of up and down. It was a bit disheartening knowing we'd have uphill on the way back, but fortunately it wasn't too much. The forest has a very healthy understory of rhododendron. We were too early for it, but it's probably blooming pretty good by now. There was TONS of it.

Just before reaching the big meadow at Sawtooth Rock, we spotted a patch of fairy slippers. There were more than 20 of them, which is about five times the amount I've ever seen growing in one place before. No picture; the light was too poor.

And then we reached the meadow. POW! It was bursting with wildflowers. Greg would end up counting more than 40 different kinds. Awesome!










From the meadow we had a nice view over to Mt. June, where we would be heading after lunch.





The meadow was long and we kept stopping to marvel at all the flowers and to take pictures. Although there weren't any show balsamroot like there are on Dog Mountain, this was one of the coolest wildflower meadows I had ever seen. We eventually reached the end of the meadow, where the trail headed into the trees to Hardesty Mountain. Sawtooth Rock, for which this trail is named, made a fine place to stop and eat lunch.






After lunch we hiked back across the meadow and retraced our steps to the junction so we could climb up Mt. June.




The trail up to Mt. June is very steep and very not fun. By now it was mid afternoon and very warm. It was a hard trudge up to the top. But oh man, was it ever worth it! The views were pretty freakin' incredible. We could see snowy peaks from one end of the state to the other: the tippy top of Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, Three Fingered Jack, Mt. Washington, the Three Sisters, Broken Top, Mt. Bachelor, Diamond Peak, and the snowy mountain we saw yesterday from moon Point that could be either Mt. Scott or Mt. McLoughlin. This panorama photo doesn't even do it justice.






See the green meadow on the hill in the foreground? That's the meadow we just came from.




We could see a little east towards Eugene too.




There used to be a fire lookout tower up here. All that's left of it is the foundation.




It was such a nice day and such a nice view, it was hard to leave, but we had to go to Corvallis to get Greg's car and then on to Portland, so we had many miles to go before day's end. Still, this was a mighty fine end to a beautiful weekend!

[greglief]

Full wildflower trip report can be found at OregonWildflowers.org. Once again, special thanks to Tanya Harvey for bringing this fantastic wildflower location to our attention.

Greg

[Splintercat]

Nice report, Cheryl & Greg! This brought back a LOT of memories from way back when I was in school in Corvallis. During the lead-up to the 1984 Oregon Wilderness Act, there was a major movement in Eugene to create a Hardesty Mountain Wilderness that would have included Mt. June and Sawtooth Rock. As I recall, it pushed the limits of what was then considered to be "minimum" acreage for wilderness, but that notion was blown away by the many very small wilderness additions that came in the Mount Hood wilderness bill last year.

This page on the Oregon Wild site gives a little background on why Hardesty was omitted from the 1984 bill (when the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness was created -- the area I was focused on as an activist -- plus Badger Creek, Hatfield Wilderness, and a bunch of others) that Senator Hatfield sponsored. Congressman Weaver was a great wilderness advocate, and it must have been excruciating for him to "pick" between Waldo and Hardesty (described in the article).

If can find it, I'll bring my little "Hardesty Mountain Wilderness Guide" to a future meet-n-deet. It's a neat little booklet, complete with maps and natural history for the area, plus the expected trail descriptions. In those days of yore, it was a big undertaking to produce something like that, pre-desktop publishing!

Thanks for the report - great photos, as always!

-Tom

[cfm]

Thanks for all your trip reports from the Oakkridge Cheryl! I sure do miss that area.

The local recreational community keeps the trails in very good condition, but they are never crowded.

[justpeachy]

Interesting history, Tom. Thanks! That is really too bad they weren't able to include this area in the wilderness bill. The views out over the non-wilderness national forest included lots and lots of clearcuts, and in fact we drove through an active logging operation on the road to the trailhead. They have really logged this area to death.

[justpeachy]

I’m perusing the very interesting book, Finding Fire: A personal History of Fire Lookouts in Lane County, Oregon, by Doug Newman. I just came across this part where the author spoke with Clair Hogate and Frank Wilson, who used to pack in material for lookouts and construct them in the early 50s. One of the places they built a lookout was Mt. June (although they refer to it as June Mountain). Interesting story; this kind of work was not for the faint of heart!

Frank: June Mountain’s got quite a story behind it…

Clair: We started in the later part of August up there—well, a little earlier than that we had packed in the cement and some of the water…and were all ready to pack in the material and then had a slash fire escape…that put us in the last of September—wasn’t it?

Frank: That put us into October.

Clair: But then, by the time we got back up there to build, why it was getting pretty cool and windy and we lived in a shelter…it was right on top of a knob…and some mornings we’d have to wait until the ice got off the tower, before we could work on it.

Frank: Things went fairly good until we got up onto the upper deck when we was putting in the house—I remember then that we was working—there was eighteen to twenty inches of snow up there then, and I remember we got ready to put the shingles on—we wanted to close it in before we left for the fall—we had to tie ourselves up on the roof when we were shingling, to keep the wind from blowing us off the tower. You could only stay up and work fifteen to twenty minutes and then you’d have to come down and warm up…just couldn’t hold a nail any longer. This feller that was helping us, he was scared of heights, too, so Clair and I had to do all the high stuff. He was even to the point where he’d have to go up the stairs on his hands and knees when he was packing things up—he was afraid to stand up.

Clair: I had a little dog that stayed with us all the time, and ti was cold enough so it froze the tips of his ears out there, outside the cabin, so we finally let him in.