Reliable water - August backpacking Ochoco or Malheur NF

[s0rce]

I'm planning a few day backpacking trip with my wife and a friend in central OR in August (you can probably guess what it will coincide with). Other than a couple nights of car camping last year and driving through we haven't spent much time in those forests. I've been looking at the maps, trails and trip reports to plan our adventure but I'm a bit uncertain about the availability of water. It looks like the lakes of Strawberry Mountain Wilderness would be a sure bet but I suspect they might be busy and I'm happy to go somewhere a little less well known. The N fork of the John-Day river could also work.

Black Canyon, Mill Creek and Bridge creek wilderness look interesting, although small, but I'm uncertain about the water situation around there and in the Ochoco mountains in general.

The area around the Little Malheur river near the Monument Rock wilderness also looks interesting Do the creeks around there tend to have water near the end of Aug?

Advice from people more familiar with the area would be great. I understand if people don't want to give away too many of their secret places and have them inundated with tourists.

Thanks!

[sparklehorse]

I have not been to the other areas on your list, but I did hike into the eastern half of the Black Canyon wilderness in the late 80's. That part of the wilderness is fairly low elevation, and I did not find it very interesting. I would think in August it could be quite hot as well. The western half is higher and might be nicer, I don't know. Being off the beaten path you'd likely have a better chance at less crowding there than in more popular areas, but of course it's impossible to say for sure. No one really knows how many people will actually show up for the eclipse, or where they'll go. Or what the weather will do. As far as water, I find USGS Topo maps to still be pretty reliable predictors of water availability. They are not a guarantee by any means, as most topo maps were drawn decades ago, but over time I've found that in most cases if a spring is shown on the map it is still there. If a stream is shown as intermittent (dashed blue line) it likely won't be running in late summer, but if it is shown as perennial (solid line) it's more likely than not to be running all year. It may have changed its water course, but it's still in that general area somewhere. The unusually wet and snowy winter we had should also help ensure that those small perennial streams will still be running in late August. Hope that helps.

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