Oregon Hikers

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Sure wish the Sierra Club would get that cool little Tillamook Forest trail guide book
back in print. A guy who works with them was nice enough to make me some xerox's
of the maps from his copy though.

Did all the ridges myself in the area, or at least all the ridges that the Mazama's have
listed on their custom area map. The SE Kings ridge was the second hardest behind
the more difficult West Kings ridge, must be that rock out cropping that does it or
just getting up into the ridge, but once up there it seemed to flatten out nicely
into some thinned out forest then connected just above the boy scout picnic table
if memory serves.

Will have to hit those 3 ridges in between Kings and and Elk again now that I have
a GPS, have the track for West Kings ridge. Also, these things are a lot easier with
the brush since it's going into winter!

Nice work guys!

Someday I am going to go right up the middle and hit the old forest road/trail, looks
totally doable with no major cliff bands that can't be navigated around...

mandrake wrote:No good pics unfortunately per monsoon-like conditions.

Well, you put a monsoon day to good use (just as I did working! ) Thanks for the detailed description and the map. I look forward to following your (and the elks) tracks. I will also have to take a look over to the Coxcomb Ridge.

I plan on redoing all the ridges in the area and making a solid printable map.

Sounds like a fun winter project!

We should do the SE Ridge together Peder, or do you prefer solitude?

Here's the GPX for the West Kings ridge that I did back in May -

http://gpsfly.org/g/1224

I googled "kings mountain coxcomb ridge" this morning and came up with your report! (Although, you're right, the Coxcomb and Southeast routes are not the same thing). I thought it might be a decent outing this time of year, and obviously you had the same idea.

@Eric Peterson: I applaud your project, will be cheering you on in spirit, and hope you can share when it's done.

The Sierra Club does plan on revising its Tillamook State Forest hiking guide. I have the original edition and did most of those hikes over the past decade, usually fall through early spring. One purpose of the guide, of course, was political: to increase recreational use in support of the "50/50" plan (banning logging on 50% of the land), which voters didn't pass in 2004. Since then, quite a few of Sierra's routes on old logging roads have been upgraded to permit access for logging operations, so it will be interesting to see what they include to get to 50 hikes.

John

I was lucky enough to see the sign before it was removed

Latitude: 45.609550º N
Longitude: 123.518535º W
Altitude: 2,473 ft

Eric Peterson wrote:We should do the SE Ridge together Peder, or do you prefer solitude?

I would be happy to team up, but after hiking 7 times during the first 14 days of this month, I am now busy with work until Christmas. So hopefully sometime next year we could visit the ridge.

bobcat wrote:
@Eric Peterson: I applaud your project, will be cheering you on in spirit, and hope you can share when it's done.

Hey BC, yes, that is my intention and reason for mapping it so it can be shared. Plus it sounded
like fun since I did 3 out of 4 ridges before I had a GPS

@ Peder, sounds like January then maybe

mandrake wrote:@Mayhem: Nice -- I'd heard there was a sign up there marking the side trail to Coxcomb once upon a time.

Reportedly the route took off eastwards traversing at about the same elevation around the east side of Kings passing across the SE ridge further north to reach the base of Coxcomb Ridge. We did run across one section of reasonably good tread on the way up somewhere around 2400' elevation. Coxcomb may not be the best on a wet day tho' as it sounds like the top may be a bit exposed. "Roping up would be recommended except for the lack of reliable placements for protection." Here's the writeup:
http://orsierraclub.files.wordpress.com ... bridge.pdf

Here is the Coxcomb! From EP

mayhem wrote:

Cool, that's from the Mazamas though, but I did stick it up here or something at some point...