Silver Star: Starway - Bluff Mountain hike/bike

[bobcat]

It seemed about prime time to go to Silver Star, and I negotiated to get the family vehicle for last Friday. Also, I had not done the Starway Trail before, so decided to do this as a loop with Bluff Mountain. The weather reports had said something like: “Thunderstorms in the wee hours, clearing up by mid-morning.” I trundled along the potholed, water-barred FR 41 up to the large turnaround at the Bluff Mountain Trailhead and stashed my bicycle in the thimbleberries. Then I drove back down to the valley bottom, making a left onto the rough FR 4107 track and parking at the Copper Creek footbridge.

This bridge is a rather amazing investment for a minimally-maintained trail like the Starway. I took the old road bed up about a quarter of a mile and then forked off and climbed the cat road steeply up the hill in Douglas-fir woods which transitioned into noble fir/silver fir forest on the crest. I passed the abandoned tarp/plastic sheeting camp and followed the route along the crest, which is rather unnecessarily marked by orange and pink flagging. Soon there are open meadows on the ridge and views of the Star Creek valley and one of the waterfalls mentioned in some off-trail reports, most recently by rick6003. It drizzled on and off and the cloud ceiling remained low.

The ridge drops off quite steeply and then makes the ascent to the Bluff Mountain Trail, passing a small tarn on the way. By this time, I was in the clouds, the temperature had dropped, the vegetation was dripping, and the wind was gusting from the east. The clouds showed no signs of lifting. I ate a quick lunch and decided to head back along the Bluff Mountain ridge instead of going to the top of Silver Star.

I got down out of the clouds below Little Baldy although I never saw its summit. On the way out, I ran into my first hikers of the day, pdxflowergirl and her crew (Nice to meet you, flowergirl & co.!).

The ridges on Silver Star were originally forested, but were scoured bare by the devastating Yacolt Burn of 1902. The flower meadows are established where once there was shade and you can find higher elevation species here about 1,500’ below their normal habitat.

In addition, paintbrush, lovage, larkspur, sweet-vetch, goat’s beard, golden pea, lupine, penstemon, tiger lily, and yellow rattle were prolific. Smooth hawksbeard, a European weed, has also colonized much of this area.

I reached the Bluff Mountain Trailhead after meeting a couple more hiking parties, jumped on my bike and rattled the 5 ½ downhill miles to Copper Creek and my car. On the way, I passed the most obvious evidence of the early miners in the area, a small adit along FR 41.

[weathercrazy]

While at the summit of Silver Star the other day, I overheard a FS employee (Adrian?) talking about how that bridge was slotted for another area, but it turned out it would disrupt an archaeological site, so they scrapped it and decided to use it on that trail that is hardly used.