) that infested the miners during the 1850's gold rush). This is hike #71 in Sullivan's Southern Oregon guide. The access roads were a little tricky - potholes mostly - but we were soon heading up from the Upper O'Brien Creek TH through thick, old forest.
Along the way, we surprised a junco that was sitting on a nest she'd built in the sidewall of the trail!
We kept on until we reached the Boundary Trail - a local 37+ mi scenic trail - and then followed it S to Grayback's SE ridge.
Sullivan suggests you can go directly up a meadow to the summit ridge, but that looked pretty daunting, so we went up the SE ridge instead. There was some worry about brush - manzanita can be vicious - but there wasn't much we couldn't work around and there were a good number of open boulder fields we could use to keep us out of the brush.
Looking S, we could see Buck Peak (B) which towers above Azalea Lake, our destination from two days before.
There was even on open area, carpeted with bunches of small lavender flowers.
From the summit, we could barely make out Mt. Shasta (arrow) to the S (it looked pretty melted out and we were told the ski area never opened this winter),
Preston Pk to the W in the Siskiyou Wilderness,
and Mt. McLoughlin (arrow) to the E.
After lunch on the summit,
we retraced our steps part way down the ridge,
then descended directly down the meadow (much easier going down than up as suggested in the guide).
At the bottom of the meadow are the remains (an old stove) of the Krause Cabin,
and little to the N of that is the Grayback Snow Shelter which is used by snow survey crews in the winter.
After that, it was back to the TH.
A short (5 mi) but steep (2400' EG) hike in beautiful country with great views under full bluebird conditions!
