Pats Cabin Canyon and other obscure trails 5-18 & 5-19-22
Posted: May 23rd, 2022, 11:59 am
I returned to the Painted Hills area to investigate some intriguing routes in the Pats Canyon and Sutton Mountain wilderness study areas. My camp for two nights was on a rutted track near Stovepipe Spring, off the Priest Hole-Twickenham road. This is about five miles north of the Painted Hills. Cows and their calves were a companionable presence morning and evening, the calves endlessly fascinated by my pottering about camp.
Pats Cabin Canyon
You can park at a corral on Burnt Ranch Road just south of the Priest Hole turnoff. Across the road is a BLM gate and a track that leads across a flat to Bridge Creek. There are a couple of campsites, and the BLM has planted aspen along the creek. (You could drive in and camp here, too.) A perfectly good hiker bridge lies stranded on the flat. When I reached Bridge Creek, I could see a plank that would take me ¼ of the way across; then it would be a ford. I kept my boots on for this, prepared to sink up to my thighs but, doing a little zigzagging to cross a submerged log, didn’t immerse more than 15 inches into the spate.
After that, I made my way up Lockwood Canyon. The route essentially follows an old jeep track, which is completely washed out in parts, especially the lower sections. The main danger is to find yourself up the wrong side canyon, the first test being at the confluence of Pats Cabin Canyon and Lockwood Canyon.
Heading up Pats Cabin Canyon, one encounters more junipers, and the jeep track is more obvious. Near the head of the canyon, I passed a stock trough with broken piping leading down from a spring.
Pats Cabin is situated on a grassy saddle with a view of Sutton Mountain. The borehole below the cabin is now capped by a tin can. I hiked up the little knoll below the cabin and was delighted to find healthy populations of hedgehog cactus and bitterroot, both at the very beginning of their bloom.
Added notes:
(1) Pat was apparently a trapper, so he would have been here in the winter, probably getting all his supplies up the track in the fall before any rain. Even a small amount of rain would have made the track impassible.
(2) Both the Sutton Mountain and Pats Cabin Canyon areas are part of Sen. Merkley's national monument proposal (2021), which covers a greater area than the proposed wilderness.
Rocky Trail
This one was in the Sutton Mountain Wilderness Study Area not far from my camp. The first 1 ½ miles is a rough road which opens on April 15th every year. Only 1/10th of a mile in, I encountered a short but very rutted and steep rise that I doubted my Subaru with street tires could easily handle. I parked the car and walked up the road in open sagebrush country. As I got higher, views opened up down the Bridge Creek valley to the Painted Cove area, the Carroll Rim, and Stephenson Mountain in the Ochocos. Near the end of the road, there’s a stock trough, and the Rocky Trail (unsigned) takes off from a turnaround.
This trail is an old stock route that leads up a canyon to the high ridge on Sutton Mountain. At times, it is still a well-traveled cow trail. There are a couple of sandy stretches resulting from an eroded tuff badland above. Along this lower stretch of the trail, there were lots of hedgehog cacti, again just in bud. The trail then climbs a rocky track along the side of a canyon, passing above a tall multi-tiered dry waterfall and then below craggy ramparts. I passed through a closed BLM gate above which there is no cattle grazing. I stopped at a rim viewpoint about 1 ¼ miles before the end of the trail, which is at a cow pond on the Sutton Mountain ridge. From there, you could head left or right up one of the ridge high points or gaze down into Black Canyon.
Wheeler Trail
This one was hard to find and took a bit of driving back and forth. It’s right off Highway 207 about 6 ¼ miles north of the 207 junction with Highway 26. There’s a small parking area here. The route is again a faint old jeep track that passes through an opening in a fence. The track follows ridges north, west, and then east, first above Meyers Canyon and then Girds Creek and dipping into a couple of saddles. Views south include the conical hills of Marshall Butte and Peggy Butte as well as Keyes Mountain. Wildflowers were abundant, including death-camas, milk-vetch, Tolmie’s onion, desert parsley, and bushy pea.
I reached the end of the jeep track looking northeast and then backtracked and did a short trudge up a knoll (Knoll 4325) to get views just north to the Sutton Mountain summit and south to snow-covered Mt. Pisgah. Some Cascades peaks should also have been visible, but the clouds in the west were low. You should be able to do a pleasant ridge walk between here and Sutton Mountain, which is about two miles away. Balsamroot was blooming on the knoll itself, but the dark clouds came over on the way back to the trailhead, the temperatures dropped to the mid-30s, and I was pelted with sleet!
Pats Cabin Canyon
You can park at a corral on Burnt Ranch Road just south of the Priest Hole turnoff. Across the road is a BLM gate and a track that leads across a flat to Bridge Creek. There are a couple of campsites, and the BLM has planted aspen along the creek. (You could drive in and camp here, too.) A perfectly good hiker bridge lies stranded on the flat. When I reached Bridge Creek, I could see a plank that would take me ¼ of the way across; then it would be a ford. I kept my boots on for this, prepared to sink up to my thighs but, doing a little zigzagging to cross a submerged log, didn’t immerse more than 15 inches into the spate.
After that, I made my way up Lockwood Canyon. The route essentially follows an old jeep track, which is completely washed out in parts, especially the lower sections. The main danger is to find yourself up the wrong side canyon, the first test being at the confluence of Pats Cabin Canyon and Lockwood Canyon.
Heading up Pats Cabin Canyon, one encounters more junipers, and the jeep track is more obvious. Near the head of the canyon, I passed a stock trough with broken piping leading down from a spring.
Pats Cabin is situated on a grassy saddle with a view of Sutton Mountain. The borehole below the cabin is now capped by a tin can. I hiked up the little knoll below the cabin and was delighted to find healthy populations of hedgehog cactus and bitterroot, both at the very beginning of their bloom.
Added notes:
(1) Pat was apparently a trapper, so he would have been here in the winter, probably getting all his supplies up the track in the fall before any rain. Even a small amount of rain would have made the track impassible.
(2) Both the Sutton Mountain and Pats Cabin Canyon areas are part of Sen. Merkley's national monument proposal (2021), which covers a greater area than the proposed wilderness.
Rocky Trail
This one was in the Sutton Mountain Wilderness Study Area not far from my camp. The first 1 ½ miles is a rough road which opens on April 15th every year. Only 1/10th of a mile in, I encountered a short but very rutted and steep rise that I doubted my Subaru with street tires could easily handle. I parked the car and walked up the road in open sagebrush country. As I got higher, views opened up down the Bridge Creek valley to the Painted Cove area, the Carroll Rim, and Stephenson Mountain in the Ochocos. Near the end of the road, there’s a stock trough, and the Rocky Trail (unsigned) takes off from a turnaround.
This trail is an old stock route that leads up a canyon to the high ridge on Sutton Mountain. At times, it is still a well-traveled cow trail. There are a couple of sandy stretches resulting from an eroded tuff badland above. Along this lower stretch of the trail, there were lots of hedgehog cacti, again just in bud. The trail then climbs a rocky track along the side of a canyon, passing above a tall multi-tiered dry waterfall and then below craggy ramparts. I passed through a closed BLM gate above which there is no cattle grazing. I stopped at a rim viewpoint about 1 ¼ miles before the end of the trail, which is at a cow pond on the Sutton Mountain ridge. From there, you could head left or right up one of the ridge high points or gaze down into Black Canyon.
Wheeler Trail
This one was hard to find and took a bit of driving back and forth. It’s right off Highway 207 about 6 ¼ miles north of the 207 junction with Highway 26. There’s a small parking area here. The route is again a faint old jeep track that passes through an opening in a fence. The track follows ridges north, west, and then east, first above Meyers Canyon and then Girds Creek and dipping into a couple of saddles. Views south include the conical hills of Marshall Butte and Peggy Butte as well as Keyes Mountain. Wildflowers were abundant, including death-camas, milk-vetch, Tolmie’s onion, desert parsley, and bushy pea.
I reached the end of the jeep track looking northeast and then backtracked and did a short trudge up a knoll (Knoll 4325) to get views just north to the Sutton Mountain summit and south to snow-covered Mt. Pisgah. Some Cascades peaks should also have been visible, but the clouds in the west were low. You should be able to do a pleasant ridge walk between here and Sutton Mountain, which is about two miles away. Balsamroot was blooming on the knoll itself, but the dark clouds came over on the way back to the trailhead, the temperatures dropped to the mid-30s, and I was pelted with sleet!