Horsethief Meadows FR 620 and Trail 650 8/27/22

[ChrisA]

Continuing in our quest to hike on trails that are new to us, we (wife, dog and myself) parked just west of Hwy 35 at gated FR 3520, I believe. We had been here about a month ago, and encountered a lot of water on the road/trail, so figured we would try again. We started out on FR 3520. After a dry wash, there is a nice bridge across the first creek, a little ways upstream from the road. Then it is back to the road. The stream splits and some flows towards Horsethief Meadows, and some flows down the road. There is a junction and a sign for the left trail reads Robinhood Loop Trail. We tried this in July and ran into a dead end -very thick brush/trees at the end and lots of stream anabranches. This trip, we continued up 3520 and eventually came to where the road is very overgrown and the stream was flowing about 15' wide, but only up to 6" deep. There looked to be a path on the other side, but we decided to go back to FR 620. This was in better shape and we had a nice walk to the next stream crossing. This was also about 15' wide and about 6" deep. In looking at the map, and the time of day (we had our usual 11 am start), we figured we could cut over to Trail 650. The distance should have been about 0.2 miles, but the whole way was littered with blowdown oriented like pickup sticks. We finally made it to the East Fork Hood River across from Nottingham Campground. Trail 650 was nowhere to be found. We went upstream, zigzagging through blowdowns and above washouts, and following remnants of a trail for at least 0.5 miles. Every now and then we would find a ribbon or a cut log and get excited that we were back on the trail. Then there would be more blowdown. Finally the trail appeared and was pretty good all the way back to our vehicle. There were a couple log crossings over creeks. Overall, more adventure than we were looking for as today was going to be our 'easy day'! And we never saw the meadows on this trip.

[Chip Down]

Neat.
There's a bunch of interesting stuff around there, courtesy of periodic violent flooding, including creeks that have been completely re-routed.
I've struggled to get from PtA to PtB in that region, but it's always been fun trying.