One of the notable aspects of this ridge hike is simply the drive in. Sullivan warns that the 16½ mile drive takes an hour from the Wallowa Highway, and I sort of pooh-poohed that, thinking maybe the Subaru could get up there in perhaps 45 minutes or less. Indeed, the first 10 ½ miles along Big Canyon Road was excellent, although narrow, gravel, and I moved along at a 35 mph clip. Then I turned up the 050 spur and began lurching up on a narrow track surfaced with large aggregate. I knew this was a popular trailhead for hunters, and I dreaded encountering a couple of horse trailers trundling down from the trailhead - no place to pull off. Once high on the ridge, the road becomes a narrow shelf track with magnificent views and steep drop-offs, but with more places to pull off. This is where I met the only other vehicle. At the Bear Wallow Trailhead, I looked at the time and - yes- it had taken exactly an hour!
Bear Wallow is a large trailhead, but no one was there except me, and the expanse of grass that has taken over the space told me it probably doesn’t get as much use as it once did. In fact, the Forest Service discourages passenger cars and RVs from making the drive. Some large but old patties reminded me that the area is sometimes a hangout for a privately-owned escaped buffalo herd that meanders around these parts. The buffalo are technically illegal since they don’t have a grazing permit, but they have managed to breed successfully and increase their numbers. The trail begins on what was an old road bed and, for the first four miles, bisects the areas of 2009 Big Sheep Ridge Fire and the 1994 Fox Point Fire. Young lodgepole pines and a few larches crowd the trail, and the trenched, rocky single track belies the fact that much of the route actually follows an old jeep road. The trail makes a swing through the dry meadows on the west side of Bald Knob, where I passed through an unburned area and got views down towards Big Canyon and across to Cougar Ridge.
Then the path stays pretty much on the crest. Because of the fires, the views have opened up, particularly to the east over Doe Creek to Fox Point and then to Huckleberry Mountain above the Bear Creek valley. I was able to identify Twin Peaks, one of the higher Wallowa summits, but others were not in view. Fall colors were beginning to show. I suspect the trail gets logged out every year as the deadfall is plentiful. Eventually I left the burn and entered a subalpine fir wood, where brand new signs indicate the junction with the Dobbin Creek Trail, which runs 3½ miles down to the Bear Creek Guard Station, mostly through the burn area.
As per Sullivan’s suggestion, I left the trail at a dry meadow to reach a viewpoint on the rim overlooking Dobbin Meadow and Dobbin Creek. Fox Point is on the ridge above the meadow. Farther away, I (or rather my Peakfinder app) could distinguish Elkhorn Peak, Eagle Cap, Lookout Mountain, the Matterhorn, Sacajawea Peak, Twin Peaks, and Ruby Peak.
From here it was a short distance to Standley Cabin, which was built in the early 1900s as a base for range studies, e.g. determining the capacity and quality of pasturage, etc. This was a time when sheep grazing dominated the high ridges and meadows of the Wallowas and hiker tourists were not a thing. The cabin is in good shape but locked shut, with metal grates over the windows to prevent vandalism. It is located on the edge of a lush meadow with islands of subalpine fir around. A roughly hewn plank chair on the front porch was where I chose to partake of my luncheon.
Then I took a walk around the area. There are trails that lead up the slope to the west to another rim viewpoint. Just south of the cabin is Standley Spring, the source of Deer Creek. It is a covered spring with a pipe, so the water should be safe to drink. Beyond the spring is a large campsite in the trees, and I saw signs hunters had stayed there in the last few days. After this, the Standley Ridge Trail becomes the Bear Minam Trail, and the junction is the southern terminus of the Cougar Ridge Trail. A hundred yards past the Cougar Ridge junction is the junction with the Washboard Trail. The Washboard is probably the most unsung trail in the Wallowas, a high 11-mile open ridge hike ending near Bear Lake, averaging 7,500 feet, with fantastic views all the way. But then it doesn’t have a trailhead (Bear Wallow is the closest), and there’s no water. Most of the trail is within the footprint of last year’s Sturgill Fire, but I can hardly imagine that blaze incurred much damage to the tread.
Bear Creek Guard Station
I camped at the Boundary Campground, up Bear Creek only nine miles south of Wallowa. From my campsite, I walked down the road to the trailhead the afternoon before. This was definitely the most “hunted” trail of the hike, several trucks and at least four horse trailers filling up the parking area. However, more than half of them drove out later that evening.
I had picked this trail, a low elevation creek hike, because rain was predicted for the day. It was dry when I started out in the morning and crossed Bear Creek. Although this is a creek hike, Bear Creek has carved a sheer-sided gorge in places, so at times I hiked up on 100-foot cliffs, where I could get views down to the creek as well as up the valley to the Fox Point ridge. I passed the much-arborglyphed sign at Baker Gulch, probably 50 years of wanna-be-famous-somewhere vandalism on display. I looked for the abandoned Baker Trail about ¼ mile after the sign but couldn’t see anything.
Past the wilderness boundary, I was basically hiking an alley hemmed in by undergrowth and tall spruce and Douglas-fir. The rain had begun in earnest, and I donned full waterproof gear. The mushrooms were erupting and Indian pipe had emerged in large clusters in one area. I passed the junction with the Goat Creek Trail, which rises 5¼ miles up Huckleberry Mountain, and crossed Goat Creek on a wide bridge. To the left was one of those well-appointed hunting camps, with someone seated under the kitchen tarp warming himself at a blazing fire. There were other empty campsites down to the right.
Shortly after this, an unmarked junction indicated that I should peel off down to the right. First I passed an outhouse and then reached the Bear Creek Guard Station, another one of those early 20th century backcountry cabins. Four donkeys and mules were clustered under the trees. They were not tethered but each wore a donkey bell. They regarded me balefully but then ignored my presence. There were no humans about, so I assume they belonged to the hunter’s camp I had just passed. There’s a small meadow here where they could graze. The cabin itself is locked up. It served as the center of ranger operations in the region, and a porcelain insulator on the side indicates where the line came in, down Dobbin Creek, from the Standley Cabin up on the ridge. I visited a broad cobbled bar on the creek and then returned to the trailhead for the drive back to Portland.
It was an unsung secret of the western Wallowas, but they added a campsite fee a couple years ago) and have been to the guard station, but never did the drive up to Bear Wallow. On the Bear Creek trail, you'd have to do a like 16 mi loop up to Standley cabin, including a ford of Bear Creek (and I've always gone there for Fourth of July, so the water was rushing), so I never got up there to see the cabin. It's a nice pocket of the Wallowas. 
