• Start point: Catherine Creek Trailhead
• End point: Coyote Wall Upper Viewpoint
• Trail Log: Trail Log
• Hike Type: Loop
• Distance: 11.0 miles
• Elevation gain: 2640 feet
• High point: 1675 feet
• Difficulty: Moderate
• Seasons: Year round, best March–May
• Family Friendly: No
• Backpackable: No
• Crowded: Yes, on spring weekends

Hike Description

This hike links the Catherine Creek area with the Coyote Wall area. There are great views of the Columbia River, the east end of the Columbia River Gorge, Mount Hood, and a lot of wildflowers. There are numerous variations to this hike, including starting farther east at the Tracy Hill Trailhead for a much longer day that will take in all the features of the area.

From the Catherine Creek Trailhead, hike on a closed road (Atwood Road, signed FR 020), toward the northeast. This trail soon drops down to Catherine Creek as it bubbles through a small oak forest. The graveled road continues upstream for a bit to a junction with another closed road, this one signed FR 021, a.k.a. the Catherine Creek Arch Trail. Follow the road as it crosses the creek on a small bouncy bridge made of logs and plywood. This trail heads up the east side of the creek next to large wall of columnar basalt. You'll soon come to an abandoned corral filled with miner's lettuce that blooms in April. The rock arch looms over the corral high above a talus slope made of fallen rock. In times past, visitors could scramble up and through the arch to the bench above, but now it is fenced off by pole and rail to protect it as a significant cultural site for Native Americans. Past the corral, on your left, are the collapsed remains of a shed: rattlesnakes take cover under the planks here, so be careful if you're poking about! This is a good spot to turn around and begin the loop proper.

Return to cross Catherine Creek, and go right on the FR 20 spur road (Atwood Road). Hike up under oaks and ponderosas to get views across to the Catherine Creek Arch. You may notice Lewis’s woodpeckers flitting about in the trees, turkeys may scuttle off in the undergrowth, and there are views back to the Columbia River. Keep up the main road bed and pass under powerlines. Big-leaf maples and Douglas-firs suddenly become the dominant canopy. In dark Douglas-fir woods, the track drops to the Atwood Road-Old Stove Road Junction (There's an old stove just down the road to the right). Keep left here and curve up on a poison oak-lined track to emerge from the woods onto the vast grassy slope of Sunflower Hill. Death-camas and bare-stem desert parsley bloom in profusion here in the spring, and views extend east to the Columbia Hills and across the river to McCall Point and Memaloose Hills near Mosier.

You'll soon reach the trail post at the Atwood Road-Sunflower Hill Trail Junction. Keep heading west on Atwood Road here. Descend gently across the face of Sunflower Hill, getting views down the Rowland Wall to the Rowland Pinnacle. Enter shady oak woods carpeted with poison oak. Lupine and chocolate lilies bloom trailside. Cross a trickling Rowland Creek, and transition from oaks to Douglas-firs. The road bed rises to the Atwood Road-Shoestring Trail Junction, where you keep right to stay on Atwood Road. Enter a ponderosa pine/whote oak parkland and then cross an open grassy slope with expansive views to the vineyards and cherry orchards of Mosier. The trail drops into oak/Douglas-fir forest to cross a seasonal creek. Reach an open slope again and look right for lilac bushes that bloom in mid-spring. Behind the lilacs are the ruins of an old homestead, where daffodils and German irises also bloom. Then come to the signposted Atwood Road-Upper Labyrinth Trail Junction.

Maps

• Maps: Hike Finder

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• User:Retiredjerry