Today’s hike had no real purpose other than just getting out on a trail I haven’t been on in a while. The weather was supposed to be reasonably good, so I looked around for options and decided to hike the Pansy Lake trail up to the old Bull of the Woods lookout. I hadn’t been on this since 2023, so it seemed like it fit the bill. The views from BOTW are great usually, even after the fires.

We headed out a little early since it was just Thor and I. As we were driving down the Clackamas, we passed the Armstrong campground and they were setting up for the annual whitewater festival that is going to occur on the weekend. I’ve been thru there before while it was going on and it is quite a zoo. I’m glad we missed that today!

We made it to the trailhead a little after 10:00. I suited up rather quickly because as soon as I got out of the truck, a bunch of mosquitoes converged on me. I was hoping that was not how the day was going to be, but I did bring bug spray just in case – thankfully, the only mosquitoes we had all day were at the truck. We quickly headed up the trail. Most of the trail, including the beginning, were unaffected by the fire – It starts out in some incredible old growth forest:

As we headed up, we crossed several creeks/streams, all of them un-named:


As we made our way up the trail, we started to get into some burned areas. There was a small pocket of burn and in this section was the junction with the Dickey Lake trail – I almost missed it since it is so bad – the tread is all under all the debris, but it looks to be in pretty rough shape – you can see the trail number sign in the upper middle of the photo and the Pansy Lake trail sign in the upper right:

Shortly after that, the trail re-enters unburned forest and we soon arrived at the lake. We didn’t stop at the lake on the way up – I wanted to make sure we had enough time to get to the top. We continued our way up the trail. At some point, you get a bit of view overlooking Pansy Lake (you can see the south end of the lake in this picture) and down into the Pansy Creek drainage:

A bit further up the trail is a pretty sizeable rockslide that the trail switchbacks thru. This was part of the re-route of the trail that was done back in the 70s I think. The trail thru here is pretty impressive – it was a lot of work to build this:

We continued our way up the trail (the section after the lake climbs pretty aggressively), and soon we were approaching the end of the Pansy Lake trail where it joins the Motherlode trail:

We turned east and headed up the Motherlode trail. This is what the beginning of the trail looks like – it burned pretty aggressively in here but there is some new growth starting:

The trail climbs up the south side of the Bull of the Woods to a saddle on the east side where it then transitions to the Welcome Lakes Trail that then heads back west and switchbacks up to the top of Bull of the Woods. This portion of the trail had significant work done to it after the 2021 fires and was mostly in pretty good condition. There were a few logs down and a few spots where the tread had slipped down the hill, but it was mostly in pretty good shape. We did some clearing as we could and removed a lot of debris from the trail. At one point, we got a pretty good view of Mt Jefferson:

And in another section there was a bunch of wildflowers blooming – I think this is Larkspur:

And this is Indian Paintbrush with Larkspur around it:

When we got to the junction with the Welcome Lakes trail, we headed back west for the last few switchbacks up to the top of Bull of the Woods. As we were climbing, it started to get breezy and a little cool. I put my rain jacket on at the beginning of the day because it was cooler than I was expecting. As I climbed up from Pansy Lake I quickly warmed up so I was able to take my rain jacket off, but the wind was making it cold even with the exertion. I think I was able to keep it off until towards the end when I was just too cold and had to put it on for the last push to the top.

When we got to the top the breeze was still pretty chilly – it was kind of late for lunch, but we hunkered down on the east side of the hill where we were protected from the wind. We sat down and had lunch.

After lunch, I took some pictures. A couple of peakfinder photos – first, looking Southeast:

Next, looking southwest:


After lunch and enjoying the views, I looked at my watch and it was quarter to two already! WOW time flies when you are having fun! We packed up our stuff and headed back down the hill. Since we did a little bit of clearing on the way up, the way down was easier and quicker. When we got to the junction with the Motherlode trail, I had to take a picture of the continuation of the Welcome Lakes trail – this looked about the same as I remember it from our trip to Schreiner Peak in 2023 – I’m sure no work has been done on that trail for probably 10 years now – very sad:

We continued down the trail, making really good time. We got to the junction with the Pansy Lake trail and continued our way down. When we got to the lake, we took the side trail over so I could get a picture of the lake:

After that, we continued down. The trail crosses a few un-named creeks. One of them had a waterfall I hadn’t noticed on the way up. It also had a lower section but I couldn’t find a good place to get a picture of it, so I just took a picture of the small upper part:

I also took a video of the little waterfall:

We continued to make our way down the trail and got back to the truck a little after 3:00. Just like the morning, the mosquitoes were THICK. I quickly packed stuff up and tried to send a Garmin message, but it was taking its sweet time. I didn’t want to get bitten by all the mosquitoes so I just put it in the truck and figured it would send eventually… (it did)

Before we headed out, I decided to see how far up the 6341 road I could drive. I know it isn’t really maintained past the Pansy Lake trailhead, but there is an old trail (the 552 – the old Dickey Lake trail) that we’ve been looking for that dead ends on the 6341 road so we were hoping we could drive up there to look for it from that end. The good news is that I was able to drive to within a few hundred feet of where we think the trail ended on the 6341 road – about 3 miles past the Pansy Lake trailhead. This is what it looked like:

With that discovery, it was time to head home. We turned around and headed back. The drive home was uneventful, although shortly after we left the trailhead, it started raining a bit. The rain got worse and at one point was actually quite heavy. I was glad we didn’t run into any of that while we were hiking.

It was a nice day in the woods – the scars from the burn are kind of depressing, but there is still a lot of beauty left there and I’m beginning to see the joy in the burned areas (as long as we can keep the trails intact!). Nature has started the process of regeneration as there are a LOT of small trees growing now. It will never be like it was in my lifetime, but it is part of the cycle of the forest and it is interesting to see it recover after such a dramatic event.