Today’s hike was pretty simple – just get out in the woods for a bit. Since Thor had his mouth surgery (he got 8 teeth extracted!), I didn’t want to do anything too crazy – I’d been wanting to check out Bull of the Woods trail. It is not too much elevation, not too long and we checked it out a couple of years ago after the fires and it wasn’t in too bad of shape, so it seemed to fit the bill.

We headed out a little early since I wanted to be back mid/late afternoon. We made it to the trailhead a little before 10 and headed up. The trailhead looked MUCH better than the last time I was here:

This is what it looked like back in 2022 – you couldn’t even see the signs:

I wasn’t planning to do any trail maintenance, but I thought I’d take my new 23.5″ “crosscut” saw I bought recently. I haven’t used it. We hadn’t gone very far when we encountered a relatively small log (6-8″) over the trail. I decided to try it out – it worked GREAT – this is what it looked like after the cut:

We continued up the trail thru the old cut – in this area there are some spots that are VERY brushy – you can see the tread thru the huckleberries but they completely cover the trail. Fortunately, those areas are pretty short.

We continued up the trail until we entered the first burn area from the 2021 fires:

In this area there was tons of beargrass which is going to bloom probably in the next couple of weeks – it is going to be quite the show:

As we continued thru the burned area, there was more blowdown. I decided to give my saw a little more of a workout. This is what it looked like before:

And this is after – it doesn’t look as good as it did in person though:

A bit farther south on the trail we came to Terrace Spring – this small area did not burn in the fires and is now exploding with Thimbleberry:

Right at the spring there used to be a sign – here is what remains – not sure what happened to it since it didn’t burn:

A bit farther down the trail you get a nice view over to Pansy Lake and Pansy Mountain:

We continued south on the trail. At one point I got a bit concerned – looking kind of southeast the sky was pretty dark – I had read in the paper there was a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. I was worried we might get caught in a thunderstorm which wouldn’t be ideak since we were going to be on top of a mountain. Fortunately, no thunder or lightning happened. It was getting close to lunchtime, so I was eager to get to the top so we could have lunch.

As we continued towards the old lookout, I did small pieces of trail maintenance, moving some logs off the trail and cutting smaller logs off. We soon came up the west side of Bull of the Woods – I remember before the lookout burned that was where you got your first view of it – it was always cool to see – kind of a surprise in the wilderness. Unfortunately, once we got to teh top, all we got to see was the little that remains after the fire:

We stopped and ate lunch and looked around a bit. You could see Big slide Mountain with Big Slide Lake below it pretty well:

But anything much farther than that was pretty tought to see. It was very hazy – when I got home the air quality was moderate – I’m guessing a lot of it was smoke from fires in the area. This is what Olallie and Mt Jefferson looked like:

We couldn’t see Mt Hood at all due to the haze.

After looking around for a bit, we headed back down the hill. I did a bit more maintenance on the way down – moving some of the bent over trees so they won’t whack you in the head as well as kicking more branches and rocks off the trail.

As we were coming up, I realized I missed the junction to the Dickey Lake trail. On the way back down, I did see it – we went down it a short way and I noticed that the trail number sign survived the fire!

After checking out the first bit of the Dickey Lake trail, we continued back down the trail, continuing to do minor trail maintenance as we went. It was pretty uneventful. We got back to the truck about 2:30 and headed home. One the way home we explored a couple of off the beaten track spur roads which was kind of interesting.

All in all it was a great day in the woods. The only thing that could have made it better was if it wasn’t so hazy. The views from the top of Bull of the Woods are amazing when it is clear!