Friday was Zack’s birthday so he wanted to get out in the woods to celebrate. We decided to hike the Fish Lake trail but the day ended up a lot different than I was expecting (with a REAL surprise at the end of the day). It ended up being a truly epic trip – one which I won’t soon forget.

We started a bit late since he had a Football game in the morning – we left the house a bit before 10 and headed out. We got to the trailhead

about 11:30 and quickly suited up and headed down the trail. The washout on the 120 spur at Squirrel Creek has gotten a lot worse since I saw it last (which was over 10 years ago I think). We were able to get past it by driving slowly, but the washout is 2-3 feet deep now and probably 8′ across.

The beginning of the trail

goes thru moderate sized trees with quite a bit of brush covering the forest floor. It is pretty open.

You don’t go too far when you get to the first of many lakes of the day – Si Lake:

A little bit farther down the trail is a trail junction with a sign

to go to surprise lake – but that trail did not look in very good condition at all. I don’t think I’ve ever gone up to Surprise lake as it is more of a swamp than a real lake. Some day I think I’d like to continue on 4691 which appears to go right past it to see what that side looks like.

We continued down the trail – it wasn’t long before we entered the powerline corridor:

Once we were on the other side, it was very evident the powerline road has had some major work done – I have no idea why:

There were 3 or 4 cars parked here so we knew there were people camping at the lake, so I leashed up Thor. As we continued down the trail, we started approaching the north end of lake:

We soon popped out of the woods and into that first campsite where there were 15-20 people. They waved and we continued on. Just past the campsite (which was totally unburned), we entered the burn area which was pretty ugly

but typical of the burned areas. The good news is that it has had some maintenance on it – quite a few logs have been cut. There is fireweed everywhere but there is a path and most of it isn’t too hard to follow, although there are a few tough areas, including some new downed logs.

When we got to a good viewpoint, I took a picture of the lake

which had at least two groups of campers – the ones we passed and another group on the east side of the lake.

We fought our way thru the fireweed and soon the fireweed thinned out a bit and the trail started heading up near the south end of the lake:

This ascent gets kind of steep in a few spots but isn’t too bad. There are several switchbacks and thankfully the fireweed wasn’t nearly as bad on this portion of the trail.

After some huffing and puffing, we finally topped out at the south end of the lake. This was where we stopped to eat lunch:

This is a similar viewpoint from a trip I did in 2011 – quite a difference:

We stopped here and ate lunch and drank some much needed water. It was warm but not too hot – and thankfully it wasn’t full sun – it was partly cloudy so we weren’t getting the full impact of the sun.

After eating lunch, we continued down the trail – once you ascend the hill on the south end of the lake it is kind of flat for a bit *you can see Olallie Butte thru the trees):

The trail then gently ascends a bit to the junction with the Lodgepole trail and Lower lake to the south. This is when we did our first alteration of the plan for the day – we decided to head north on the Lodgepole trail to see what Cornpatch meadow looked like after the fire.

Since Cornpatch Meadow is kind of a wet area, it is at the bottom of a small valley. This is the trail down to Cornpatch meadow – it was in pretty good shape and appeared to have some recent maintenance on it:

Along the way we saw these rather odd signs – “Timber Trail”

I finally figured out what they were for: – https://oregontimbertrail.org/ – it is a mountain bike trail that goes most of the way thru Oregon (north/south, similar to the PCT). They re-use existing trails and/or use forest service roads.

It wasn’t long before we got to Cornpatch meadow

Although it has been a long time since I had been there, it wasn’t like I remembered it. This is what it looked like in 2011:

We walked thru Cornpatch Meadow and went a little ways on the trail – it soon started climbing out of the valley it is in – since there really wasn’t anything else we wanted to see, we turned around. The next adjustment to the day was to decide to head up to Potato Butte – I haven’t been up there for a number of years and I was curious how it survived the fire. We turned around and headed south. It wasn’t long before we were back at the junction with the Fish Lake trail – we continued going south.

Even though it was all burned most of the way, the trail was pretty easy to follow. It wasn’t too long, and we passed Middle Lake:

Thor decided he needed to cool off. Zack observed the lake a bit to see if there were any fish (spoiler – there weren’t). I neglected to mention he brought his fishing pole to fish if he found a good opportunity.

As we continued down the trail, I was surprised to enter some unburned areas – this is on the lodgepole trail but there were more unburned sections further south on the Red Lake trail:

It wasn’t long before we got to the end of the Lodgepole trail – I’ve always found this to be a weird junction

The Red Lake trail kind of does a U turn right here where the Lodgepole trail joins it – it is always difficult to know which way to proceed on the trail.

We made the correct choice and soon got to the small Fork Lake:

And just a little bit farther we got to the junction with the Potato Butte trail:

This portion of the trail was unburned and it was in pretty good shape. The trail is pretty flat for a bit and that part was all reasonably good. It then starts ascending a bit and at the top of a small rise, we got back into the burn:

And then after following the trail thru the burn a bit we go back into an unburned area. It was this area where I remember I got confused as to where to go when I came here the first time. It looks like you continue straight, which takes you to this lake

Which appears to be a self named lake – I’ve never seen this sign before. But what the trail really does is it skirts the north end of this meadow/lake area:

Once we figured out the correct alignment we continued up the trail. It was shortly after this point where the trail conditions deteriorated quite a bit. We were able to follow it in places but other places it just kind of disappeared. The hill is relatively steep and as I recall the trail was never the greatest. Once the fires happened what little vegetation there was to hold the hillside is mostly gone, so it is really easy for the trail to slide down the hill.

We worked our way up the hill and finally got to the top of Potato Butte

We we found the post, but the sign is unfortunately gone. Here is a picture of the back of the sign from a trip way back in 2004 (it was the second backpacking trip with Carly):

We walked around a bit and I took a few pictures. Here is Olallie Butte from the top of Potato Butte:

And what the burned out top of Potato Butte looks like now:

After looking around a bit I flew my drone – Its not as dramatic as some other drone videos I’ve done but here it is:

One thing I also did was to take a 360 panorama picture with my drone – it takes the best panoramic shots of anything I’ve tried. Here is the page with the 360 picture Potato Butte Panorama

After flying my drone (and actually WHILE flying my drone), I kept feeling stray drips – so did Zack – but the sky above us was blue sky – not a single cloud. There were darker clouds forming over near Olallie Butte but nothing over top of us. It was kind of weird. I did read the pinpoint forecast before we left and it called for potential thunderstorms and some decent rainfall but it had been partly cloudy all day long. Things were about to change, however…..

We packed up and headed back down. A little ways down the trail (which we could still follow) Zack saw this cache of old insulators that someone had stacked next to the trail:

We mostly followed the trail down the side of the butte and at one point I had to take a picture of what it was like – here is a section of the tread (such as it was):

That tree came down on the trail and pretty much completely obscured it. The ground is so unstable that just about anything can destroy sections of tread.

A bit farther down the trail, right next to the tread. Zack saw this pile of wire pieces:

I think they were pre-cut pieces that they used to assemble the phone line insulators – but that is totally a guess. They seem to be about the right length for that.

As we worked our way down the butte, we continued feeling drips periodically. We also started to hear thunder, although thankfully it sounded far away. I didn’t want to be on top of a tall butte with thunder in the vicinity however!

We made our way off the Butte and were soon back down at Sheep Lake. We quickened our pace because the sky to the east and north was looking increasingly dark and angry. At one point, I took this picture of the dark skies above Olallie Butte, but it didn’t represent the real darkness – it was pretty black in that direction:

We got back to the Lodgepole junction and hiked the Lodgepole trail back to the Fish Lake trail. We had continued to feel intermittent drops but nothing significant. Zack asked a couple of times “do you want to put on your rain coat now?” I said no, but a bit farther up the trail the drops became more regular and we stopped. It is a good thing because it wasn’t long after we did that that it REALLY started raining – BIG drops. I took this photo at one point but it again doesn’t really show how hard it was raining (you can see Thor is soaking wet at this point):

We got to the spot where we had lunch and it was a TOTALLY different view than it had been at noon (this was taken about 5:00 and sunset wasn’t until 8:00):

We quickly headed down the hill down to Fish Lake – the rain wasn’t letting up and the thunder was intermittently getting louder. At one point, we got hail/sleet – it was so large that it kind of hurt your hand when it hit it. We were walking as fast as we could, but didn’t want to slip as the trail was getting rather slippery in places. We really wanted to get back down into the trees.

The rain continued as we went down the hill down to the lake. It continued as we walked along the shore of the lake, but about the time we got past the campsite at the north end of the lake, the rain let up a bit. The campers we had encountered earlier in the day were gone – I guess the rain was too much for them.

It was still raining a little but it was much less intense than it had been earlier. We continued along the trail but now we had a new adventure – the trail in this area is kind of brushy in spots and all the brush was soaking wet. Most of it is close to the ground, so all that water just went right inside your boots as you walked by. It wasn’t very long before I was squishing as I walked. I didn’t really care – I just wanted to get back to the truck.

We got back to the truck a little before 6. We dried off as best we could and got in the truck. The seat heaters felt good on the way home! As we were driving the rain started back up. At one point on 46, there was a LOT of sleet/hail on the side of the road – it was white! It also looked like there had been more soil movement – there were new rocks on the road in several places. By the time we got closer to town, the rain stopped, the sun came out and the roads were all dry. It appeared as though the rain was limited to the east side.

Against my better judgement (Zack warned me), we stopped at Time Travelers for dinner – it was OK but the service was pretty slow as usual. It did make for a great end to a pretty epic day of exploration – with a lot of surprises thrown in.

Happy Birthday Zack!