Today’s trip had a couple of purposes:

• Replace my trail cam at the second rockslide – the battery was at 7%
• Try and make it up to Mt Lowe

The second objective was a little ambitious, but I’ve done this same trip before with more snow, so I was hopeful we could complete the trip. The day didn’t turn out exactly the way I was expecting (do they ever?), but it turned out to be a very, very good day.

We headed out a bit early and arrived at the “trailhead” (the 4670-210 spur road) a little after 10:00. We suited up and headed up the trail. The last time I was up here (in March), there was snow on 4670 as well as on the 210 spur. Today they were both completely clear.

We headed up the 210 spur and soon got to the trail heading north. Kirk asked where the trail went back in the day – I wasn’t sure – but we decided to poke around on the opposite side of the road to see if I could find any blazes or tread. We did find some blazes and tread on the other side of the road and followed it for a bit. It kind of paralleled the road for a bit and then intersected it close to Tarzan Springs, which would make sense. The trail would have gone to Tarzan Springs as a water source probably and then somewhere from there continued south.

After poking around looking for the continuation of the trail, we continued north on what is now typically known as the Tarzan Springs trail. I think we might have encountered one or two very small patches of snow in this segment but they were VERY small.

It wasn’t long before we got to the junction with the Burnt Granite trail. It was getting warm so we zipped off the bottoms of our pants to stay cool. My first shorts hike of the year! We continued on Burnt Granite and it wasn’t too long before we got to the second rockslide. It was here where we had the two trail cams, both with failing batteries. I was going to swap out my camera with another one that had the firmware updated already. I had updated the firmware earlier this year but something happened and it reverted to the earlier version, so rather than try and upgrade in the field again I thought it would be easier to just swap cameras.

I swapped the camera and was trying to get it to connect to verify the framing of the shot, but the cell service was pretty spotty. I was not having a lot of luck so after eating lunch I figured we could just continue down the trail and hopefully at some point it would connect.

After lunch we packed up and continued down the trail – I left the other trail cams since we would be coming back this way and there was no need to haul them up to Mt Lowe. We continued down the trail and soon ran out onto the old 6310-270 spur road. As we walked along this road we ran into a few patches of snow – some still rather deep – but most of the road was completely clear of snow.

At one point as we neared the 6310 road, Kirk noticed something above the road – we walked up there, and there was a cleared “route” next to the road. We followed it a bit and then turned around and followed it out towards the 6310 road. Parts of it looked like it could be old tread but part of it definitely looked like someone had just cut a route thru the woods. Here is part of what we saw:

This route took a more direct route over to 6310 than the road does. When it got above the 6310 road, it opened into a little open area with a good view of where we were going:

We didn’t really see a good path down to the 6310 road from there – not sure if we missed it or they just never completed the cutting, but we fought our way down the hill to the 6310 road and walked up to the beginning of the Rho Ridge trail.

We started up the Rho Ridge trail and after a brief open area, the trail returns to mature timber with some beautiful tread:

A little bit up the trail it opens up again at a small knob and you get a nice view of Mt Hood and Mount Adams:

We continued south on the trail and soon got to the old trail junction mentioned in the old trail info sheets. This trail went down to Lowe Creek. From this point, we started our final ascent up to Mt Lowe. It was in this area where we saw the most snow of the day:

It wasn’t tough to get thru it – when I was up here in March it was rough going in this area due to all the snow.

We soon got to the top of Mt Lowe – the wind had kind of been building for a couple of hours and I had wanted to fly my drone from up here. It was still breezy but I thought I’d take off and see what happened. Thankfully, even though it was kind of windy, it wasn’t strong enough to keep me from flying. Here is the completed video from the drone – the music is a bit dramatic but I’ve been experimenting with the “cinematic” look and feel of these videos:

I also got some good pictures from the drone –

Mt Jefferson:

Olallie Butte:

Mt Hood:

After flying the drone for a while, I packed it up and poked around the top of Mt Lowe a bit. I got a few more pictures from up there.

This was Schreiner Peak and Bull of the Woods from the top of Mt Lowe:

It is hard to get a good shot of Mt Jefferson from the top due to all the trees on the south end of Mt Lowe, but I found a spot where you got a pretty good view of it:

This is what the Top of Mt Lowe looked like today:

After poking around a bit I noticed an upside down can kind of in the middle of where the lookout used to be. I turned it over and there was an old glass jar with a lid – it appeared to be a kind of summit register so I opened it up and started looking at things. It was kind of weird – normally you’d have a notebook with people writing in it – there was a notebook but not too many people had written in it. Most of the notes were very old and were written on individual pieces of paper – many were almost impossible to read since they were so faded. The weirder part was there was a whole bunch of “IDs” in another bag – this one from 2002:

Someone else put in a car insurance card, and old ID from a TriMet employee, a grocery receipt – I’d love to know why people thought all those things belonged in here – very odd….

After looking at the register and then putting it all back, it was time to head out. By this time It was about 3:00 I think. We still had a ways to get back to the truck and I was still hoping to get my camera set up. We packed up and headed down the trail. We made pretty good time and didn’t really stop for much. When we got near to the north end of the Rho Ridge trail, Kirk saw a good view of Mt Jefferson and it had a pretty good cell signal so it was a possibility for a camera placement.

We continued on and soon got to the 6310 road – instead of going back the “mountain bike route”, we headed down 6310 to the 270 spur and started walking down it. When we got to the area where Kirk first noticed the “route” above the trail, he walked up there and attempted to follow it. It mostly followed the road it seemed. I decided to walk the road – it was easier. When we got near the end of the road, the “route” seemed to come back to the road, so we hopped back on the road and then the trail.

Once we were back on the trail, we talked about where the old trail headed up to the top of Burnt Granite – I’ve been up there a couple of times but never really found the trail that headed up there. I’ve heard that it has pretty much been obliterated by logs, but it would be neat to find it and potentially cut it out some day. As we were walkking, Kirk saw an insulator – one of the few we saw during the day:

This insulator is somewhat significant because the maps show the phone line did not go down the rest of Burnt Granite – it went to the top of Burnt Granite where there was a phone box. So, the junction to the trail up to the top has to have been after that insulator somewhere. I looked at the old maps and it does seem like that makes sense – it wouldn’t be too far from that insulator where the old trail to the top took off – an exploration for another day however.

We got back to the second rockslide and my camera still had not checked in – it was getting late, so rather than extend things (and probably not having much luck), I decided to just pull my camera and figure out where to place it on another day.

While we were there, I had to take the requisite picture of Olallie Butte and Mt Jefferson:

After packing up all the cameras, we headed down the trail. It wasn’t far to the junction with Tarzan Springs and from there, we knew were were on the home stretch. We were all tired and ready to sit down in the truck, but we had one last mile to go. Thankfully it was all downhill.

We got to the truck and the creek that comes from Tarzan Springs runs right under the road – Thor decided he needed to lie down in it – apparently he was hot – that made for a wet dog in the truck on the drive home but that is why I have the rear set protector – it is all waterproof.

We packed up and headed out – it was a very cool day of exploration. A little bit of disappointment on the camera, but that is something to figure out on another day. One last thing – as I was looking at our track from the day, and comparing to the old maps, I had never realized how old both of these trails are – they both appear on the 1916 map – one of the earliest maps of the area – that means they are over 100 years old!

We stopped on the way home for a well deserved burger and beer – it was the perfect way to end a great day of hiking.