Today’s hike was kind of a last minute plan. I wasn’t sure I would feel up to hiking today but in the morning I was feeling pretty good so I decided to do what I thought might be a little less strenuous hike. Spoiler alert: It was not less strenuous….

The plan for the day was to hike the south end of the Clackamas River trail and hopefully get up to Pup Creek Falls. The trail suffered a significant amount of damage in the 2020 Riverside fire but the south end has had more work done to it. There is a pretty large, dangerous washout on the north end so I didn’t want to attempt that end. I thought the south end would be easier.

We started late since it was close and kind of a last minute decision. We got to the trailhead about 10:45, suited up and headed up the trail. Very quickly we could see evidence of post fire work:

The beginning of the trail wasn’t too bad, but as we progressed north, there were sections that got very brushy:

This is a bad time of year to be hiking the trail since the brush is in full swing right now. Thankfully the sections of heavy brush were relatively short.

We continued north on the trail and soon came to the first of several blown out creek crossings – I’m sure these happened last December during the high water event – you can see the continuation of the trail in the upper right of the photo:

A bit past that was this huge mess of logs – you can see a couple of old cut logs in the mess:

When we got about opposite of the Oak Grove hydro plant we encountered some down logs – once past those, it was time for lunch. It was a bit late but I was hungry. After a pretty quick lunch, we continued on – I think this brushy area was just past where we had lunch – and BOY was it brushy:

Somewhere past that, I was hearing the powerplant, and I stopped and took a video of it – I thought it was interesting even though it was a good distance away and the river was between us, you could still hear it very clearly:

I’ve driven by that hundreds of times but never heard it running before. That was kind of interesting.

A bit further down the trail we got a nice look at the old/former town of Three Lynx – a perspective I’ve never seen before:

We continued our way north and soon got to one of the small waterfalls/cliffs that the trail traverses below:

And under the waterfall was another blowout of the creek under the waterfall:

A little farther north we got to my favorite spot of the day – the “Grotto”:

This was a picture from walking inside the Grotto

And this was an interesting view from inside “The Grotto” looking out:

The trail in this area (minus the blowouts at the creeks) was not too bad. It was a bit brushy in places but easy to follow. Just past the Grotto the trail had a short slide that took out most of the tread for a short distance:

As we progressed, we got to a section that was incredibly brushy – I couldn’t even see the tread – Thor was kind of under all the brush and was walking on the tread so I just followed him – this is what that area looked like – yes, there really is tread under those ferns:

After that brushy section we got to one of the better sections of the day – surprisingly it was the trail thru the powerline corridor – it was considerably better than this photo makes it look – there was actual tread in here and not a ton of brush – although it appeared someone had come thru and done some cutting of some of the larger brush:

As we were going thru the powerline corridor, I took a picture of a pink flag – I’d seen quite a few of them along the trail – I’m guessing someone had put them to mark the route of the trail:

Somewhere near the end of the powerline corridor we crossed a small wooden bridge over what looked to be a runoff ditch. We continued on until we got to the next big impediment – the Cat Creek crossing. I didn’t take a picture of it, but did cut some limbs off a log to make it a bit easier to get thru. It was another creek blowout – but bigger than the prior two (or three – I lost count). Once across the creek, I was looking for the continuation of the trail. I was seeing nothing that looked anything remotely like tread so I eventually looked at my old track of the trail and it looked like it was closer to the river – I walked over there – This is kind of what it looked like – it was a complete mess – I think the trail might have continued thru here somewhere:

At this point, it was after 2:00 I think. I had considered 2:00 to be our turnaround time – given what I saw, and the fact that we still had almost 2 miles to go in order to get to Pup Creek, I knew there was no way we could do this today. As we got further north, the condition of the trail continued to deteriorate more. It would be quite a challenge to get to Pup Creek in the trail’s current form I think.

We turned around and headed back. As we went I whacked some more brush, especially any thorny canes – those have made Cripple Creek difficult to hike. Somewhere along the way I realized the sun had gone away and the wind had picked up. It was actually getting pretty gusty at times. Given the forest we were in I was a bit concerned. As we were hiking back, a gust came thru and I heard a big crack ahead of us and saw the top of a tree snap off. It did not hit the trail but it was not too far from the trail I think.

After seeing that tree top snap off, we quickened our pace to try and get out of the woods before things got worse. As we rounded the corner heading up the 4620 road, the wind kind of died down a bit. I think the wind was worst in the river canyon and once we left that – or got further away from it, the wind died down a bit.

We actually made really good time on the way back and got to the truck about 2:45. We packed up and headed out. I stopped at the boat launch at the end of 4620 to dip a towel in the river to wash off my arms. I had gotten quite a few scratches and a lot of char from the trees on my arms so I wanted to wash it off before we headed back. All in all, it was a good day, although it was a bit disappointing. I was surprised at the poor condition of the trail since it has undergone a lot of work, but I think the storms last winter did a lot more damage to the trail that has not been repaired. Trails that have burned require yearly maintenance otherwise they risk becoming lost. I hope that doesn’t happen with this trail.