The path proceeds along an old logging track, with young Douglas-firs to your right and a line of young ponderosas, bitter cherry, snow brush and cottonwood to your left. Ten yards past the gate, the trail resumes up the hillside, following the fenceline. Reach a much-flagged open green gate on the 1700-161 spur, and walk through it to your right. The path runs within a yard of the road before beginning to ascend a slope. Past a tall ponderosa pine, enter denser woods with the barbed wire fence that marks the boundary with The Dalles Watershed to your right. The trail tread gets somewhat lost behind some large brush piles, proceeding along just a few yards from the road. Hike along a very open crest to cross gated Road 1700-160 near its junction with the 662 road. Pass along the north side of a prominence, and get a glimpse to your left of the North Fork Mill Creek valley and gravel FR 1700-662 running below the trail. The forest floor here supports a variety of flowering plants, including trillium, toothwort, vanilla leaf, Solomon plume, and blue-eyed Mary. Hike above a former clearcut now colonized by western larch trees, and descend along the fenceline with the outlines of the Mill Creek Buttes dominating the southern skyline. Across Crow Creek, you can see a cabin in the out-of-bounds watershed area. Pass through an open area with a lot of deadfall, and notice that ponderosa pines are infiltrating the forest mix. To the south are the Mill Creek Buttes.ĭescend from the crest of the knoll, and get glimpses down into the forested Crow Creek drainage to your right. Look back here to get an excellent view of Mount Hood behind Shellrock Mountain. You’ll be descending gently before winding up the slope of a prominence on the ridge. About 75 yards from the trailhead, there’s a trail coming in on the left that originates from the Gibson Prairie Horse Camp. The thinned forest here is dominated by Douglas-fir and grand fir with some western white pine and red-cedar. The trail tread is fairly obvious but, being hardly ever hiked or ridden, is riddled with gopher mud castings and supports its own plant communities. Walk past this post along a line of fence posts that once were strung with barbed wire. The trailhead is not signed, but there is a corner post for The Dalles Watershed displaying No Trespassing signs.
ANEMONA PONTA ROSA FULL
In the spring, trillium and toothwort are still in full bloom on the western sections of the trail, but on the open ridge, you’ll encounter whole slopes of arrow-leaf balsamroot, saxifrage, prairie star, and larkspur. From the eastern terminus of the trail, you can hike up the lovely open meadows of the west end of Mill Creek Ridge. This ridge hike takes you through heavily thinned forest, making the transition from Douglas-fir/grand fir woods to more open ponderosa pine parklands. Also, the trail runs parallel to and, for a couple of stretches within touching distance, of Forest Road 1700-622, a road that is gated for part of the year. You have little chance of getting lost, however, as the trail runs close to, and often right along, the northern boundary of The Dalles Watershed, to which entry is forbidden. There has been no work on the tread itself, though, and this sometimes gets lost in open grassy areas, particularly towards the eastern end of the trail. The 44 Trails Association, a mountain biker group, has logged and brushed out the trail although a spring visit will no doubt involve encounters with a few downed trees. This obscure trail is theoretically part of the Surveyors Ridge mountain bike/Gibson Prairie horse trails system, and yet the trail tread indicates that the creatures that are most abundant here are pocket gophers, whose mud castings decorate the route from beginning to end.
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