As the weather starts to cool off, and the fire danger starts to drop off with it, we can start to venture a bit further afield to places with a few less people. Last weekend that place was deep in the Ochocos, or Deep Creek to be more precise. The North Fork of the Crooked River heads high in the Ochocos, runs through Big Summit Prairie and then turns south and meets Deep Creek. While…
Who knew the North Umpqua had so many waterfalls? I sure didn’t. But following our recent tour, I’m impressed.
I’ve certainly traveled the North Umpqua before, but I’ve actually not spent the time I would have liked to actually. I certainly knew it was a place of great beauty, but other than a day of fishing a small stretch I really hadn’t had the time to dig in. This past weekend was the first attempt to remedy that.
After stumbling across a web brochure I was surprised at the number of waterfalls either on or running into the North Umpqua. Add in a great campground and we had a weekend.
Every once in a while plans change. This time around we’ll blame it on the weather. We were all set to head to the lake and then the weather forecast came along saying snow. Well, yeah, it’s possible to fish in the snow, but I know when to cut my losses. And just like that we were off to the southeast corner of Oregon.
A trip to begin exploring the Trout Creek Mountains has been on the list for quite a while, but it takes a while to get there, and time is the typical limiting factor. But we had a tree day weekend on our side, so off we went. The first night we made it as far as Steens Mountain and enjoyed a good camp surrounded by yipping coyotes. Then we were off to the Trout Creeks.
It’s tough to find a lot of information on the Trout Creek mountains. It’s actually a bit of a challenge to even find an accurate map showing which roads are open and passable. But we managed to improvise and get around. This was after all and exploratory mission.