Lori LaBissoniere - 50 Hikes in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests

50 Hikes in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests

2018 Sierra Club Oregon Chapter

ISBN13: 978-1-932010-96-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Ooligan Press

Portland State University

Post Office Box 751, Portland, Oregon 97207

503.725.9748

ooligan@ooliganpress.pdx.edu | www.ooliganpress.pdx.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sierra Club. Oregon Chapter, contributing body.

Title: 50 hikes in the Tillamook and Clatsop State forests.

Other titles: Fifty hikes in the Tillamook and Clatsop State forests

Description: Portland, Oregon : Ooligan Press, Portland State University, 2018. | Sierra Club, Oregon ChapterCover. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017043908 | ISBN 9781932010961 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: HikingOregonTillamook State ForestGuidebooks. | HikingOregonClatsop State ForestGuidebooks. | TrailsOregonTillamook State ForestGuidebooks. | TrailsOregonClatsop State ForestGuidebooks | Tillamook State Forest (Or.)Guidebooks. | Clatsop State Forest (Or.)Guidebooks.

Classification: LCC GV199.42.O72 T583 2018 | DDC 796.5109795/44dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017043908

Cover design by Andrea McDonald

Interior design by Hope Levy

Index by Kento Ikeda

References to website URLs were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Ooligan Press is responsible for URLs that have changed or expired since the manuscript was prepared.

Printed in the United States of America

1. Wildcat Mountain
2. Gales Creek
3. Gales Creek Summit
4. University Falls
5. Elk Creek
6. Elk MountainElk Creek Loop
7. Kings Mountain
8. Elk MountainKings Mountain Traverse
9. Kings Mountain Junior
10. Larch MountainBell Camp Road
11. Larch MountainStorey Burn Road
12. East Standard Grade Road
13. West Standard Grade Road to Blue Lake
14. Keenig Creek to Footbridge
15. Jones Creek Day Use Area to Footbridge
16. Jones Creek to Diamond Mill
17. Kings Mountain to Diamond Mill
18. Elk Creek to Kings Mountain
19. Little North Fork of the Wilson (Lower River Trail)
20. Triangulation Point
    Trask-Tualatin Drainage
21. Henry Hagg Lake
22. The Peninsula Trail
23. Gold Peak
24. Steampot Creek
25. Joyce Creek
    Miami-Kilchis Drainage
26. Cedar Butte
27. Feldshaw Ridge
28. Sawtooth Ridge
29. West End of Sawtooth Ridge
30. Company Creek
31. Kilchis River
32. Little South Fork Kilchis River
    Salmonberry-Nehalem Drainage
33. Four County Point Trail
34. Steam Donkey Trails
35. Pennoyer Creek and Salmonberry River
36. North Fork of the Salmonberry to Enright
37. North Fork of the Salmonberry to Wolf Creek Flats
38. Lower Salmonberry Trail
39. Step Creek
40. Giveout Mountain Scenic Drive
41. Upper Lost Creek Ridge
42. Nehalem Falls Loop
43. Soapstone Lake
44. North Fork Nehalem River
45. Gods Valley
46. Triple C Trail
    Clatsop State Forest
47. Spruce Run Creek Trail
48. Gnat Creek Trail
49. Bloom Lake
50. Northrup Creek Equestrian Loop Trail

While we have made a considerable effort to check the accuracy of information in this book, errors and omissions may still occur. Changes may also happen on the land, and some descriptions that were accurate when written may be inaccurate when you read this book. One storm or logging truck, for example, can block a road, or the Oregon Department of Forestry may obliterate or change a trail.

In addition, hiking, climbing, biking, and driving in forests (especially near timber sale sites) are inherently dangerous activities. The final judgment and decision to pursue outdoor activities is always your responsibility as the user of this book. It is your responsibility to acquire the necessary skills and abilities. You must be physically fit before attempting any of the hikes described here. You must decide whether a road or trail and the weather conditions are safe for you to start or continue a trip. Road and trail conditions continually change due to timber sale activity, flooding, erosion and other natural or human-caused events. Logging and gravel trucks may meet you on forest roads. You must decide for yourself whether conditions are safe and whether you have the skills and fitness to do the hikes in this book. This book is meant only to inform and inspire.

The authors, publishers and all those associated with this publication, directly or indirectly, assume no responsibility for any accident, injury, damage or loss whatsoever that may occur to anyone using this book. The responsibility for good health and safety while hiking or driving to a hike is yours and yours alone.

The names Clatsop and Tillamook apply not only to the two state forests this guide is about but to the counties the forests are in and our ancestral people, the Clatsop tribe and various bands of the larger Tillamook language groupNehalem, Tillamook Bay, Nestucca, Neachesna (Salmon River), and Siletz (Neslets) bands of Tillamook Indians. The state forests and the lands surrounding them are their home, their gardens, their grocery, their medicine cabinet. Thousands of years of interactions between people and the land created mosaic landscapes of ancient forests, early and mid-seral forests, and open headlands, ridgetops, and meadows. Frequently applied, low-intensity fires (at proper times) maintained a prosperous and biodiverse landscape for the benefit of all.

Our Clatsop people are most known for their interactions with the Lewis and Clark party. The fort the party built and occupied in Clatsop territory over the winter of 180506 bore the name Fort Clatsop. Few people, excepting a small number of Northwest Indian basketry enthusiasts, know that Clatsop basketry is some of the finest wrapped-twine basketry there is, and the work was only accomplished with materials gathered from sandy beaches and tide pools to lofty summits. Additional weaving techniques using other materials round out a rich tradition of fiber arts for our ancestors from the south bank at the mouth of the Columbia and nearby uplands north of Tillamook Head.

Not to be left out, our Tillamook basketry rivals that of their near neighbors to the north and resembles it closely. The Tillamook peoples wrought finely woven treasure baskets and tough utilitarian wares with materials from patches that their ancestors also maintained, enhanced, and gathered from.

Since the loss of lands through solemn promises not kept, these ancestral landscapes have been undeniably altered by road building and other development, harvest of the biggest and most ancient stands of timber, then the catastrophic fires of the early-mid 1900s (the Tillamook Burn), and, when the smokes cleared, the gargantuan efforts to restore an overcooked ecosystem. The objective was to plant and promote regrowth of the most merchantable timber species: Douglas-fir (Oregons state tree). The diversity of forest species was reduced with that effort, but it is being reclaimed with todays restoration efforts. There remain many hints of the original grandness of these northwest Oregon wondersthe landscapes and the forests. With each year that passes since the Tillamook Burn era, those memories, that legacy, come back into clearer focus through the mists of time carried on coastal breezes.