Indian Creek Hike

Overview

Hood River's Indian Creek Trail, which will be almost six miles long when completed, is currently in two segments that await connection via an easement through private property. The oldest section, described here, begins above the deeply incised canyon of Indian Creek where it joins the Hood River. This was, in fact, the old way trail which connected the upper and lower parts of the city and which also served as the conduit for the wooden flume which brought water to a fruit cannery in the lower settlement. The old wooden flume is still there, although it no longer carries water, and the trail takes you away from residences and businesses into a leafy canyon which displays a variety of wildflowers in the spring. Twenty-five yards above a shed decorated with road signs, the path drops and then rises gently. Homes top the wildflowered slope above and an oak forest, underbrushed with snowberry and wild rose, drops to the river below. Get a view of the Hood River and the pear orchards up the valley. The trail levels and passes a picnic table. In the spring, this section is lined with miner’s lettuce, big root, prairie star, two kinds of lupine, forget-me-nots, and fern-leaf desert parsley. Balsamroot flowers under the oaks above. A powerline which heads up the Indian Creek valley appears to your right. Armenian blackberry dominates the slopes which lead down to Indian Creek, which rushes and tumbles below maples, cottonwoods, and flowering dogwoods. Blooming purple honesty (Lunaria annua) festoons the trailside as you walk alongside an old wooden pipe that used to carry water from Indian Creek down to a fruit cannery in the City of Hood River. The trail exits shady woods at a power substation and then bends to the right in a open area with ponderosa pines. Cross Indian Creek where it pours through a culvert and then head up to the junction of 12th and Pacific Avenue at a Dutch Brothers Coffee outlet. Cross 12th Street and pick up the Indian Creek Trail as it descends to your right to cross over Indian Creek in a

Trail Stats

Photos

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