1.1 hr
Overview
This is a hike with no views, few wildflowers, and a scrappy sort of forest – not to mention the unhappy condition of one leg of the loop. Even though you begin and end the hike on the Salmon River Trail, you’ll only get a distant glimpse of the river. The interest of the area is invisible to the naked eye, involving a clash of cultures and an education in forest use practices reaching back centuries. In addition, it would be most helpful if you brought a strong lopper and perhaps a pruning saw to trim back some of the brush on the 1 ½ miles of the Fir Tree Trail. The loop connecting three trails (Salmon River, Dry Lake, Fir Tree) is entirely within the area of the Sherar Burn and enters the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness on its eastern end. The Sherar Burn was a large mid-nineteenth century conflagration that scoured these slopes between Devils Peak and Mud Creek Ridge. Joseph Sherar was one of those enterprising characters of the old West who prospected for gold in California, ran pack trains to eastern Oregon mines, purchased a toll bridge over the Deschutes River (at the site of Sherars Bridge), and ran a stagecoach station there. He also grazed sheep on the open grassy slopes of the Sherar Burn. What is less known is that the whole area is a traditional berry ground for Warm Springs Indians, who practiced periodic burning of the forest every 20-30 years to keep an open, sunlit, south-facing slope ideal for the ripening of black huckleberries. However, since 1910, the year of the last prescribed Native burn, the Forest Service’s fire suppression strategies have resulted in an infill of unmarketable timber, much infected with spruce budworm, which has overgrown the open berry fields. The Salmon River Trail begins from the pull through and heads downhill through rhododendrons and bear-grass. It’s a mixed lower montane forest here of Douglas-fir, western hemlock, silver fir, noble fir, western white pine and even a few Engelmann spruce. Huckleberry bushes fringe the trail. You’ll cross Mud Creek on a single-
Trail Stats
0.0 km
320 m
0 m
0 m
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Photos
400px-DryLakeFirTreeMap
400px-DryLakeFirTreeMap
250px-Old_footbridge%2C_Salmon_River_Trail
250px-Old_footbridge%2C_Salmon_River_Trail
250px-Douglas-firs%2C_Fir_Tree_Trail
250px-Douglas-firs%2C_Fir_Tree_Trail
250px-Common_garter_snake_%28Thamnophis_sirtalis%29%2C_Fir_Tree_Trail
250px-Common_garter_snake_%28Thamnophis_sirtalis%29%2C_Fir_Tree_Trail
250px-Hen_of_the_Woods_%28maitake%29_%28Grifola_frondosa%29%2C_Salmon_River_Trail
250px-Hen_of_the_Woods_%28maitake%29_%28Grifola_frondosa%29%2C_Salmon_River_Trail
400px-Through_the_rhodies%2C_Dry_Lake_Trail
400px-Through_the_rhodies%2C_Dry_Lake_Trail
TKO put tools to trail here.png
TKO put tools to trail here.png