Catherine Creek West Loop Hike

Overview

This hike starts at the Catherine Creek Trailhead and offers a route up the wooded west side of the Catherine Creek Canyon to the open slopes of Sunflower Hill, where there are views extending east to the Rowena Gap and Columbia Hills and west over the Rowland Basin to the Labyrinth. Many trails and trail junctions are unsigned, so pay attention to directions. The hike is best done anticlockwise as described so you are facing the magnificent vistas over the Columbia River Gorge as you descend the slope: this loop should only be done on a sunny day, and the months of March through May are best for wildflowers. From the parking area, head in past the green gate and up rocky Road 020 (Atwood Road) in a ponderosa grassland. After 80 yards, keep left at a junction with the new Catherine Creek Loop Trail, opened in 2019. Then descend into the oak forested Catherine Creek Canyon. Note that poison oak flourishes everywhere here. Catherine Creek rushes to your right. At a road junction, go left and hike up under oaks and ponderosas on abandoned Atwood Road. There are views across to the Catherine Creek Arch, now crowned by a pole and rail fence. You may notice Lewis’s woodpeckers flitting about in the trees, turkeys may scuttle off in the undergrowth, and there are views back to the Columbia River. Keep up the main road bed and pass under powerlines. Big-leaf maples and Douglas-firs suddenly become the dominant canopy. In dark Douglas-fir woods, the track drops to the Atwood Road-Old Stove Road Junction (There's an old stove just down the road to the right). Keep left here and curve up on a poison oak-lined track to emerge from the woods onto the vast grassy slope of Sunflower Hill. Death-camas and bare-stem desert parsley bloom in profusion here in the spring, and views extend east to the Columbia Hills and across the river to McCall Point and Memaloose Hills near Mosier. You'll soon reach the trail post at the Atwood Road-Bitterroot Trail Junction. Drop down to the left a grassy former jeep track. Swing towards t

Trail Stats

Photos

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