1.3 hr
Overview
Catherine Creek and Coyote Wall have become increasingly popular with hikers and mountain bikers, and the springtime months are especially busy, with parking lots filling early. To avoid most of the crowds, try the area between the two above the Rowland Basin. You’ll still get views to the Catherine Creek Arch, the variety of habitat and wildflowers is greater, and the views are just as sweeping. The downside is that, once you have left Sunflower Hill, you will have frequent brushes with poison oak: know how to recognize it, wash the areas that have been touched immediately, wash your clothes as soon as you get home, and think twice about bringing your dog. After you pass through the main gate, you’ll see two roads. Take FR 015, which heads up a grassy slope to the left. Camas, saxifrage, and shooting stars bloom here in early spring, while cluster lilies, sand clover, and brodiaea come out later. The road bed passes through a copse of oak and Oregon ash and reaches the unmarked Rowland Wall-Bitterroot Trail Junction. Go right here to pass a camas swale which forms a pretty pond in early spring. The trail rises in ponderosa pine grassland to offer the first of many views of the Catherine Creek Arch from the oak-lined rim of the canyon. Continue hiking up along this rocky scarp, where lupine, death-camas, and the beautiful bitterroot bloom in mid-spring. Swing left into a ponderosa pine parkland, dropping in and out of lush camas swales. As you head up on the more open slope of Sunflower Hill (It gets this name from the brilliant display of balsamroot that travelers across the river used to remark upon; then the cattle were grazed here and now few balsamroot plants remain), you’ll get more expansive views to Mount Hood as well as the Rowena Gap, McCall Point, Sevenmile Hill, and the Columbia Hills to the east. Come to the powerline corridor at a pylon, and follow this up the open hillside, first getting views across the Rowland Basin to the Labyrinth. Pass the unsigned Bitterroot-Rowland Wall North Tie Trail
Trail Stats
0.0 km
402 m
396 m
0 m
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Photos
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