Black Canyon Wilderness

Friday, May 28, 2021

For Memorial Day Weekend we headed over to the Ochoco National Forest. We left bright and early Friday morning so we could get a jump on the weekend crowds and find a good campsite, which we did:

Ochoco campsite

After we set up camp we drove east to the Boeing Field Trailhead below Wolf Mountain:

Boeing Field

We could see the Wolf Mountain Lookout from there (we visited it on our 2011 trip here):

Wolf Mountain Lookout

Boeing Field is a big meadow and is named for a B-18 bomber that crashed near here in 1942 (even though it wasn’t manufactured by Boeing):

Boeing Field

There were some nice wildflowers to see here:

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

The hike starts out on the Owl Creek Trail:

Black Canyon Wilderness

Entering the wilderness right away:

Black Canyon Wilderness sign

The trail descends through a burn area from a 2008 wildfire:

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

There was a nice field of wildflowers just off the trail:

Black Canyon Wilderness

Trail crews haven’t been here yet and there were several fallen snags we had to negotiate:

Black Canyon Wilderness

We crossed Owl Creek:

Black Canyon Wilderness

At 0.6 miles we reached the junction with the Black Canyon Trail and turned left:

Black Canyon Wilderness

We saw plenty of false hellebore:

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

Greg trying to photograph Brown’s Peony:

Black Canyon Wilderness

We reached the edge of the burn 0.2 miles past the junction and then had to negotiate this muddy quagmire:

Black Canyon Wilderness

We appreciated the shade of the unburned forest:

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

Cool fungi growing right on the trail (I believe this may be Gyromitra montana):

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

We crossed Owl Creek again:

Black Canyon Wilderness

There was one area where a bunch of mushrooms were pushing up earth and forest duff, which was pretty cool:

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

Black Canyon Wilderness

We reached the crossing of Black Canyon Creek at 2.6 miles. We had lost 1,000′ of elevation and it was already late afternoon so we decided to make this our turnaround point:

Black Canyon Wilderness

We back-tracked to the car and headed towards our campsite. On the way stopped to check out Paulina Butte, following the old disused access road 0.2 miles to the top:

Paulina Butte

Paulina Butte

There was once a 75′ tower here but it’s long gone:

Paulina Butte

The footings are still there:

Paulina Butte

Paulina Butte

Paulina Butte

Paulina Butte

Back at our campsite we made dinner and enjoyed the gorgeous summer evening. We discovered one disadvantage of a campsite with a view of Big Summit Prairie, which is private grazing land. We could hear cows mooing down there and they were pretty loud. Better than listening to human-made noise, though!

Big Summit Prairie