{"id":5225,"date":"2024-07-04T15:28:09","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T15:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/?p=5225"},"modified":"2025-02-01T23:29:06","modified_gmt":"2025-02-01T23:29:06","slug":"morgan-butte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/2024\/07\/04\/morgan-butte\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan Butte"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday, July 4, 2024<\/p>\n

Today I hiked the Fremont National Recreation Trail south up to the summit of Morgan Butte.<\/p>\n

I started at Avery Pass, where the trail crosses Road 019. The Brattain Fire burned through here in 2020:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

There’s a crispy sign that used to say “Trail User Parking Area”:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Because of the fire the trail is a little tricky to spot at first, but there is one these brown trail signs:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Heading south through the burn:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

This stretch is also part of the Oregon Timber Trail, a long-distance mountain biking route:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

The trail tread was faint, but not impossible to follow:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking northwest at Slide Mountain and Sandy Butte:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Even though it was early July, this part of Oregon has been dry this season and almost all of the wildflowers had come and gone already, weeks earlier than normal. But there were still a few hanging around:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

This is open range and I passed a small group of cows:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

A burnt signpost:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

The trail crossed this open meadow area:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

There was a side trail to a viewpoint:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking south at Cougar Peak:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking west out over the Chewaucan River to Gearhart Mountain, surrounded by millions of burnt trees from the 2021 Bootleg Fire:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

I got a peek at Morgan Butte and its lookout:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

A few more wildflowers:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

The trail skirted around the east side of Peak 7009 and Peak 7070:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

The trail angled southwest and Morgan Butte came into view again:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

The trail paralleled the access road then climbed up the slope. Just like most of the hike up to this point, the final climb uphill was a hot shadeless slog. Just below the summit the trail crossed the road. It continued south, but I turned right on the road to head up to the summit:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Morgan Butte Lookout:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

The man staffing the lookout was outside staining the shutters and we chatted a bit. He said this was his fourth season at this lookout. He was up here in 2020 and had to evacuate when the Brattain Fire broke out.<\/p>\n

The views up here are pretty great. Looking north at Brattain Butte:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking northeast:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking east:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking south at Round Mountain<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking west with distant Mt. Shasta on the left and burned-over Gearhart Mountain just right of center:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

Looking northwest:<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

I didn’t spend long on the summit due to the heat. I beat a hasty retreat back to my sun-baked car.<\/p>\n

After my hike I drove up Road 020 to the gate (42.54578, -120.54749). Just before this spot is a short connector trail on the right that connects with the main trail. One could hike up the road to the lookout, and back down the trail (or vice versa):<\/p>\n

\"Morgan<\/p>\n

This was probably a super pretty hike several weeks ago when the grass was green and more flowers were in bloom. I was sorry I missed that.<\/p>\n

Gaia stats: 6.7 miles, 1,040′ elevation gain<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday, July 4, 2024 Today I hiked the Fremont National Recreation Trail south up to the summit of Morgan Butte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5367,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[244,159],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5225"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5371,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225\/revisions\/5371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}