Salmon Mountain: Red Cap Lake

Klamath National Forest

Shasta-Trinity National Forest

Six Rivers National Forest


DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4


Red line for day 4. Click for map.


(Day 4 of  6  4.) I woke up with a sore throat, not that it had gotten visibly smokier. I was pretty much decided on not wandering down Devils Backbone Trail when I got there, anyway. A day down and a day back seemed to just get the hard bits while leaving no time to poke around an area that probably has a lot of trails for a reason. There's a few other trailheads to give access to the area, too. I had a little breakfast and packed up to hike all the way out via Red Cap Lake.

morning light starting up
The morning light flows into the lands below. It takes a while to get out of shadow at Rock Lake.

tilted light on the trees
Morning view of Salmon Mountain from Rock Lake.


Light was just getting to the iffy camp sites on the west side as I headed down the good trail. Not worried about time, I cleared the trail a bit as I went. There were a couple big things I could get, even. And if not me, then who? There actually were some day hikers with binoculars coming up. The first fellow who said he used to drive up to Red Cap Lake and such when he was a young hunter, "If you can believe." Ha! I could. The surveyors on Salmon Mountain wrote that the Forest Service had pushed a bulldozer all over the place, but then dug out the beginning to stop the hunters from driving in anymore. He chuckled at that. They'd just been glad to be able to, but didn't feel entitled to it. The pair up after him were controlling a pair of dogs as I passed. Don't dogs make bird watching hard? Maybe I'm misinterpreting the binoculars. There are other things to see.

giant paintbrush
Paying a little more attention to the flowers along the way. This paintbrush is particularly large.

floppy purple aster things... daisies!
Suggestions are that this daisy is a fleabane.

yellow faced bumblebee on sulfur buckwheat
One yellow faced bumblebee checking out the sulfur buckwheat.

tidytips don't have such fuzed petals
Some sort of tidytips, perhaps? Plenty were just yellow.


Back at Salmon Summit, I turned for the second least used trail expecting it to be the difficult section for the day, but not too bad. It was a bit overgrown with very clear trail along the old bulldozer track. It did look like someone might have driven it once or twice. It certainly isn't getting any driving now. It has some erosion issues and then some heavy overgrowth, but hikers have simply found a higher route around it all.

lots of shade
Shady road with a trail down it.

bright and yellow with a big bulge of center stuff
Bright and bulging sneezeweed to challenge to allergy pills.

broken sign
So, what did this sign once say? No junctions are expected here.

lots of valley over the trees
A little bit of view of Eightmile Creek.


The map would have me believe the trail avoids all the water, but I found bits of Eightmile Creek even before wandering incorrectly below the trail. I suspect the bears like getting closer to the water in the more reliable places.

leopard lilies
Another thick cluster of leopard lilies. I suspect these of being Vollmer's lilies, specifically.

tiny white orchid
White bog orchids as further proof there are wet spots along the way.


I probably was supposed to follow the water up through the lilies to find the rest of the trail. I turned left and found a different trail. Admittedly, there was a clamber through a tree with well spaced branches on the way. After the other occasional clambers, it didn't exactly feel off. From there, I was following bear trails which kept wandering into the willows only to end at the creek. The actual trail on the old bulldozer track goes above the willows. I eventually climbed up high enough to find it again.

single monument plant flower in shade
If I'd stayed on trail, I wouldn't have found the few open flowers on the sparse monument plants.

old burn
Nearing the top in an old, bad burn scar. [This is looking out over where the Salmon Fire started and is burning as I write this a week later.]


I got back on track just before the signed junction with Devils Backbone. It is a wide road heading south. I turned north, the direction pointed for Red Cap Lake. The trail down to the lake was twice as far along as the map told me, but was obvious enough and progressed downward in switchbacks instead of practically falling down the steep slope, so I forgive it for being wrong. I kept hearing about a steep trail out of Red Lake, but this is quite reasonable.

junction of two bulldozer paths
Easy to find trail at the junction. There's a minor tree hazard down over the trail that continues on to Salmon Summit.

Red Cap Creek
View over Red Cap Creek from where the trail is shown to start dropping.

Red Cap Lake from up high
A first view of Red Cap Lake when coming down the trail.


I lost the trail at a big meadow. I expect it crosses, but I couldn't find anything of trail on the far side and ended up following various bear trails down the hill rather steeply. The switchbacks were nice while they lasted and I'm sure glad I didn't try to find my way out instead. I never figured out what of the random trails around the lake and camps is supposed to connect to what I came down. The lake turned out to be a bit more interesting than the previews had indicated. I was back in day hiker range and was a little surprised that there were none to share the lake with.

grasses growing on a log in the lake
A long log in the lake is supporting a lot of grassy growth.

water-crowfoot
The pond scum is blooming.

Red Cap Lake
There's plenty of trail for enjoying Red Cap Lake.

dragonfly with banded wings
I watched the dragonflies a little bit. This lake is dangerous for them as there are quite a few fish.

Red Cap Lake
Another viewpoint of Red Cap Lake.


The trail out the other side to return to the trailhead from Red Cap Lake wasn't immediately obvious, but it would be the only one that gets very far. I saw lots of evidence of somewhat recent trail work as I climbed up to the Salmon Summit Trail.

among a lot fo green
Up in the trees and climbing.


Once back to the main trail, I kept thinking about and deciding not to go after one of the few peaks along the way. Whitneys Peak would have been a particularly easy one to grab, but it was just hot. Hot hot hot. The air was really seeming clearer than that first day, too. I even saw a probable Mount Shasta poking up in the distance. An excellent day to grab a peak. I kept to the shade of the trees as much as I could. I did start down an old bit of trail that would travel closer to Indian Rocks, but decided to give it up, too.

northeast view
Those mountains to the northeast are starting to have detail.

Red Cap Creek drainage
Looking out over Red Cap Creek.


There were day hikers for Red Cap Lake and Salmon Mountain. I found a pair of locals from Orleans who mentioned the trail isn't even on Alltrails. (I probably won't fix that, but I made sure it got marked on OpenStreetMap where it was also missing.) There were another few singles and a massive group camping right at the trailhead where a bunch of bicyclists were about to start for the mountain. On the way, I missed the higher sign for Orleans Mountain, but I found the one near where it is marked on the map including some ribbons. I noticed a second trail and followed it to find a spring and Whitneys Camp. The spring is above the trail, but the flow isn't even apparent at the trail.

ribbons marking trail
There's a lot of trees down on Orleans Mountain Trail, but there are ribbons for now. This is the one marked with a sign on a small tree eating the sign. Just past the wilderness sign is another trail sign on a large tree indicating the same trail.

spring box
The spring near Whitneys Camp. There is a spring box and water flow into a couple of small dug out puddles.


So I returned with about a third of my food. I checked out what I might get to from the area and decided against that, too. Nothing really was nearby. I headed down, managing to only meet one car coming up. That's not so bad considering it was Saturday.




©2020 Valerie Norton
Written 1 Aug 2020


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Comments

Valerie Norton said…
I guess this is all what it looked like before it burned... I learned a few days after leaving that fires had started up in the area. Here are a couple Facebook posts by the relevant National Forests about them:
Red Fire on Six Rivers National Forest
Salmon Fire on Shasta-Trinity National Forest
The Salmon Fire officially started midway through Monday, July 27, but the information on the Red Fire indicates the lightning that started them off actually came through on Sunday, July 26. Either way, that's when I would have been hiking the area had I stayed in two more days with my two more days of food expecting to leave on the 27th. I think the Red Fire was too far down the drainage to be an obstacle at the time, but the Salmon Fire is larger and far up the Eightmile drainage and does look to be at least licking at the trail.

They have now been combined into the "Red Salmon Complex" for the purposes of fighting them, but they are still separate fires. (For now. Burning in wilderness at low intensity, so they may let it burn a while. These are lightning fires, so rather hard to see as anything other than part of the ecology.) Current information can be found here.
Jaunting Jan said…
This sounds like a lot of Type 2 fun. Maybe someday these trails will be resurrected. Until then they'll see little traffic. I'm impressed with those on day goes since it's a long drive from nowhere. I'm sure hunters use the area primarily but it sounds like it wouldn't be fun on horses either. What an adventure. I like your storytelling. It's very similar to the way I blog. Congrats for pressing on further than most. I too am a wanderer and like finding footprints it evidence others have been there somewhat recently. The heat, fires and smoke have put me in hiatus mode.
Valerie Norton said…
I have to say, the anticipation turned out worse than the actual, but there was always so much anticipation. It's a 2 hour drive coming from Arcata, but so is everything else. The heat and smoke really are too much. My attention is going distinctly coastal for the next few weeks.

I'm coming up empty for trail maintenance groups. There's Trinity Trail Alliance, but their current projects seem less than inspiring to me. There's Bigfoot Trail Alliance, but this isn't Bigfoot Trail area. I've had my Volunteer Wilderness Ranger training via Los Padres Forest Association so I believe I could even lead a group cutting brush. I haven't got sawyer training, just lent my hand to a saw a few times. That Salmon Summit Trail looks to me like something that would be popular with trail runners and seems especially attractive as part of huge loop possibilities with PCT if it were clear. Horses can't get far out there currently.
Valerie Norton said…
As of today, every inch of trail that I hiked has burned. The last bit to go was the part near the end, between getting water for my second camp and camping, that was particularly hard to get through and only possible because of others before me cutting away at it. It was still an island in the fire footprint yesterday. Not anymore.
philzerkel said…
Yesterday a friend and I did the Salmon Summit Trail from the signage up to the peak then down to the lake on those sketch switchbacks and the back to the main trail on the more gradual traverse. I hadn't been to the area since pre-pandemic so hadn't seen the affect of the 2020 fire. Its pretty severe, a lot of the manazita and brush is gone or beat down. The cedars and firs look like they were burned fierce and quickly. Ran into a mama and baby bear on the way out 8) I feel like I've run into bears every other time I've explored this area. One of my favorite parts of Humboldt. Anyways found your blog last night and was stoked to see how much you've documented your explorations. Thanks for sharing!
Valerie Norton said…
Glad you like it! I haven't been back there yet, although I would like to at least do that loop. I keep hearing that there was some high intensity burn up there.
Anonymous said…
Camped at Red Cap Lake last weekend, at the campground on the east end of the lake. Got lots of visits from a mountain lion and bears and deer. The mountain lion was a little more persistent than I am comfortable with 80. Still a good check out the area later in the season. Did you have a lot of mountain lion interactions when you backpacked in the area?
Valerie Norton said…
Nope, bears and mountain lions were not making themselves known to me, but I only stopped by the lake on my way in the middle of the day. Animals are always a dynamic situation. It certainly is a well used camping area.

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