Salmon Mountain: Salmon Summit

Six Rivers National Forest

Shasta-Trinity National Forest

Klamath National Forest

DAY 1  |  DAY 2  |  DAY 3  |  DAY 4


Orange line for day 2. Click for map.


(Day 2 of  6  4.) I got packed and moving, climbing back up the vanishing trail to the old bulldozer line marked on the Forest Service topo map as a high route to Salmon Summit. The pair of trees just past where I had turned up for the peak were a bit of a climb to cross, but they were not repeated. It was nice trail through the switchback and down to a manzanita choked fire scar where it became hard. From there, the map shows a junction with the trail dropping down sharply or turning back to regain the ridge again. I turned back and found it even harder to travel through the brush. Once under the trees again, I still found none of the trail. I found only game trails doing approximately as the map suggested, gaining the ridge and dropping along it. While not always easy hiking, it was nice, especially on the ridge.

Trail through the forest starts off easy.

I found a spotted corralroot orchid still blooming.

Trails along the ridge are still apparent, but this one gets hard through that regrowth.

Once I had pressed my way through the bushes to get under the trees again, I could find no sign of old trail. I made my way along game trails doing approximately as the map suggested. There were more burned spots, but these were turning into meadows. While not always easy hiking, it was nice, especially once it regained the ridge.

I'm not alone in the meadows.

Getting out to the ridge top in a burn scar. The brush here is not yet hard to navigate.

Fireweed is easy to find in the burn scars.

The forest at the top of Eightmile Creek has almost vanished in the last fire.

Looking back along the ridge toward Salmon Mountain.

Out around Nordheimer Creek heading north, the forest is still dense and green, at least as far as I can see in the morning light.

Easy walking on the ridge line. Rock lake is in the rocky cleft ahead.

I was very surprised to see multiple Washington lilies along the ridge. Most were purple and dried with age, but this one was still fresh.

I got to Salmon Summit to find I had come along the least traveled route. Most of travel comes up from High Point and turns to climb up to Rock Lake. The trails to Rock Lake and Red Cap Lake are even signed. I was hopeful that the next bit of trail would be pretty easy to follow and hike. It could certainly use a little work, but was indeed easy to follow and hike.

The way is mostly forest, but there is meadow too.

The humble and cheerful daisy in one of its many forms. Perhaps subalpine fleabane?

Meadows far down the hill to the north as well.

The large puddle of Knownothing Lake. The road up to High Point is visible beyond.

The land gets a bit more vertical around the area of the lake and the trail is built into the rocks. At the lake, I found well used camp sites to the east and lesser used ones among the rocks north and west. No running water was anyway. The lake was about five feet too low to be spilling. There didn't seem to be much life, either. I could see small things with paddles and others pretending to be sticks, but nothing else. It has probably had quite a few swimmers, but I needed water so that's what I had to get.

Rock Lake from the lower of two well used camp sites on the east side of the lake. The upper site appears to be official.

Then I turned to the trail east of Rock Lake that others have claimed to be impassible. It was also built into the rocks. A slide could be a big problem, but it sure looked just as well used as the trail coming in. I found nothing wrong with it all the way up to where it passes over the ridge. There were even footprints on it.

There are some vertical rocks, but the trail avoids those.

Topping out on the ridge means all sorts of new view including the higher mountains on the east side of Trinity Alps Wilderness.

The trail coming down the other side is not so good. Over the top, a pair of trees sit on top of a switchback. It makes the trail hard to see, not impassible. There are more switchbacks coming down and then it gets into heavy brush with trees up past my waist fallen across. I did give up the trail for about 100 feet to continue, but nothing was remotely like impassible all the way down to the junction with the Virgin Creek Trail junction. Looking across the valley, I could even easily pick out the trail as it continued eastward.

A little closer look at those high peaks through the mildly murky air.

Wandering up on the cut bits of three foot logs to get around the brush but definitely still on trail.

I didn't actually see any sign of the junction and had to stop a few minutes to pick out for sure which way Salmon Summit Trail continued, but once found it was easy enough to follow down the hill and past the Salmon Summit Mine. There were artifacts and a camp near the mine. The map indicates water, probably sourced from the mine, so maybe not the safest to drink. I wasn't going to trade my "tasty" lake water for it, but I didn't see it anyway.

Artifacts of the Salmon Summit Mine seen from the trail. I did not explore around the mine.

A pair of western sheep moths brighten up the moment.

Looking down the Virgin Creek drainage.

Another western sheep moth came fluttering and landing and fluttering some more.

I think I did find the trail that heads off the ridge and to the 4WD roads just north of the wilderness although it was blocked with a bunch of sticks. It didn't look well used. Salmon Summit turns to make a level path around the south side of Youngs Peak instead. I turned and found myself plunging into a lot of brush. Apparently just being able to see the trail easily along the side of the mountain doesn't mean it'll be easy to travel. Most of the brush was below waist height, but it got worse along east facing slopes and sometimes was over my head. This is not brush that just reaches out and touches giving ticks a chance to latch on. This is brush that meets the brush from the other side and would be intertwined except that people and animals keep coming by to press their way through. People have definitely been traveling here.

Sticks on a bit of trail to the left, maybe, and a bit of trail to the right with minor manzanita bushes before hitting a section of oaks mildly choking the trail. The high point is the top of Youngs Mountain.

Hard to believe there's even more Washington lilies hanging high overhead on this baked slope.

It looks like it would be easy to just wander around wherever around Virgin Creek, but the low green stuff isn't low enough.

I found water as I made my way along the trail. Water! It was just a bit of moist moss and a drip, but had I needed it, it would have been a most wonderful find. On the far side, I found things getting thicker and brush overhead. Then I found trail work. Someone had actually cut a space for me in the overhead brush. There was a lot more water coming down and even a camp (full of 5 gallon buckets) just before the trail finished with Youngs Mountain.

Not all of the trail is a dreadful brush push.

I should have traded my stagnant lake water for yummy stuff here among the leopard lilies.

There was a nicer looking camp (except that it is further from the water) at the saddle before the trail winds north of another bump. Trail is very nice along this section except for the occasional downed tree.

At the saddle, there is a view off the left of the next peak along. Potato Mountain seems to be a bit bare at the top and the next section along steep slope.

Just a few trees here and there. A rock has been sliced for this trail.

The showiest of the tiny flowers along the trail.

At the next saddle, I searched a bit for the trail up from Eagle Creek and couldn't find it. That put an end to my plan since the "impassible" bit of trail didn't. I just don't quite have the confidence to find a trail by doing 20 miles or so and following it from the other end. I did find the next junction. It even has a sign. Trail work seems to have come in from the side trail off Hotelling Ridge and only went west. I sat down and wondered if maybe I ought to just turn around and grab camp by the stream. After all, I wasn't sure if the stream I was aiming at would have water or a camp site. I decided at least I could go off and tag Mary Blaine where there was once a fire lookout and maybe Dees Peak, a nearby point that happens to be a bit higher. I would continue with the plan for a few more hours.

Now up above Eagle Creek on the side of Potato Mountain.

I passed a rock shoulder that looked like it could be a nice camp in a pinch. I got less worried about finding water when I found a little that wasn't even marked on the map. There wasn't any at the seasonal stream that was marked. I found another, lesser shoulder that had been used as a camp under the trees, something I found while spending twenty minutes trying to locate the trail out the other side. There are plenty of places that start to travel through the bushes and then suddenly stop. Only finding the trail allows continuing a while. A fallen tree had helped to make things difficult. As I came around, I started to hear something like a little roar of water cascading a long, steep route. Or maybe it was wind. I got more certain as it stayed and the wind only blew softly sometimes. There was a lot of water coming down. There was even another little stream a little further. There were no camps.

Burned trees show fire came right up the creek bed even though the vegetation should have been quite well watered.

I looked for some flat big enough to sleep on. I settled on something and grabbed some water and then decided against actually using it. I didn't like the camp half a mile back the way I came either, so decided to stagger on and see what came up. First, that was the worst trail I hit the whole trip. The area was moist and the bushes growing high and thick and some were right across the trail. It had been cut into, but stems had come down over that to fill in the space. I had to climb over and under and through with that extra water weight. My reward, a much nicer camp maybe half a mile forward on another shoulder.

Actually a pretty nice camp out on a larger rocky shoulder on Potato Mountain. Water a half a mile away.

A little color in the smoky. There's not much view around.

Between the lack of any chance of water coming down and the light breezes that wouldn't make things cold and the comet in the sky to try to see and the small moon going to set soon, I decided it was long past time I slept out in the open again. It was a very nice night and I did finally get to see that comet. I didn't manage to get a good picture of it, but I did leave the camera set to its highest ISO setting to sabotage the morning pictures until I noticed something was wrong. Then it was way too late and I fell deeply asleep.

Continue to the next day ⇒




©2020 Valerie Norton
Written 30 Jul 2020