Preston: Raspberry Lake

Six Rivers National Forest

Smith River National Recreation Area

Klamath National Forest

Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest

DAY 1 | DAY 2 | DAY 3 | DAY 4

static map — Orange line for day 2. Click for interactive map

Morning light came to Sanger Lake long before the sunlight. Since I hadn't had time to make a loop on the trail around the lake in the evening, I went around in the morning. Around the far side, where Calypso orchids and Trillium grew and small streams delivered water to the lake, the trail got hard to follow.

024: dark lake — Morning comes to Sanger Lake.

025: colored sky — The colored western sky as the sun comes up behind.

027: tiny blue and white flowers — But the flowers I took pictures of were the thyme leaved speedwells along the north side. They happen to be invasive.

After breakfast and packing, I had to go back for a bit brighter pictures before heading down the road to the trailhead.

028: lake and trees and snow — Looking south across Sanger Lake from a campsite that is far too close to the water.

031: snowy mountain ahead on a rough road — The snowy side of Youngs Peak while heading along the narrow road to the trailhead.

033: flooded meadow — There's lots of water along the way, flowing and flooding meadows into shallow ponds.

034: green flowers — Rocky Mountain maples were still in bloom.

037: parking and sign — Youngs Peak Trailhead, the end of the line for car travel in a week or two. Trail goes off to the right.

We glanced over the sign and turned to follow Clear Creek Trail. Past a row of big rocks, it is still old road to what was the trailhead a few years ago. There's some views along this stretch.

039: snowy bumps of rock — Peaks up ahead, including Preston Peak, wilderness high point, at the right.

040: bunch of bright white flowers — Bitter cherry was being a bit more showy with its flowers.

041: flower like — The "flowers" of a Douglas fir.

The old trailhead has metal bollards to restrict vehicle travel from the trail that still follows old road. It does start to have significant defects if you were actually to try to get a vehicle down it. Which you wouldn't because it's the Siskiyou Wilderness.

042: metal bollards and a sign on a tree — Into the wilderness, signed by a big sign on the left tree.

That old trailhead is pretty much the high point for the day. Next is a long drop into Youngs Valley. We had a bit of snow on the trail even through this is a rather southerly facing slope. Sometimes it stretched all the way across the old road.

044: big snow patches — Snow on the trail below Youngs Peak.

045: bunch of pink flowers — Lots of bunches of greenleaf manzanita flowers.

We found the old, long switchbacks cut a couple times. The first came as the road became particularly choked with snow. The second even had a sign. Apparently we are all going to Raspberry Lake, because that's what it was pointing out the way for.

046: sign on a tree — Raspberry Lake, to the left, where the road seems to go for a creek so it is easy to miss the switchback.

050: little white flowers — The buckbrush (Ceanothus) made knee high carpets of white.

051: snowy peaks over green meadow — El Capitan rises prominently over Youngs Meadow with Preston Peak behind.

052: significant cascade and falling water — We found a huge waterfall across the valley.

053: blue flowers and beetles — Siskiyou mat (Ceanothus) adds in some blue and a playground for dimorphic flower longhorn beetles.

Arriving at the junction with Black Butte Trail, Daniil wanted to take the 300 foot walk to the saddle. From there, he kept on going because there wasn't a view yet. The trail stubbornly refused to give one, so he gave up and headed cross country northeast of the saddle where there was an opening and view. I decided to take in the lovely collection of flowers at the saddle rather than wandering up into the trees for a view.

054: old roads split — The trails are all old roads as Black Butte Trail splits off to find the East Fork Illinois River.

056: white flower petals of three — Pacific Trillium just over the saddle as we popped into Rogue River-Siskiyou, the third National Forest of the day.

057: underside of a yellow nodding flower — A glacier lily with some of the trees of the Klamath National Forest.

058: white flowers with bright yellow sweet spots — Lanceleaf springbeauties.

059: more little white flowers — Nuttall's toothwort.

I was willing to follow over to where there actually was view and see the Illinois River's East Fork.

060: squred off peak — Black Butte itself from the viewpoint near the pass.

061: treed valley — More of the East Fork Illinois River valley.

062: purple flower with a wild hair style — Fairy slippers, a Calypso orchid, lined the trail.

The saddle was well worth the easy excursion. From there, we continued downhill to Youngs Meadow and a different collection of flowers.

064: wide, flat, green — Youngs Meadow from the edge.

065: many petaled white flowers — Nevada Lewisia, to start with a prize.

066: yellow flowers — Western buttercups are less of a prize.

068: water in the meadow — Clear Creek gets itself started in Youngs Meadow. (Or at least that's how USGS used to see it.)

There were blankets of purple in the distance. Lupine? Larkspurs? Nope. Shooting stars.

070: bee and flower — A black-tailed bumblebee arrives at a Sierra shooting star with another flower on its back.

071: frilly white flowers — Saskatoon bushes flower at the edge.

072: little beetle — A pollen covered flying saucer lady beetle.

Trail is still old road at the junction to go to Raspberry Lake on the Poker Flat-Youngs Valley Trail. It is still road as it splits to an old secondary route on the far side of Clear Creek. That abandoned route is bridged and we popped over as far as what is now a well established camping area. Once we followed the sign for "Clear Creek Trail", it started to look less like an old road.

074: water and grass — A small pond that sits in Youngs Meadow and some of the purple shooting star carpet.

077: big water — Just getting to and crossing Clear Creek, at least according to the more modern national map by USGS rather than their old topos.

078: lots of water — Clear Creek certainly has a lot of water already.

081: nodding flower with checkered petals — Finally a checker lily in bloom!

We hit the expected fire area. This is the 2018 Natchez Fire and it looks to have been rather bad in the area, but trees do remain. There's a lot more undergrowth than in other parts of the forest now.

082: burn with cut log — Siskiyou Mountain Club was here since the burn, but with even delivered funding somehow vanishing they may need directed funding to find their way here again. It's Bigfoot Trail, but the Bigfoot Trail Alliance is even smaller and also isn't seeing the expected funding. There's plenty of work!

083: yellow flowers — A stream that is more of a wide, flowing, wet spot is choked with stream violets. And a couple Pacific trillium.

086: white stars — Salomon's plume is starting to flower.

Crossing the creek outflow of Raspberry Lake, we were ready to stop losing elevation. Really ready considering how hot it had gotten. In spite of the rather complete tree kill by the fire in the area, we did find a reassuring sign to mark the trail up to unburned Rattlesnake Meadow. We just had a lot of challenging burn to cross to get there.

088: sign among Ceanothus and burned tree trunks — Finding the junction sign helpfully reduces the scope of potential trail options. I still found two.

089: lots of black trunks and distant green bits — Almost obscured distant green tree tops suggest there might be easier parts of this trail.

090: big cairn in the rocky landscape — Some big cairns help, if you can spot them in the rocks and brush.

The trail, which we mostly did find, does not wiggle the way the Forest Service line wiggles. But it does go that way a bit. Mostly. It was an incredibly arduous journey. And my stupid cheap fitness watch kept accusing me of sitting too long because it doesn't understand the movements of hands with poles, especially when one is leaning heavily on them trying to pull one's self up an overgrown, tree strewn, difficult to find trail.

091: strings of flowers — Deer oak will be making happy bees in the coming weeks.

092: spiked fruit — Sierra gooseberries to make the bears happy.

093: just burned trees — Why, fire, why? Why do you think this is acceptable behavior?

As the trail is supposed to leave the ridge area and contour around to the meadow, Daniil announced that it was impassible due to Ceanothus/deer oak/dogwood/really the identity of the green crud that is not trees doesn't matter. I didn't check his work as I had pretty much given up on seeing that green oasis of Rattlesnake Meadow up close. We knew there was one because we could see it from afar. We briefly tried following trails on the ridge a little further, which just meant we didn't have as nice a deer trail to the pond north of the ridge when we did break that way to get to Raspberry Lake instead.

095: shallow water among burn — A likely seasonal pond at the edge of bad burn.

Once to the little pond, we had come to the end of steep, overgrown difficulty. We still had some steep travel to go, but it was so much easier without so many trees to jump over and not bothering to try to find a faint, vanishing trail. That's both physical and mental energy saved.

097: hanging white flowers — Hooker's fairybells and vanilla leaf on the hillside.

098: stalk of small, fancy white flowers — One of a few stalks of three-toothed mitrewort.

We popped over the hill directly into a well used camp at Raspberry Lake.

100: white headed bird — A bald eagle settled into a tree on the far side.

101: lake with burned trees above — The fire did come down to Raspberry Lake.

102: more lake — The lake across the outlet to Copper Mountain. The eagle is approximately center.

As tired as I was, I did find the energy to move around the lake and grab a different spot by some large rocks. I thought they had potential for some sunset views plus they were covered in flowers.