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Meandering in Brown Mountain’s maze By Lee Juillerat Oct 21, 2022 12:30 AM A A 3 View all photos Hiker Bill Van Moorhem is dwarfed by fallen tree. [Photo by Lee Juillerat] Klamath Trails Alliance keeps this and other trails open for hikers, bikersand equestrians. [Photo by Lee Juillerat] Columnist and photographer Lee Juillerat dubbed these oddly spooky bovines “Halloween cows.” It was a great hike, wherever it was we went. Bill Van Moorhem, who’s always interested in finding new places to hike, wanted to explore a new route. It started out simply enough, with Bill eventually turning off Dead Indian Memorial Road and driving a series of Forest Service roads to a trailhead near Little Butte Creek. From there we hiked along a section of the Brown Mountain Trail, which is well maintained by members of the Klamath Trails Alliance. It’s a beautiful section, with towering old-growth trees, occasional glimpses of Little Butte Creek, peeks of Brown Mountain’s summit and, fittingly for the fast-approaching holiday, what I dubbed Halloween Cows. What’s a Halloween Cow? Watching us as we hiked along was a small group of black cows. But what make them oddly spooky were what appeared to be enlarged orange eyes and large, rectangular gray-colored mouths. Whaaaa! On closer examination the “eyes” were orange tags hanging from both ears. The “mouths” were thing-a-ma-jiggies hanging over their mouths. I’ve been around cattle, but I’d never seen anything like these critters. The Halloween Cows were an entertaining diversion from breathtaking natural scenery, including old-growth trees so tall they were tickling the sky. We learned just how big some of them are. A fallen giant near the trail was so gargantuan that a section near its trunk was as wide as Bill is tall. Its collapsed root system dwarfed Bill and, in keeping with the Halloween theme, looked like a gnarly, hiker-eating monster. At the trail’s junction with another road we headed left, in a mile reaching a little maintained road that we followed to its bushy end. We backtracked to a series of roadside rocks, which we figured were there for a reason, then headed off, weaving and stumbling through the brush, searching for some semblance of a path. Using his GPS and common sense, Bill and I took turns leading before eventually reaching a dry stream and, on the uphill side, a maze of brushy manzanita and tumbly lava fields. Using the sun — it was nearly noon — as a guide, we made our way north, weaving around lava rock-strewn obstacles. “Another 300 feet,” Bill assured, studying his GPS. Sure enough, after our meanderings around and through bushes and rock fields, was the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s part of an amazing section of the PCT. Because of its erratic, lava-obstructing terrain, the section of the PCT alongside Brown Mountain south of Highway 140 was reportedly the costliest to create. In creating the route, trail crews brought in small, red-colored rock to help mark the path. We admired the work while taking a snack break. But only a short distance along the PCT, we left the trail and angled back into the bushes, whacking our way from wherever we were to wherever we were going. “Another 400 feet,” Bill pronounced after more thumping twists and turns. A short while later, after more of the meanderings, were we back at the dead-end road. Instead of following the same route and section of the Brown Mountain Trail back to the car, we followed the dirt road the other direction before eventually reaching a paved road and returning to Bill’s waiting car. I’ve studied my Fremont-Winema and Rogue River-Siskiyou national forests maps — the two forests overlap near the Brown Mountain region — trying to figure out where we were. There are clues, from Dead Indian Memorial, we took FS Road 3720 to 3725, but my maps show no logical connections with the Brown Mountain or PCT trails So no, I don’t know exactly where we went. But I’m looking forward to going there again. Reach freelance writer Lee Juillerat at [email protected] or 541-880-4139.