Day 5 and 6 of the Steens Road Trip

On Day 5, Saturday:
Drove to camp site at Lake of the Woods and camp to do some MTB at the lake.
Found a new trail that runs between Lake of Woods and Fish lake, about 9 miles.
Lots of caches in the area.
On Day 6 Sunday:
Drove home and cleaning up cache alone the way.
This me on near the top of Steens Mt. Rang.

Grasshoppers hitting car between places.



Me at the highest cache in Oregon.
9733 feet.
One of 70 caches I found on this trip.

Day 3 and 4 of Steens Road Trip

On day 3 and 4.
I was at the base of Steens Mt. Rang.
Its a 60 mile loop up to 9700 feet.
So I drove the 3 miles in to Frenechglen to fuel up.
At only $5.00 gal. I only need about 4 gallons.
Only a 3 cache to day, but I do get a FTF on the highest cache in Oregon.

I saw this watch tower near a farm house, why?















The view from the road of the first canyon.





The great view from the rocks.















Look south at the hight point, 9733 feet.



















Wild Horses lake, there is 3 people down there.

The Road Trip to Steens Mountain Rang

I left July 22, heading out on highway 140 out of Medford going east.
I had set-up the GPSr to geocaching alone the way all the way to the Steens or as much as possible.
So I started picking up caches about Fish Lake and Lake of the Woods area, alone the road.
I pick up about 16 cache alone the way, all the way over to the other side of K-Fall pass Bonanza to a lake called Gerber Reservoir, and camped there in a nice little dry camp.
Its about 25 acer lake.
Seem to be the fishing spot for every one who was there.
There was 2 not find yet cache, but one was on and island and other was across this bay, the water was none to clean, so I passed on these as much as I hated not getting the FTF.
The smoke from the Cal. fires was blowing into this area, as you can see from the picture.
On Day II, I was up about 7:00AM because the sun was shinning on the tent, so no sleep in time and I had to make to the camp sit at the base of the Steens today.
I left the area about 8:AM or so and found some more caches, as I was leaving the area.
Heading back to highway 140 I had to cover about 30 mile of dirt road so this slow me down so till I hit 140.
I pick up 7 cache through the hole day, not to good, but no misses yet.

I push on for Lake View, not much of a town.
I had forgotten to get a tube for my MTB in Grants Pass, so I thought I would find one here, no luck at all.
Only one place had bike tubes, and there were the wrong ones.
A hardware store, and no bike shop in town.
So I fueled up, because this would be the last place to fuel till I get to Frenchglen, at the base of the Steens.
So I took the short cut to Frenchglen, and you know how short cuts work out.
I pass through one of the largest game and bird refuges.
Warner (bird) Refuge and Hart Mountain Antelope Refuges.






As you can see from the video, it is really big.
When I left Lake View, I cut up north to a little place called Plush, and that was were the pavement ended and the dirt road started.
The dirt road was under construction, so at about 25 miles from Plush I came across a flagger, who told me that she could not talk to the other end because the radios wouldn't reach that far, so go ahead and watch out for the big trucks.

So driving at the post speed limit, I drove the 65 miles of dirt, dodging big trucks and farmers and some cows.

There is a really nice place for sell out there, 420 acres with new house on the only hill out there, with lots of open space to do what ever you would like.
I got to the Page Spring camp ground about 4:30 and found a nice camp spot next the a river, the river was about 8 inches deep. LOL
I spent two night here.
Oh, the post speed was 35mph. LOL

Day 2, Alta Lake Hike

Got to the Alta lake about 4:00pm and set up camp in the same spot that Me and Ben used about 15 years ago.
This is the end you first come to when the trail ends, the camp site is way down at the other end. The camp site is at 6800 feet elevation.
The weather cools down pretty quick, I was in the tent and bag by 8:00pm because I got cold.










This the view from the camp site, in AM.


And the video is of the valley starting with Crater Lake at one end and ending at Devil's peak. This is the view I had for dinner and breakfast.

Picture to the right is of Grass Lake and Middle Lake is closes, this is looking south into California.








If you click on the picture, you can see witch is Crater Lake and Mt. Thelson.








The reflection in the lake was so nice, I had to add the picture.

And last...............

The Hike to Alta Lake

I finely started my vacation, about two weeks late, starting Thursday, NO WORK till August 4.

And guess what the first thing I did?
On Thursday morning I packed my back pack, and left for the 7 Lakes Wilderness area in the Sky Lakes Wilderness. This area is located between Crate Lake and Mt. McLoughling, and area about 15 miles wide and 50 miles long, with 100s of lake.
The trail head for Alta Lake, one of the 7 lakes, is the closes and shorts hike in.
A mirror 6 1/2 miles by the sign any ways.
Being on vacation I slept in and got a late start. So by the time got my pack set-up and found every thing, I did not get out of here till about noon.
The trail head is about 14 miles the other side of the town of Prospect.

Here I am at the trail head.

I drove into the TH, about 1:00pm, a mosquitoes go me in the first two minutes I was out of the car. So, out came the OFF stuff, the super strong stuff is the only thing that will work with these hungry bugs.
The trail is just wide enough for a unicycle, and climbs pretty good.
The first two miles, climbs from 5000 feet to 6000 feet, walking though woods and fields.















About 1 mile of open fields, as you can see in the pictures.
After 2 mile it got a interesting surprise, for the next 3 miles, I must have cross 50 of these.














As you can see that the snow is really there, in places, being up to eight feet deep. As luck would have it, it is very hard, so it made it easer to walk across, in most places.
More to come of what I saw, when I got to Alta Lake and the other 6 lakes.