Last week saw us out on another hiking excursion to one of the less traveled trails up the McKenzie watershed, Grasshopper Mountain. One of those gems in the back of William Sullivan’s hiking books, my partner discovered this trail a couple of years ago when he had tried all the featured hikes and wanted something extra. This particular day, we took our friend and his 12 year old daughter along, both hardy hikers who just scaled South Sister last month, and set off on a warm summer afternoon for adventures.
The trail wasn’t terribly steep, and made its way through forests, wildflower meadows and patches of mountain huckleberries! Towards the end it got a bit brushy, but it appeared a crew had cleared the trail since last time Corey was out there, and there were only a couple of downed trees to contend with.One of the things this trail is known for is the heavy wildlife use, and we saw plenty of tracks, scat and various burrows.
The meadows on top of Grasshopper Mountain were nothing short of breathtaking, with sweeping views of rolling ridge tops, slightly hazy from some wildfires to the South of us. We thought we saw a bear foraging down below, but it turned out to be a black stump. I guess one is only due so many bear encounters on their wilderness treks.
As it turns out, Grasshopper Mountain was very aptly named because there were hundreds of grasshoppers exploding up from our feed everywhere we walked. We even made friends with a couple of them. They were quite friendly.
My young friend Logan had a good time jumping up and down and making grasshopper explosions.
Those grasshoppers will be telling stores about the earthquake of 2013 for years to come and those giants they made friends with.
We enjoyed munching our peanut butter banana sandwiches and looking out at the vast expanse of mountains around us. It’s the kind of spot I would love to come back to and spend a night with the rain fly off of the tent just to see the stars and enjoy coffee at sunrise. I’m feeling like one lucky mountain woman to have so many great hikes practically in my backyard. The McKenzie is a good place to be.
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