| Rock Creek Butte 9106' Trip Report |
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| Rock Creek Butte 9106'   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Date Climbed/Hiked: Jul 9, 2006 Activities: Scrambling Season: Summer | Page By: tazz Created/Edited: Jul 11, 2006 / Jul 12, 2006 Object ID: 206936 Hits: 1110 Loading... Page Score: 87.71% - 7 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Rock Creek Butte is the highest peak in the Blue mountains of or. Elkhorns. For those who like the list thing Rock Creek Butte is the 5th most prominent peak in Or. According to the register and the author of the mountain page on SP, it is climbed by less than 20 people a year. I have wanted to get into this area for a while now. There was always the lurking thunderstorms and the heat to deal with. I would never do this in the middle of the summer cause it is too HOT! Spring and Fall are the best bets for a more comfortable trip.
I went at the perfect time IMO. The forecast for thunderstorms had dropped with the high pressure system setting in. The area has seen some incredible storms in the past two weeks and Sat was one of the first breaks it had from them.
My cohort (Tazzman) and I headed out for the long 6 hour drive. The road up to the trail head is a good dirt road till the last 1/2mile or so. Then one might want high clearance. The last few hundred feet requires a high clearance vehicle.
The trail starts out as an old road the turns to trail quickly. Crossing Lake creek was interesting. After about 1.5 the trail opens up into some lush meadows and the views only get better as you go! Some of the greenest meadows I have seen since Colorado. Fields of green grasses speckled with the color of wildflower. The trail climbs up to Twin Lakes at 3 + miles.
The meadows and lakes are some of the nicest I have been to. Have you ever wanted to strip naked and roll in the cool wet meadow grass on a hot day?
Well I wanted to and Tazzman did! I know he stomped the meadows, but the next day the spots he did play in were perked back up and thriving again.
I was thinking of climbing that afternoon then just hiking out the next day but it was way too hot and decided to hang out at the lakes and go in the morning when it is nice and cool and then get down before thunderstorms popped up.
The area is beautiful! As we hung out scrambled, and hiked around the area.
There was a lot of rock fall all along the peaks and cliffs above the lakes. Looking closer I saw goats, not just a few but goats everywhere! They defy gravity and bounce around in the cliffs like it was nothing at all. I must have seen 50+ goats spread all throughout the area. . There is also a salt lick for them that they visit many time during the afternoon evening. This I believe helps them keep the fear of humans because they are not looking for salt from you or your stuff. These goats would high tail it as soon as they see you. There is no following you around like the goats I have seen in the Chants and Tuck & Robins areas. They were my entertainment for the day.
Sunset was cool with the almost full moon rising.
The next morning I headed up to the ridge to the saddle.
The trail joins the Elkhorn crest trail and you take a left and traverse the ridge to the next saddle. From here the trail moves to the north side of the ridge and I ran into some snow. I was able to get around the snow easily by using the moats. The trail then arrives at another saddle. From here I turned right and headed of trail up the SE ridge of Rock Creek Butte. The route is easy class 1 but you can play around and find some class 2 stuff if you want.
The views are nice from the top. You can see into the Wallowas and to the south is Strawberry peak area and on and on.....
We hung out on top for a bit and thought about going over to do Elkhorn peak. It was getting hot by now (9am!) and Tazzman had no water. So I decided I best get back down to the lakes so he can get cooled down. I can always come back and do the peak at another time. I singed the summit register and looked for Sp memebers Dean, Dennis and Bob names but there was a lot of paper in it. I didn’t find theirs but found another SP member http://www.summitpost.org/user_page.php?user_id=11822 in there. He is the one who created the mountain page. There were dates all the way back into the 80's. Lots of teens come up and leave their school ID cards as a graduation celebration. We headed back down and ate some early lunch, packed up and headed back down to the trial head.
About an hour after I got back to the car the thunder heads were building. As I drove through Baker City the whole range was getting beat by thunderstorms.
Whew! Got out of there in time!
There was one thing that I thought to be odd when I was there. I heard and saw motor bikes (2) up on the Elkhorn crest trail. Now I am not sure if it is allowed and I am cool if it is. All I have to say is I was on that trail and a motor bike on it would be scary as hell. Lots of drop offs and skinny spots that any sane person would not want to ride a motor bike on. It took them 2+ hours of pushing and riding the 2 miles that I could see. I know they could have never gone through the snow so they must have had to turn around. Just odd. I have never seen bikes up that high on a hiking trail. It is recreation trail so maybe it is allowed. Hmmm.....
I saw about ten people the whole time and only 2 face to face at the Lakes. Then saw the most people on the hike out. They where all doing a day hike up into the lakes. Great place to go solo for a nice easy backpack or great little day scramble.
Stats:
6 hrs from PDX ....yuck
11miles + RT.
6100' Acc gain. Not a lot of ups and downs but plenty of up.
High point 9106'
hauled ice axe and crampons but didn’t need them. Grrrr
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Elkhorn Mountains (OR)
