The trail then undulates high above the river among tall western larches. A little farther on, there’s a collapsed cabin with a shake roof. Rusty bunk bed frames remain in the main room. Below the trail, you’ll see your first cabin with its attendant outhouse and shed. Aspen trees shimmer on a talus slope above. Cross several boggy seeps, noting the white orchids, and enter a more mature woodland of Douglas-fir, Engelmann spruce, ponderosa pine, and some very large larch trees. Heliotrope, geranium, cinquefoil, and mertensia bloom along the path. Pass the wilderness boundary sign, and hike along a grouseberry-lined trail in shady lodgepole woods. Pass miners’ rock piles and then go right across the big log that constitutes the Trail Creek Footbridge. Hike down through a lodgepole pine-shaded meadow that blooms with cow parsnip, penstemon, and lupine. It's a 5 1/4 mile round-trip hike to the Bigfoot Hilton if you want to do a shorter hike.Īt the trailhead, an information board illustrates some of the salient features of placer mining. Some sections of these trails are not regularly maintained, so you will probably have to contend with some downed trees. This hike will take you down past several of these workings, but to make this a loop, you’ll have to ford at knee-depth the North Fork John Day (Bring water shoes and two trekking poles for balance) and hike up the Crane Creek Trail, which becomes indistinct in the long lush meadow near the source of the creek (Also, there are ticks in the meadows). Miners used powerful water cannons to blast away whole hillsides, and the larger rocks were piled in small ridges so the finer material could be sluiced to sort out the heavy metals, primarily gold. Some of the old miner’s cabins remain, and rock pile tailings, as well as water trenches, are obvious in many locations. When the area became wilderness in 1984, the existing 200 claims were grandfathered in, and the last operation, the Blue Heaven Claim, was worked until 2004. Production tailed off by the 1920s, but the Great Depression saw a number of small claims filed up and down the river. The North Fork John Day River was a hot bed of mining activity from small operations in the 1860s to larger, more industrial concerns beginning in the late nineteenth century. 6 Guidebooks that cover this destination.
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