My route took me from Clackamas down through Oregon City and out hwy 213 through Mulino and into Molalla. After stopping to top off my fuel, I headed up Sawtell Road for about 12 miles before turning up an unnamed road that travels East along South Gawley Ridge. The road I ended up taking didn't actually show up on my GPS and the road it told me to take was blocked off at the top, good thing I kinda knew where I was going...
Though temperatures were hitting close to 80 in the Portland area, up here in the mountains they were barely touching 70 in the sun and it was in the mid-60's down in the dark canyons. It was a reminder that spring and summer start a bit later when you're at 3,000 feet. As such, there were plenty of flowers blooming up in the higher elevations including rhododendrons.
I made it up to the view point, which is actually about a quarter-mile from Dog Rock, which is inaccessible by vehicle. There were some people already there so I wasn't able to drive my Jeep out to the edge for a shot of it looking over the valley. The rock in the center of the picture is at the edge of an approx. 400 foot cliff. On a clearer day you can see Mt Hood and I suspect Adams as well.
Coming back down to the main road, I noticed one section where there were young firs growing right down next to the road, not something usually seen along a logging road.
From there I wanted to explore a small road that heads down toward Butte Creek that I'd briefly driven on during a PNWBA tour a few months earlier. While driving down it, I spotted some more flowers to photograph. There were a ton of butterflies flittering around them.
Including this guy who was on a flower right next to me.
I turned down another side road which I hoped would take me down toward Butte Creek Falls. It quickly became pretty overgrown and with the pool ladder on my roof, I was having trouble getting through in a few places. Eventually I found a wide enough spot to turn around and did so. Shortly after, I got this shot at one of the wider/more open spots along the road.
My next goal was Rhody Lake, which is accessed via a maze of logging roads at about the 3,500 foot level. Not sure if there are many fish in this lake though I'm told it has lots of rough skinned newts in it. There's a small unimproved campground on the far side of the lake, it even has a pit toilet and trash can...
From there I continued up toward Hellcat Rock. I'd driven almost to it once before but the road gets pretty rough and I only manage to get up there while driving by myself and it is not a high traffic area. This time I decided to walk the last half mile to the rock to check out the view. The water seen in the lower center/left is Butte Lakes and the water toward the right (near one of the tree branches) is Copper Lake, neither of which I've had the opportunity to visit. Yet.
There is also a nice view of Mt Hood from there, along with some other peaks, none of which I can identify...
At this point it was nearly six o'clock and I really wanted to get out of there before it got any darker. I decided to drop down into Gawley Creek and come out along the Molalla River and follow it out to civilization. The crossing of Gawley creek is rather unusual. For whatever reason, instead of building a bridge or putting in a culvert for the road to go over the creek, it was chosen to pave across the creek and just let the creek run over the road. The road is in remarkable condition, no sign of being worn down by the water running over it at all. It makes a nice water crossing too :)
Gotta love that sweet ladder on the roof :D
These were my last pictures of the day as my goal was to just get out of there and go home but there were several spurs off the road between there and the Molalla river that begged for exploration that I'm going to have to go back and explore.
-Ryan
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