Oregon Butte — Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020

When you get a window you take the window. Knowing rain and snow was coming in the days ahead you put a call into “a blue mountain old timer” to get the 411 on the road conditions (often very muddy this time of year which can cause some super sketch traveling) I was given the green light. Roads were good enough and I would be able to navigate the current mud/ice conditions in my lifted 4Runner with mountain tires.

A pretty windy day at the trailhead. Two other trucks were in the TH parking lot (spike elk hunters). I wore the brightest orange I could for safety and we hit the trail. Three miles each way. The trail splits a little under a mile in and you can take either trail as they both reconnect later down the trail. We took the ridge trail (upper) on the way out and the north facing slope trail (lower) on the way back. The guard station was locked up for the winter and we ran into a hunter glassing up there. Sat on the bench that surrounds the structure to have a snack and hung out for about 30ish minutes before we made our way down. Once we got back down to where we could pick the ridge or north facing slope trail we opted for the more northern trail. Found ourselves walking in massive amounts of mud during that section (good times).

The road out had thawed quite a bit and was more muddy (especially since all of the elk campers along the road also headed out). Pretty big muddy ruts had been made even bigger with all of the traffic. It definitely made driving more challenging since this road has many steep drops off the side and is very narrow. We made it back up to Kendall Skyline without real issue since I’m comfortable driving in really crappy road conditions (we did have some slipping here or there but I was able to navigate).

We definitely hit the window. Rain/snow is forecast for the next two days and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere on Forest Road 4608 with the current conditions. Spring may be the next opportunity in all likelihood.