Collawash Mtn trails

Doug Firman · 2016-09-22T16:35:10Z

Yesterday I did some exploring on Collawash Mountain to see if I could find either of these two trails shown on the 1938 map. The blue trail is the Rho Ridge trail and the yellow trail I call the Collawash Mtn trail. I found segments of both of them. The yellow trail, the Collawash Mtn trail, runs along the east side of the ridge leading up to the summit. I was able to follow it for about 1/4 mile to the edge of the clearing on the north end of the summit ridge. At that point there is some bunched phone wire on the ground and an insulator on a tree. Beyond that point there is a long rock field along the west side of the ridge with no clear evidence of trail. The map suggests that the phone line went farther south along the summit ridge and that the trail continued beyond the summit to the south. I followed that route along the east edge of the ridge as far as the road which runs along the Willamette NF boundary, but found no sign of trail. Collawash Mtn trail: The blue trail is the Rho Ridge trail. I located it in the big trees south of the clearcut. I followed it south for a while then turned around to see how far north I could locate it in the clearcut. There is clear tread in the clearcut although it is obscure in places. I did not have enough time yesterday to search very far into the clearcut, but I did locate a total of about 0.4 mile of this trail. In the big trees, the trail is in good shape and is easy to follow. Rho Ridge trail on Collawash Mtn: Photo of the general area and gps track of my route: The map below shows my route with the located trail segments highlighted: With more searching it might be possible to close the gap between the north ends of these trails. With even more searching it might be possible to locate the Rho Ridge trail north through the clearcut to Rd 6355. That might be too optimistic, but having found as much trail as I did in the south end of the clearcut makes me think that it might just be possible to find enough intact segments that can be linked together to reestablish this route to the summit of Collawash Mtn. View west across the summit of Collawash Mtn:

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Bryon Boyce

Oct 13, 2016 4:10 pm

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Joined: 16 years ago

In the post Historical Items of interest | Old Lookout Photos on the sidebar there is a link to Collowash Mountain, which shows it is most likely a seasonal lookout site, like Baty Butte, which is also listed. I will see if I can find the old Firemens Maps for Collowash Mountain. I have one with Baty Butte shown with the label L O. Nearby peaks that had a Fire Tower were marked in addition with a red stamp of a L in a circle.
Collowash Lookout Panoramas

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