#pilot rock

[unteriors]

NE Cherry Street, Pilot Rock, Oregon.

[rabbitcruiser]

Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint, OR (No. 1)

The Peter Skene Ogden State Scenic Viewpoint is a state park on the Crooked River in Oregon, United States. It is on the border of Deschutes and Jefferson counties.

The facility is named in honor of Peter Skene Ogden who first entered the Crooked River Valley while leading a Hudson's Bay Company trapping party in 1825. Although no mention is made at the park itself, it was also the site of one of Oregon's most sensational murders, which led to the conviction of Jeannace June Freeman of first degree murder. She was the first woman ever sentenced to death in Oregon, and remained the only woman ever sentenced to death in Oregon until 2011. Her conviction was upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court, though she was not in fact executed.

Source: Wikipedia

[mundanalyst]

A few views from Grizzly Peak, Oregon; 5/22/2021

[pcttrailsidereader]

Pilot Rock (Oregon)

At 5,910′ tall, Southern Oregon’s Pilot Rock is not a particularly tall peak but, as its name suggests, it is a landmark distinguishable from some distance away including to PCT hikers. This volcanic plug is located in the western Cascade Range near the east end of the Siskiyou Mountains, just east of the Siskiyou Summit and I-5 near Ashland. The PCT is routed along the base of the plug on its northside as it follows the high ridge to the east.  At 25.6 million years old, Pilot Rock is one of the oldest features in the Cascades but far younger than the 425 million-year-old Siskiyou Mountains that the PCT transects to the west.

In our on-going series on Oregon mountains along the PCT, we are focusing on peaks often overshadowed by the dramatic Oregon mountains like Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson.  Too often thru-hikers race through the forests of Oregon and don’t appreciate the many unique mountains in the Oregon Cascades.

The Takelma tribe of Native Americans originally called the rock Tan-ts'at-seniphtha (stone standing up),but to early settlers Pilot Rock was known as Boundary Mountain. Hudson's Bay trappers came this way in the early 1820s. Peter Skene Ogden camped within sight of Pilot Rock when his party of explorers crossed the Siskiyou Mountains in 1827. Pilot Rock stood as a landmark for ‘49ers making their way between the California gold fields and the settlements in Oregon's Willamette Valley. The United States Exploring Expedition passed through the area on September 28, 1841, renaming the rock Emmons Peak after Lieutenant George F. Emmons, a U.S. naval officer and member of the group.The rock later become known as Pilot Rock because it served as a landmark for pioneers coming north from California on the Applegate Trail, being visible from as far as the southern end of the Shasta Valley, over 40 miles to the south.

Stagecoach travelers and freight wagons jolted along a wagon road that opened near the mountain in 1859. The road was paved in 1913--an 8-foot strip to accommodate the automobile. Named the Pacific Highway in the 1920s, the road was widened to 16-feet. It was re-routed in the 1940s, and replaced by Interstate 5 in the 1960s.  

Nine planes have crashed into Pilot Rock since 1942, mainly due to poor visibility.

[outdoorovernights]

Pilot Rock CBP-247 BBQ Charcoal Grill Review

Have you ever wondered what it takes to elevate your outdoor cooking game, ensuring that every barbecue session is not just a meal, but an experience to remember? Enter the Pilot Rock CBP-247 Jumbo Park Style Heavy Duty Steel Outdoor BBQ Charcoal Grill with Cooking Grate and 2-Piece Post for Camping and Backyards, Black. This grill promises to add a robust touch to your backyard or campsite, and…

Pilot Rock CBP-247 BBQ Charcoal Grill Review

[tadingle]

Lexus GX off roading.

[pcttrailsidereader]

Don’t Stop Fighting -- The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in the Cross-Hairs

We have provided regular updates on Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s review of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and urged PCT hikers to  weigh in (see http://pcttrailsidereader.com/post/168289752745/the-evisceration-of-bears-ears-and-implications).  You are a stakeholder as a lover and user of the PCT.  The PCT winds through the Monument for 19 miles . . .   This is an excerpt of a very balanced article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on March 3 that lays out the arguments on both sides.

Hyatt Lake in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument and on the PCT

By Kurtis Alexander

There’s no welcome sign here, not even a marked road to the entrance. Just wide-open countryside.

But this little-visited stretch of protected hills and valleys that makes up California’s share of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is at the heart of a nationwide debate over the management of America’s public lands.

After President Trump’s recent decision to shrink two monuments in Utah, the administration is eyeing the 113,000-acre Cascade-Siskiyou site on the remote California-Oregon border for similar downsizing.

Established in 2000, the monument safeguards the crossroads of the ancient Siskiyou Mountains and the younger volcanic Cascades. The juncture forms a land bridge that brings together an unusual mix of animals and plants, from desert snakes to salamanders to cactus to old-growth firs. Some have called it the Galapagos of North America.

The administration, though, has recommended more logging and cattle grazing here, an overture that brings Trump’s pro-development push from the more receptive Southwest to the deep blue West Coast. Already, all four senators from California and Oregon, as well as many in the state legislatures, are lining up with conservation groups to protest.

“This isn’t Utah,” said Dave Willis, 65, an outdoorsman who lives in a mobile home on one of many private parcels within the monument’s boundary and has spent much of his life advocating for the area’s protection.

But despite the resistance, many residents in this sparsely populated region don’t share the politics of the rest of their states, and they have little concern for the monument.

In Yreka, the seat of Siskiyou County, where one of two remaining sawmills closed a few months ago and a historically booming timber industry has given way to high unemployment, many said they can’t afford to put conservation ahead of commerce.

“Our concerns don’t come from a standpoint of having a pristine place because we have tons of them,” said county Supervisor Ray Haupt. “We’re a poor county, and anytime we look at a lockup of public property, it hurts us economically.”

On a recent afternoon, terrestrial ecologist Evan Frost, who co-wrote a scientific report that successfully argued for the monument’s expansion under President Barack Obama, trekked down an old ranch road on its California portion.

To the south, giant Mount Shasta loomed. To the north stood Pilot Rock in Oregon, an old volcanic plug that once guided wagon trains and serves as the monument’s defining landmark.

“I rarely see anyone up here,” Frost said, crossing through grasslands where feral horses grazed. “It’s really off the beaten track.”

The California side of the monument is just 5,000 acres, sitting alongside the state’s little-known Horseshoe Ranch Wildlife Area, which is roughly the same size and enjoys similar protections.

While small, the expanse is important, Frost said. It’s not as high as the more mountainous terrain across the border and offers sanctuary to low-lying oak and chaparral, which attract deer and elk from the north come winter.

The monument’s biggest waterfall, Jenny Creek Falls, flows in California. The series of cascades with drops up to 40 feet is hidden in a far-flung canyon where hikers commonly get lost trying to find the chutes.

The Obama administration added the California property to the monument in January of last year, part of a near doubling of the overall site. While monuments are similar to national parks, they don’t need congressional approval and are created or enlarged at the wishes of the president under the 112-year-old Antiquities Act.

Frost and others made the case to the Obama administration that the original boundaries weren’t sufficient to preserve the area’s biodiversity.

“Having this full spectrum of ecological change is very important,” Frost said. Now he stood beside a fragrant juniper tree, more at home in the dry eastern basins of Oregon than its perch on the grassy, California hillside. “We’re almost in a high desert here, but we go to a conifer forest in only a few miles.”

The Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the monument, has yet to draft an official plan for the expansion. If the site survives Trump’s review, federal officials could add a few amenities for visitors, such as road signs and trails.

When Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke visited the region last summer to evaluate the Obama administration’s adjustments, the region’s logging and ranching communities opened their arms to the scrutiny. One resident greeted the secretary with a poster: “New Endangered Species: Rural American.”

As in the nation’s coal country, the natural-resource economy here has taken hits not only from stepped-up environmental restrictions but foreign competition, new material markets and an aging workforce. Far more jobs today are in health care, hospitality and retail. Many are holding out hope for a turnaround, even if unlikely.

“We’re just getting to where everything is coming down on us,” said Siskiyou County resident Lawrence Bell, 72, who supports the monument’s downsizing. “We got nothing compared to what we had.”

Under the terms of the monument’s creation, grazing is permitted, at least where the Bureau of Land Management thinks cattle won’t trample hillsides or pollute creeks. Logging, though, is being phased out in a bid to improve forest health.

The impact of the monument’s regulations is limited on the California side. Just two sites have been grazed recently and continue to be leased to ranchers, according to federal records. Logging companies have never harvested timber here because of the lack of trees.

Oregon is seeing a bigger fallout. While the government hasn’t forced cattle off the monument, some ranchers sold grazing leases to conservation groups, which in turn retired the rights. An industry group says monument rules make it hard for cattlemen to run their herds. About two dozen grazing areas remain active, records show.

As for logging, about 6 million board feet of timber is forfeited on Oregon’s side of the monument each year, according to federal estimates — a small fraction of the state’s production, but still troubling, according to some local businesses.

Both the lumber trade and a coalition of Oregon counties, which receive a cut of logging proceeds, are suing the federal government over the monument. Their attorneys contend the expansion violated a 1937 federal law designating most of the land for timber.

John Kessler, a forestry consultant in Siskiyou County, said the reasons to scale back the monument don’t end there. He fears damage from wildfires if timber harvesting ends, and the loss of logging roads popular with all-terrain vehicle users and snowmobilers.

Environmentalists dismiss such concerns, insisting that many of the hundreds of miles of dirt roads will remain and that logging isn’t the only way to reduce fire hazard. But Kessler’s arguments carry an emotional weight with local currency.

“I’m afraid we’re just going to see more problems,” he said.

Along Oregon’s Highway 66, where the core of the monument reveals thick pine and fir forests and plenty of snow in the winter, an emerging tension is clear in the competing signs that dot the roadside.

“No Siskiyou Monument,” reads one.

“We (heart) our monument,” says another.

Green Springs Inn on the PCT

Padraic McGuire, whose family runs Green Springs Inn and Cabins near the crossing of the Pacific Crest Trail, hung a banner in support of the site last year in anticipation of a nearby opposition rally.

“If this is how it’s going to be,” he said, “let’s wave our flag.”

McGuire, 35, appreciates the modest services the Bureau of Land Management introduced for visitors. Updated maps highlight points of interest, such as Hyatt Lake and Hobart Bluff, and a few signs show the way to destinations like Soda Mountain Wilderness.

McGuire’s woodsy resort has benefited from crowds that come from nearby Ashland, Ore., a town known for its Shakespeare festival, where people have been largely supportive of the monument. He said hikers and climbers also have started coming from Portland and the Bay Area.

McGuire hopes the organized advocacy for the monument will win out. In addition to support from political leaders up and down the West Coast, businesses have been writing letters, and some national corporations are joining the fray.

Patagonia, the outdoor retailer, recently sparred with Washington over its website accusing Trump of stealing America’s public lands. The House Natural Resources Committee fired back in a tweet that the company was lying and simply trying to “sell more products to wealthy elitist urban dwellers from New York to San Francisco.”

Attorneys general from Oregon and California are threatening to sue the administration if the Cascade-Siskiyou monument is altered. They allege that while a president has authority to create such a designation, he doesn’t have the power to remove it.

The administration has rejected the legal challenges. In addition to the Cascade-Siskiyou site, Zinke is recommending reductions to Nevada’s Gold Butte National Monument as well as management changes that could lift protections at a half dozen other land and marine sites.

In Siskiyou County, Anne Marsh, 78, said she’s no longer able to get out into these wild places because of her age, but she’s adamant that they shouldn’t be turned over to private enterprise.

“It’s not a popular opinion to have in this community. I’m considered a real greenie environmentalist here,” she said. “But for me, I have grandchildren and perhaps great grandchildren on the way. I’d like to see them be able to use our country’s land.”