Holly's Horse Tales and Trails: Pine Lakes, Indian Crossing, Hurricane Creek and Frances Lake, Oregon

Eastern Oregon is the only part of the state that I haven't spent quite as much time in, but this was my fifth trip into the Wallowa's/ Eagle Cap Wilderness, so I am getting quite a few of these trails knocked off my list.

On the trail to Frances Lake.

I started with a trail that has always been a little bit tricky to plan because there is nowhere to camp at the trailhead, since it is on private property. Cornucopia Lodge and Pack Station is 11 miles outside of Halfway, Oregon, and the owners have recently changed up quite a few things. At one time, you could rent a cabin and bring your horse along, in fact some friends of mine did just that, a couple of years ago. But they no longer have corrals set up for that kind of thing, you can still rent cabins and if you want to ride their horses, they will pack you in. And they have revamped the parking area so there is more room to park trailers. Obviously if anyone is interested in staying there, give them a call.

I stayed in Halfway, at the rodeo grounds. Although the phone number was out of service and I sent two emails to two different people, no one ever responded, so I just showed up and camped there. There is someone who lives on the property, but even though they knew I was there, they didn't talk to me. There was no pay box, so it was a nice free place to stay, although hot as hell on that particular day. In the evening a storm rolled in and it cooled things right off, in fact it rained the entire night and was still drizzling in the morning. I drove up to the trailhead and was getting ready when I heard some strange noises.

Parking at Cornucopia.

My friends, Doris and Scott had rented a cabin at Cornucopia, and planned to hike the trail, and meet me at Pine Lakes. Doris was one of the people who had stayed there previously, rode most of the trail with another mutual friend of ours, but did not make it to the lakes, due to our mutual friend having horse issues. So she was excited to get to the final destination this time. The strange noises were cow bells, attached to a herd of about 20 or so horses and mules all running around loose. And right in amongst them all was Doris and Scott on their way to start the hike. They were supposed to get a little bit more of a head start on me, since obviously I would be able to catch up with them pretty quickly.

Cornucopia Pack Station is where the trail starts.

As luck would have it I ran right into the herd of equines as I was trying to get to the trailhead. This was the most difficult part of the day for me! A few of them approached me and were getting a little too

friendly, so I trotted through them ASAP and managed to lose them. I caught Doris and Scott at a creek crossing and then only saw them again from a distance, until they reached the lakes.

At the beginning of the trail to Pine Lakes.

On the trail to Pine Lakes.

A pretty meadow just before hitting the tree line.

This trail is 15 miles all together, and nearly 3000 feet elevation gain, but the switchbacks are not steep. There is however a long stretch of shale, and an even longer boulder field to cross along the way. Once at the lakes, I hung out for a bit and when Doris and Scott arrived we had lunch. Then because it was actually a kind of chilly day, they left to hike back down, instead of doing what they had hoped, after a sweaty hike, which was going for a nice swim. I caught them a couple more times on the way back, but my horse does go slower downhill than up, and we had to take our time over all the rocky stuff, so they beat us back to the lodge.

Almost to the lakes.

The upper, and bigger lake.

They made it!

Doris and Scott heading back down the trail ahead of me.

Doris's photo of me, below a waterfall.

On a rocky section of trail.

Plenty of flowers still blooming.

Back on to the long boulder field.

Once back at the pack station, all the equines had been safely ensconced in their corral.

Doris and Scott drove in to say goodbye to me, at this point between running into them by mistake on the highway the day before, seeing them at the rodeo grounds, and then several more times at the trailhead and along the trail, we kind of had a joke that my horse was probably wondering " who are these people? and why do they keep showing up everywhere that I am?!"

I had gotten on the trail at 7:00 am and so I had enough time left in the day to drive over to the next destination, which was Indian Crossing. This involved driving on the Hells Canyon Scenic Byway. It's a two lane paved road but it does go up and down some steep hills and it is pretty curvy. When I got to the top of a long downhill section, I decided to change my itinerary around. I had planned to do a couple of other trails on my way back, but I thought it would be better to continue on the byway after I left Indian Crossing, and do some rides over by Joseph instead.

Signage for Indian Crossing.

Indian Crossing is free if you have a NW Forest Pass or $5.00 per night, if you don't. It has four official numbered horse camping spots and two more that are in the grassy area in the middle of the camp loop road. The grassy area is also a great place to either drive through, or park, if you have a longer rig, since the camp spots are not all that big. #3 is the most roomy spot where you could back a larger rig in, but you would have to likely unhook. The trailhead and day use area is across the road, and it has bathrooms, a map board and another camp spot. There is stock water from the river and there is a hand cranked well, with potable water, that you can attach a hose to. There are no corrals, garbage cans, or a manure bin. Some of the spots have hitching rails and/or tie feeders, and there is a loading ramp. There is a separate people camp across the Imnaha River from the horse loop.

Indian Crossing Horse Camp.

The people campground is across the Imnaha River.

Both of the camps and the trailhead were deserted for the first evening, and it never did get really busy while I was there. The main trail, heads out alongside the river, passing an old pack station that is no longer in use. The first two miles to Blue Hole are easy, then it enters what I call Thimbleberry Heaven, where zillions of my favorite berries line the trail, then it crosses a smallish boulder field and continues past Imnaha Falls, and Cataract Gorge, to a junction.

On a lush section of the S. Fork Imnaha Trail.

The Imnaha River.

Blue Hole is on a side trail off to the left and once I got there I rode my horse into the river in order to see into the narrow rock gorge. I also left my horse behind and climbed up onto the rocks to look at it from that vantage point, and found out that there are some BIG fish in there!

In the Imnaha River at Blue Hole.

Very large fish in the Blue Hole.

Starting out onto the boulder field.

On the boulder field.

Views back over to where I had ridden the day before.

Back at camp that evening the two resident deer reappeared that I had become acquainted with from the night before, an older and a younger one. They both enjoyed my salt blocks, but the older one whom I named Lois, was the most tame and brave (pesky!) and made herself right at home in my corral. She had figured out that I was feeding my horse senior equine, and of course she tried to sneak some of that out of my feed bucket.

Lois making herself at home.

Friday was my horse's day off, so we headed back onto the road towards the Tenderfoot Trailhead, which I have always wanted to do, but when I got to this area, the road going in looked less maintained than others, and it was the only place with no signage whatsoever, which made me concerned that possibly the trail may not be used much and/or cleared. To add to that, although the weather had been fine at Indian Crossing and there were clear blue skies everywhere else, there was a massive storm, raining, hailing and thundering at this higher elevation, which as you can imagine was not very inviting, so I drove down into Joseph and over to the Hurricane Creek Trailhead instead.

My little roadside dispersed spot at Hurricane Creek.

Hurricane Creek is close to town and it was the weekend, so it was pretty busy. Trailers tend to turn around at the trailhead and then park at a wide spot along the road. There are a few dispersed camping spots to choose from and I managed to get one alongside the creek. There is a bathroom at the trailhead, some hitching rails and a loading ramp. The creek has very easy access for getting stock water. As per usual, it's $5.00 a day/night or free with a NW Forest Pass.

That evening I was letting my horse graze in the dry part of the creek bed and she stepped right into a hornets nest. She got away from them pretty quickly, and they didn't follow her, but she got stung on her leg and on her eye, the poor thing, her bottom eyelid swelled up, but she was as good as new in a couple of days.

Sunset views of Sacajawea Peak from my camp spot.

The next day I got an early start and rode over to Falls Creek Falls first, which is on a side trail, then back along the main trail to Slick Rock Gorge, where there is another waterfall. This trail is not very difficult, but there are a few cliffy sections near the gorge. I stopped in a meadow just past the trail junction to Echo Lake and then turned back, since I wanted to make this an easier day for my horse. I had plans to do a pretty hard ride the following day.

Falls Creek Falls.

Riding along Hurricane Creek.

Riding towards Sacajawea Peak in the morning.

On the Hurricane Creek Trail.

Slick Rock Gorge.

Mountain views on the Hurricane Creek Trail.

I stopped in a meadow for lunch.

I was about 40 minutes from being back to camp when a young guy came jogging by and asked me if I had a Garmin or anything we could call out on. Turns out an older lady had broken her ankle about 2.5 or so miles back up the trail. I considered trying to pack her out of there on my horse, but after discussing it with a search and rescue guy who was hiking in, we decided it might be too hard on her to try to ride a horse downhill with a broken ankle. They went in and got her out using a wheeled litter.

I packed up camp and drove over to my last destination, Irondyke Forest Camp which is right near the Bowman Frances Trailhead. I had been there before and knew exactly where I was going to camp. To read about the other trails I did in this area on a previous trip: Two Pan/Irondyke

Irondyke is a nice little camp with mostly non horse sites, but there are two specifically designated for equines. One is down off to the side and secluded, right near the river, and the other one, which I picked, is across the road. It was a "free with a NW Forest Pass" camp when I was there before, however now they are charging $15.00 for the main campground, luckily my across the road spot was still free, as were any of the other dispersed sites along the road. My spot had a picnic table, a homemade fire pit, and a hitching rail. The campground has a bathroom, and stock water is available from the river. I also found a water trough at the nearby trailhead, but it is not close enough to be very convenient.

Irondyke Forest Camp

The road to this area is decent until you get past the guard station, and then it gets a lot rougher, but it was even rougher than I remembered, so over an hour later, I finally arrived. This could explain the boneheaded thing I did next. Perhaps lack of patience caused me to drive up into this camp spot right away instead of driving a little further, turning around, and coming back into it from the other direction. Consequently I was not level and had to drive back out anyway. Here was the issue: I tried to take a sharp corner out and did not have enough room, I was on a hill and couldn't really back up, so although I saw that my trailer tires were going off the side of the road a little bit, it seemed ok, I was just driving over a little bit of foliage, until I felt the trailer lift up, and I knew that could not be good.

There was a hidden stump, which of course took out a piece of my grey water tank....sigh. The good news is, it looked like it could possibly be fixed, and my trusty mechanic agreed, and is working on it, as we speak.

The next day I started out nice and early for the 18 mile, with 4235 feet of elevation gain, ride to Frances Lake.

Big mountain views on the trail to Frances Lake.

Heading up the trail to Frances Lake.

This is the easiest, hard ride I've ever done! It has a lot of switchbacks but they are very loooong. I would spend 15 minutes or so just going along a stretch before it made it's turn, consequently it was not as hard on my horse as it could have been. There are quite a few sections where the trail is narrow and there are steep drop offs. I saw only one human all day, a backpacker on his way down. He had a dog and he was trying to get off the trail to let me pass, in doing so he ended up dropping his water bottle which promptly starting rolling down the cliff, and did not stop. Then his backpack nearly followed suit, but was halted by a tree. The dog was growling and acting aggressive, so the guy held him with a hand over his muzzle as I went by.

After about 3300 or so feet of climbing, I got to a viewpoint down onto Frances Lake.

Then the trail goes around a corner and drops about 900 feet to the lake.

The viewpoint down to Frances Lake.

I could see some grazing horses at the far side of the lake, so someone had obviously packed in. When I got to the bottom, I just stayed on my side, and spent about an hour and a half down there enjoying the solitude.

The last corner before the descent to Frances Lake.

Frances Lake.

Zoomed in to see the horses/mules.

Hanging out down at Frances Lake.

Then it was time to climb back up to the pass, and then make my way all the way back down the switchbacks, arriving back at camp just in time for dinner!

Back up on the pass.

The following day I did the 8 hour drive home, but on a side note, when I do long drives, I always stop about half way and let my horse out for some grazing, etc. Since I travel so much I even have specific areas that I have stopped numerous times, but in this case just west of the town of Stanfield on I-84 is the Stanfield Rest Area, and it has the nicest horse facility of it's kind I've ever seen. There is a decent sized separate fenced and graveled parking area, with a water trough.... and a big horse pasture, also with a water trough, and a nice shade tree. It was very relaxing to just let my pony into the pasture and chill out for awhile....!