A note: this is the second and final post covering my Rogue River Trail hike. Part 1 can be found here.

DAY FOUR: We began the day by leaving our tent and most of our gear at the campsite, and slackpacking the 1.7 miles out to Grave Creek trailhead, which is the eastern end of the Rogue River Trail. A bit of smoke had settled in overnight to leave the morning sky a hazy, washed-out color.

While the trail guide had warned that the five miles near Grave Creek were “quite rocky”, it wasn’t more so than the rest of the trail, although there were indeed plenty of rocks, as well as gorgeous views.

Grave Creek Trailhead was a wide open parking lot with a boat launch, and best of all, it had both restrooms and a place to dump trash. We sat out by the boat launch area to eat some snacks and savor our accomplishment of having completed one direction of the entire trail. And then we turned around.

Back at the campsite we packed up our stuff and started out again. Even though we’d covered these same miles the previous day, walking with the river on our left gave us an entire side of scenic views we hadn’t gotten to properly enjoy the first time around, when we were headed the opposite way.

We’d settled into something of a rhythm at this point, and the day passed smoothly, with another lunch in the cool shadows beneath one of the trail bridges, where we filtered water and ate crackers and jerky and cheese. There were quite a few bridges on this trail – wooden and rustic and altogether charming.

That afternoon, we began discussing where to stop for the night. Alaina expressed a desire to camp on the river, since all our campsites thus far had been up along the trail, and I suggested Horseshoe Bend. According to the trail map, it had a nice site by the river.

I didn’t remember seeing anything on the way east, but many of the river sites were set down a short ways from the trail. However, as the mileage grew ever nearer to Horseshoe Bend, I began to worry. We kept climbing away from the river.

Up.

Up.

And then suddenly, at an elevation so high the river wasn’t even a murmur, a side trail appeared with a sign pointed down.

“Oh no,” I said. My feet had been protesting loudly for several miles now, and all I wanted to do was sit down and take the pressure off. “Is this it? We don’t even know how far the trail is. What if it’s another few miles?”

We walked on a little further, only to come to the inevitable conclusion that yes, that was the Horseshoe Bend we’d been aiming for.

“Do you mind terribly if we camp by the river another night?” I asked Alaina. “It is too far and too steep for me tonight. And there’s supposed to be another campsite in point six of a mile, on the trail.”

Alaina kindly agreed, and onwards we walked toward Copsey Creek. The trail map indicated that this campsite had picnic tables, which should have been a warning since I hadn’t recalled seeing any picnic tables around here last time around, but I was too full of desperation to pay attention to my gut. Besides, the trail crossed too many creeks to remember which names went to which creeks. My feet were quite done for the day, and as we neared Copsey Creek, Alaina sped ahead to check it out.

As I headed down into the dip of the creek, Alaina called out to me from her spot on the other side. “I have some bad news.”

The bad news was immediately apparent: there were no picnic tables. There was no campsite. There wasn’t even a spot flat enough to fit a single tent for the night. Instead, windfalls covered the entire area, their bushy branches sprawling across what may have once been a campsite, but certainly wasn’t anymore.

We had no choice but to keep walking a couple more miles, even though we hadn’t exactly planned for a fifteen mile day. But the trail was too steep to just pitch a tent anywhere.

When we finally arrived at a campsite, we gratefully set up camp in the last dim light of the evening, pulling out headlamps to enjoy our ramen dinner in the dark before crawling into our sleeping bags.

I was woken in the night by something which sounded almost like a dog-like creature barking just outside. Definitely not a coyote, although I still have no idea what it was. After a whispered conference with Alaina, we decided the movement of the calls sounded most like a bird, and unlikely to be a threat, and we both went back to sleep.

DAY FIVE: We slept in a bit, eventually heading out around 8:30 in the morning. The miles seemed to go slowly, perhaps just because we’d hiked more than planned the day before, but we listened to several playlists’ worth of tunes, and spotted a mountain goat as well as a bunch of wild turkeys in the afternoon.

Shortly after passing the trail’s halfway point, we were back in the Wild Rogue Wilderness area, and hiking through my favorite part of the trail, with the steep and rocky canyon walls.

We’d originally planned to camp at Blossom Bar Creek again, the same place we’d camped our first night on trail, but we ran into another couple out hiking who were already camped there. They graciously invited us to share the campsite, but we decided to cross back over the creek to a lesser-used campsite on the other side.

When our tent was set up and our dinner cold soaking, I wandered back along the creek’s bank a short ways. I hadn’t gone more than fifty feet when I made a startling discovery.

There, under the exposed roots of a giant tree, a dark hole opened up in the bank. From my vantage point it was impossible to tell how deep it was, but I wasn’t about to walk up to the cave and whatever might call it home. Instead, I backed away and went to go find Alaina.

“So, I have some news,” I told her. “We’ve camped almost directly above a cave.”

“How big?” Alaina wanted to know.

“I couldn’t see the back, but it’s pretty dark so it’s hard to tell.”

It was too late to go find another campsite, but at least we knew there were a couple of other hikers camped just across the river in case the cave was occupied by a bear who didn’t take too kindly to sharing its front yard.

It was a (not) very restful night of sleep.

DAY SIX: I woke to find Alaina poking me at around 5am. “There are footsteps outside,” she helpfully informed me.

I raised my head, listening, and sure enough, just outside our tent was the unmistakable crunch of leaves and twigs beneath a heavy animal. We both raised our voices in conversation, listening to the sounds. There were no huffs or grunts like the bear visit I’d experienced on the CDT, and these footsteps sounded too agile for a bear.

Eventually Alaina and I both came to the conclusion that it was likely a deer or perhaps goat, although neither of us were motivated enough to stick our heads out of the tent to find out. There is safety to be found inside the paper-thin layer of a tent wall.

When morning arrived properly, we slowly got up and around, taking our time. Given the mileage we’d already covered, we had an easy day ahead of us. Once everything was packed up we both headed back to check out the cave. It turned out to not be very deep at all and appeared quite unoccupied, although still the perfect size for a wandering forest creature to take up residence.

The cave, with a sister for scale:

We hiked until mid-afternoon, at which time we left the trail to relax on the banks of the Rogue River for several hours. We ate snacks, played card games, and Alaina went swimming while I dangled my feet into the water and soaked in the sunshine. When the sun dipped below the canyon wall around 3:30, we reluctantly moved on. We hiked the last couple of miles back to camp at a site on the river just below the Flora Dell waterfall.

After arriving, we both headed back out onto the still-warm rocks on the bank of the Rogue to eat our dinner.

DAY SEVEN: It was a short, five mile hike back out to Foster Bar. Leaving the trail was made easier, as always, by the fact that we were headed toward showers and cell service. There was no cell service for me anywhere on trail, which had meant a full week of being disconnected.

We arrived back at the car, piled in, and headed out. It had been a glorious eighty miles.

Looking back at the trail as a whole, it’s one I would hike again in a heartbeat. Abundant water, fantastic views, and a mostly well-maintained trail.

One entire week of hiking this year was wonderful. One week was also so very short. Now back home, the trail already feels more distant. But for awhile, at least — until the next trail — I’ll live with the memory of hot sun on my shoulders, and the echo of the rushing Rogue River in my ears.