Backpacking at Boulder Creek

Boulder Creek Backpacking

Jan 9-10

Phil and I reunited with one of our favorite fellow Cheap Campers: Chelsea. Our adventures together are always rife with hilarity and fun.

We arrived at the Boulder Creek Trailhead at about 2pm on Saturday. It is about an hour east of Roseberg, near Crater Lake National Park. Getting to the Trailhead was tricky, as it is not clearly marked. You can get to it through a nearby campground, but we went a backwards construction road way.

The trail starts at a neat little dam.

This picture is from in front of the dam. The dam creates a mini-lake, surrounded by high cliffs with multi-colored rock striations that I must look up what they are.

The Boulder Creek trailhead (Trail #1552) is a 3-mile hike from this dam. There are several other trailheads in this area, however none of them interconnect. They are all in-and-out trails. There wasn't any use fees for the area so all we had to pay for was gas to get out here and food-- a cheap camper must.

The Boulder Creek trail winds through a section of Umpqua National Forest that has obviously recently survived a forest fire, giving it a post-apocalyptic feel, as Chelsea stated.

Post Apocalyptic Forest

We hiked about 5 miles in and set up camp, since you don't get a whole lot of daylight when Winter backpacking. There were plenty of creeks and streams to get water from as long as you filter it. We saw a LOT of elk droppings, so the water is surely contaminated with who knows what. Speaking of elk, we managed to glimpse 3 elk cows running through the trees! They are beautiful; it was a treat for sure.

Special Note: We couldn't find our water purifier so we stopped at an outdoor store and picked up some chlorine tablets, thinking we could use them like iodine tablets. Wrong! We were all parched on the second day in as we sat down to refill our bottles and purify our water. As we read the directions, we realized that it takes 4 hours for the stuff to fully purify the water! So, ALWAYS READ THE DIRECTIONS BEFORE YOU NEED IT. Needless to say we didn't have 4 hours to wait, so we ended up risking disease and drinking some of the unpurified water. Not a good idea, and should be avoided!

All in all, it was a fun weekend of cheap backpacking. And by using Chelsea's Toyota Prius, gas was only $40 round trip! We decided we will return at the end of January for a snowshoeing event in Crater Lake.