Doug Lorain (in “Backpacking Oregon”) gives the Rogue River National Scenic Trail a 10 for scenery. The four of us who just completed the 40 mile trek would concur. There were vistas around every bend in the river and the autumnal colors were spectacular. Lorain ranks the trip a 5 for solitude but going in the first week of October bumped that up considerably. We saw one backpacker, 2 BLM employees, one group of rafters, and a few fisherman in drift boats. We pretty
much had the trail to ourselves. And it should be said, the rafters invited us to dinner, but since we had just (regrettably) eaten our freeze dried meals, we only sampled the smoked tri-tip steak and had a brownie.
We spent a leisurely five days walking from Grave Creek to Foster Bar. It rained the first day (obligingly, after we had set up camp) and the last day (after we were already on the trail), but it was warm, dry and pleasant in between. The trail follows along the north bank of the river, so it is south facing. The warm days were quite warm as a consequence. In the summer many stretches would be unbearable.
Speaking of bears, though we saw a lot of bear sign, we saw no bears. Nevertheless, we always hung our food. Fortunately the many deciduous trees with their spending crowns provided excellent and easy to reach branches to throw a bear line over. We did see some other wildlife: bald eagles, river otters, deer, gray squirrels and lots of Stellar’s jays.
There were not wildflowers to speak of, except for one rocky stretch that had a number of scarlet gilia still in bloom. Though not in bloom, the poison oak was abundant, and for the most part, deep red in color. The oaks and maples were also showing off their autumn colors.
The four lucky hikers were Elly Collier, Rod Graves, Nancy Rockwell and leader Rick Cooper.