On Wednesday March 20th we had 7 hikers come out to hike the Lower Rogue River from the Graves Creek boat launch to Alder Creek and back. The road through Galice is still closed due to rock slides from last year, so we drove up to exit 71 near Sunny Valley to get to the trailhead. Both of the bathrooms were locked and they have removed the porta potty which surprised all of us. We got a late start and didn’t begin hiking until 10:43am.
We saw many flowers blooming along the way. This is the only place that I can recall seeing the Delphinium Nudicaule also known as Red Larkspur. There were also Monkey Head, Shooting Stars and various others. There were also many places that we needed to do a water crossing. The 1st one usually has a lot of moss and can be very slippery. We could see where there was a trail down below so we all chose to take that. On the way back, we made the same decision with the exception of Bob. He successfully crossed without slipping.
We stopped for a snack just beyond the bridge across Whiskey Creek. From there, we continued on to Alder Creek. At one point, we came across a turtle sitting in the middle of the trail. We had a nice lunch and enjoyed the sound of the river. We hiked back to our cars having hiked 9.5 miles with around 1600 feet of cumulative elevation gain and and finished around 3:45pm

Hike Leader: Francie

Photos By: Francie & Nanci