Hiking is still the best way to really see the countryside and you'll be spoiled
for choice in Southern Oregon. Hundreds of hikes, of every imaginable level and
variety, await you here.
Check
out historic walking tours of downtown Medford, nature walks in Ashland's Lithia
Park or sections of the Pacific Crest Trail. A veritable ribbon of scenic hikes,
from easy strolls to strenuous outings, twine through the countryside of Southern
Oregon.
Here's
a Hiking Highlight
Just 10 miles northeast of Medford are two enormous
sandstone-basaltic mesas (table rocks) with flat lava caps. These relics of the
volcanic era give incredible views of the surrounding valley, the Rogue River
and Siskiyou Mountains. Both the Upper and Lower Table Rocks (as they are named)
has a well-maintained trail that snakes back and forth on its way to the top.
Once atop these monoliths,
you'll be amazed by fields of wildflowers, small marshy ponds, deer and hundreds
of birds.
The
trails are managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the Nature Conservancy.
(For
information, click here.)
Spring
on the Rogue Hiking
the Rogue reminds me of the simple rhythms of life we need to walk through all
of life: the quiet we need to listen to ourselves, to those around us and to the
world in which we live. It is a simple sort of vacation. Void of technology and
all the noise of our daily life, we walk to yet another lodge where an older-fashioned
hospitality is waiting for us. The
raft will be waiting there with all the stuff we did not have to carry on the
trail. A wonderful meal and table fellowship. As dusk settles you may find a quiet
spot with a glass of wine, some sore muscles and your thoughts. Bill
Hays
River and Hiking Guide,
Water
Water Warehouse |
Hiking the Rogue Trail
Hiking
the Rogue Trail is another great way to experience the Rogue River Canyon. The
journey from lodge to lodge is a wonderful mix of meeting new people and feeling
the solitude of your walk as hikers spread out on the trail to their own pace.
You
start listening and watching in a new way. Each turn may reveal a spectacular
rapid or waterfall to the riverside of the trail; or, a turn up a creek drainage
shaded by the drape of the canopy overhead revealing an entirely different system
of plant life.
The quiet stretches are punctuated by a rest stop where the
guide will point out some feature that is part of the canyon’s story: the place
of a distinctive geological event; a piece of history recalling when members of
the Tutani or Takelma tribes made the river valley their home.
And, in the
spring, there are the flowers. This is how you see the fingerprints of this canyon.
Stopping to see and enjoy another variety of flower; or, really stopping, getting
out the book and putting your heads together along with other hikers to identify
a bloom you’ve never seen before.
Get
a