Bald Hill/Mulkey Creek (Corvallis)

[bobcat]

This was a walk with a friend just west of Corvallis – about 6 ½ miles in all. Trails and farm roads lead along Oak Creek and through a bucolic setting of fields fringed with hawthorns and blooming with buttercups. After reaching the Mulkey Creek Trail and walking a short section, a spur leads off to cross Mulkey Creek and switchback up an unnamed hill (I’ll call it Mulkey Hill). Camas, all Camassia leichtlinii - great or Leichtlin's camas, was blooming in profusion in the low areas. The woodland here is typified by infusions of Pacific madrone and grand fir, with poison oak climbing high into the Douglas-firs, which it seems to favor. Forest flowers in bloom included iris, larkspur, fringe-cup, solomon-plume, and fairy bells.

Heading back, we took a tie trail to the complex of paths that circle Bald Hill. On the lower slopes are meadows shaded by gnarly and venerable oaks. The trails then pass through mixed slope forest before attaining the meadows at Bald Hill’s summit. The views from here extend west to Marys Peak and south over the farmlands of the Willamette Valley. On the return, we took a footpath that passed by a small grove of massive, ancient madrones.

Bald Hill is just part of a rather intricate trail system around Corvallis, which includes Caldwell Hill and Fitton Green to the west as well as the trails/gated roads of the McDonald and Dunn State Forests to the north.

[jessbee]

Glad you got such a lovely day for a walk in my neck of the woods. Bald Hill is a nice standby when I can't get out of town. Thanks for all the beautiful flower pics, which will help me I'd some unfamiliar ones the next time I had out that way.

[Splintercat]

Thanks for posting, Bobcat! Brings back a lot of memories -- when I was in college in the early 80s in Corvallis, there was quite a movement led by the local Sierra Club chapter to "save" Bald Hill, as it was in private ownership at the time. No trails in those days, though we did hike up there quite often - this was taken one November evening in 1981 near the summit:



Bald Hill has grown quite a toupee since the early 80s -- I hardly recognize it these days when passing through the area!

Nice report and great photos!

Tom