John Wayne Trail - Another Segment

Sunday, September 27 2009
Cumulative Elevation gain 600 ft
Trail length: 5 miles one way

Time taken: 2hours one way
Level of difficulty: Medium

I am picking up where we left the last time around - near the Twin Falls and Olallie State Park. It is the same trail that starts near Rattlesnake Mountain and we hiked four miles of this trail to the Olallie State Park. This time around we started off at the Olallie State Park trail head. An access trail from the parking lot climbs quickly through about 100 to reach the John Wayne Trail. From there we continued eastbound.

This section of the trail passes over a few engineering marvels from the 19th century that bridges deep ravines with tall trestles to accommodate rail traffic on top. A few bikers merrily paddled by - but much less in numbers compared to last time around. The new aspect is the rock climbers on on rock precipice honing their climbing skills.

From this trail we got a nice view of the Bandera Mountain that I hiked a couple of weeks back with a multi-colored meadow looking like a nice carpet on its southern slope. At one point the wind blowing from East to West really picked up in strength - funneled into a narrower passage by the mountains on both sides. Funnily for the rest of trail we experienced alternated blasts of perceptibly warm and cold air from time to time.


We stopped just a little bit short of the trail head for McClellan Butte and returned after resting a little bit while having some snacks. All the way through we noticed the signs of Fall from the trees turning colors. Felt like the colors would peak in a couple of week or so. Apart from the turning colors, an interesting arboreal feature we noticed is a tree stump that seems like a sitting posture. Check it out on this picture.


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