Upper Rogue River Trail Union Creek to Natural Bridge10-18-24

Photos by Kay

Ashland Hiking Home

Not to be missed fall colors, our Friday Moderate group of twelve hiked from Union Creek TH at Highway 62 to the Rogue River’s Natural Bridge. The main group hiked the “lollypop” version, crossing the bridge to climb up and down above the Rogue River to the site of the Natural Bridge, had lunch, and returned around the sites there to the parking lot and back up the River and Union Creek to the cars. Two of our hikers took a slower pace for from the same Union Creek TH to Natural Bridge parking lot and around to meet up with the main group for Kay’s famous chocolate covered cherries and a group photo. The two ‘outliers’ hiked another mile RT down river on the route toward Woodruff, returning to the Natural Bridge parking lot to be picked up for the drive home. They had covered about 4.5 miles for the day, whereas the main group completed the 7.5 RT between Union Creek and Natural Bridge.

The fall colors were brilliant, as always, on the trees not yet bare. It seemed the full display came a tad earlier this year. Among the highlights was a ‘forest’ of mushrooms growing all around the base of a large tree trunk. Three of our hikers hiked the same trail with the Monday group, and they reported that the recent rain had knocked some of the leaves down, but the colors seemed more intense on Friday.

The surprise was that the entire hiking trail was marked with orange ribbons and signs for river trail runs on Saturday organized by Daybreak Racing.  Over 150 trail runners are expected for a 50K race along with shorter distance runs.  A podium was set up with platforms for the winners.  The orange signs were helpful to us, especially along Union Creek.  We met one runner who was setting up camp and he was enthusiastic to do trail running.  Other trail runs have been conducted at Mt. Hood, along the Coast, near Bend and Portland. The Rogue River run is the last of the season.

Elisabeth and Kay