I love a good new-to-me hike! A friend & I realized we had a free weekend and a favorable weather window, and picked Douglas Creek Canyon since neither of us had ever been there before. It turned out to be the perfect conditions for a short backpack trip here. There are numerous creek crossings to contend with (I lost count of how many), but I was able to boulder hop across all except the last two. For those I switched to my camp shoes but it was an easy wade, less than knee deep. We actually spotted a few trout in the first couple crossings near the trailhead! As we hiked farther up canyon the water became murkier and more stagnant looking, and we didn't see any fish (and I didn't really want to filter from it). There are lots of cow pies around, although the cows have not been moved out onto pasture yet this year.
I'm still a little confused by portions of our route and what's permitted where. The BLM map indicates that most of the trail we were on is non-motorized, but there were a lot of motorized tracks. But the trail also exits BLM property for a while (although all of the "trail" signs along the way are BLM signs), so perhaps the adjacent property owner allows the motorized use. At any rate, we didn't encounter any other trail users while we were hiking (and only saw two others at the TH--folks we knew from Spokane!), so it was a very quiet weekend in the shrub steppe! The wildflowers are just getting started, so I think the next few weeks will be the prime time for visiting. My pup & I didn't pick up any ticks, although my friend found two...so they are just getting started.
Our route took us from the north TH up the trail indicated on the map to where it intersects Ferrell Road, where we turned on a side road that led us back to the main BLM property. Just inside the BLM fence there was a neat old farm, falling to pieces but still very interesting to look at. We found a place to drop down into Duffy Canyon, hoping to cross and camp on the other side, but it was impossible to get across the creek in that location and we didn't want to spend too much time looking for an alternate crossing point. Instead we filled up all of our water containers and headed back up above the canyon to find a tent-spot with a view but not too many cow pies. The views are easy to come by, but the cow plops are harder to avoid!
Our campsite really was incredible, with amazing views of the canyons to the east and the Cascades to the west. While some of the sagebrush was taller than me, there are no trees to speak of outside of the canyon (but the canyon has huge hawthorn, aspen near seasonal seeps, and even a few Douglas fir), so I tied my Ursack to a fencepost a few hundred feet from camp (we did see fresh bear tracks in mud a couple of miles before we camped!).
I slept great, listening to the songbirds at dusk, then coyotes & owls overnight, then songbirds again as the sun came up. We enjoyed a slow morning in camp where the sunrise colors just seemed to go on & on, then had an easy enough hike out despite this portion of the backpack trip being off-trail. Off human trail anyway; it turns out the cows know the easiest path back to water, and we re-joined the main trail where Duffy Creek meets Douglas Creek at another easy ford. The hike in was over 11 miles, but the hike out was only 3.5. Of course, that's just one rendition of a backpack trip here. I'm already hoping to return to start on the other side of Duffy Creek Canyon to explore more of the Badger Mountain side, which looked like more open grasslands from our sage forest camp.
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