Catherine Creek - Tracy Hill Loop — Sunday, Nov. 3, 2024

This is big sky country.  Just a few miles west and hikes are forested and the sky just peeks thru.  Here, forests give way to oak groves and wide open grassland.  In Spring is full of flowers and green.  Now, flowers give way to burnished oak leaves from deep green to scarlet, with blue sky and the Columbia rolling on below.  Its windy and crisp, and the trail is rocky enough that you have to watch where you step.   
There was a fire in the area just a week ago-  Top of the World fire.  Tracy Hill loop wanders past that burned section, and parts of it are visible, but the ravine with its oak and pine ecology, seems to have survived.  
Within the oak groves, the ground is covered with fallen lobed oak leaves, sometimes hard to see the trail.  But back in the fields of grass the trail is easy and quick on a long downhill under a huge sky.  
I started about 10 am, and on my return I met maybe a dozen different hikers lower down.  Fairly typical Catherine Creek I think.