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  • Trail 511 - South Fork Roaring River Trail

    This route shows up on most maps made prior to the 1970s, and usually has the route connecting to Corral Springs trail (507) at the main stem of the Roaring River, and following the South Fork up to Frazier Turnaround. I've also seen maps where the upper terminus is at the Serene Lake trail at Lower Rock Lake. I've look briefly for both upper termini, without luck. Is this another "vapor trail" that never really existed? It seems like it would have been a natural route for early lookout/guard station travel between the Frazier Mountain/Indian Ridge area and the Plaza/Salmon/Squaw Mountain lookouts and guard station.

    Tom Kloster
    Trail 511 - South Fork Roaring River Trail
  • Re: Trail 511 - South Fork Roaring River Trail (#)
  • 4/28/06; 4:53:53 PM ¦ by Donovan
  • This 511 subject comes up every year.

    The building of the trail is accounted for in "Tales of the Clackamas Country" by F. Alton Everest.  He worked with the crew that built the trail.  It is the opinion of some that the time they spent on it was not sufficient for building a service trail.  It was likely a slight trail.

    As we all need to remember about most of the Roaring River country, it was a burned out disaster area.  Until the Forest Service started putting out the fires and planting trees, most of the canyons excepting the upper reaches of the main stem looked like a moonscape.  There are abundant photographic records of the devastation.  The trails were built to administer this restoration.

    Much of the route was likely through small reprod too small to blaze.  The burned canyon wall was also likely for years to have increased levels of erosion which degrades trails.

    I have thought about scouting the other side of Lower Rock Lake to look for it.  I find no trace near the 512 trailhead.  But, I did recently notice that the 512 trail has a re-route near the beginning of the trail in a topography that seems logical for a junction.  An idea would be to follow the blazes instead of the re-route and see if the old junction lies on that segment.

    I have somewhat looked across the bank from the 507 trail but with little enthusiasm because we are usually tired from trail work and need to save our energy to climb back out of the canyon.