It was another day to get out and do some exploring.  We wanted to stay a bit close today and had decided on hitting up the Tillamook State Forest.  I was in the mood to do something new though.  I didn’t want to just head out to the Forest Center and do the Wilson River Trail (again).  So I did a little exploring on the Oregon Hikers guide and poked around the Timber/Reheers Camp area on their map search feature.

I knew about Reehers Camp because it’s a very popular mountain biking area.  I have not ridden that side yet, just Brown’s Camp, Storey Burn and Gales Creek all from the route 6 corridor.

We got a bit of a late start, leaving the house just past 10:30AM, but it’s only about 35 minutes or so to the trailhead, so not really a big deal.

The parking lot/trailhead is just past the horse camp and picnic shelter on Cochran Road, about 2.5 miles in from the Timber Rd intersection in Timber, OR.

The goal was to hit up the Step Creek Trail to Gales Creek and back to the parking lot.  With directions and a map we still screwed up a bit and ended up just doing an out and back, which ended up being about a mile longer than the loop option.  I’m pretty sure if we had gone another 1/2 mile or so at one point we would have hit the trail intersection we wanted, but I wasn’t 100% positive, so we played it a bit safe.  If we had been biking I would have totally just gone ahead and explored a bit, but hiking, I wasn’t ready to make a 2 mile error.

Anyways, the trail itself is a mix of buffed out double track and using some old logging roads.  Elevation gain is minimal with just under 900′ total.  The trails we used were all open to hikers, bikers and horses.  We only saw  1 mountain biker on our way out and some mushroom hunters too.  They were kinda sketchy, and I personally don’t think they were looking for mushrooms to just cook dinner with, if you know what I mean?

The whole Tillamook Forest was heavily logged around the turn of the century and there was some horrendous fires in the area too (click the wiki link up above).  A lot of the old rail lines still exist in the area, and I plan a few more hikes to explore some more of them.

Codi enjoyed the several stream crossings and was one soggy doggie upon our return.  He enjoys being toweled off though.

On the way home we go by the smallest Post Office I have ever seen.  The Timber Post Office is probably the most photographed aspect of this tiny little town.

Check out the operating hours!

Okay, that’s about it.  Not the most epic of adventures, but it was wicked fun! I’m going back perhaps in the next weekend or two to do some mountain bike exploring.  It’s a much better way to cover more ground.

all the pics here

Thanks for reading,

-Pete