Hiking the Rogue River
Part Four

Day 5: Clay Hill Lodge to Illahe Lodge

With only 4 miles to hike to the lodge on this, our last hiking day, we lingered over an excellent breakfast and drank lots of coffee. We picked up our lunches, and then it was on with the packs and on to the trail. We rejoined the trail directly behind the lodge, and trudged on.

Today we came upon many rock slides that had almost destroyed the trail, many tree falls partially blocking the trail, and a large area where so many trees had fallen that the trail was re-routed straight up the hill, across the top and down again to almost river level. The canyon was not so narrow now, and we were quite often away from the river, separated from it by a marshy area. In one of the low lying areas we encountered our first and only mosquitos.

To now, we had not even put on any repellant. We arrived at Ilahe Lodge at about noon, and found the place deserted. Unfazed, we doffed our packs inside the living room, and had our lunch on an outside patio.

We decided that we were really not at the end of the trail, so walked an additional mile to Foster Bar. The trail soon joined a road, paved this time, and we were back to cars, trucks and construction crews. They were working on a new bathroom building near the launching ramp and parking area.

When we returned to Illahe Lodge, the staff was there and helped us find rooms upstairs in the lodge building, and also treated us to the usual lemonade and iced tea. We had our happy hour about 6 p.m., again with wine we had carried along. We were joined by Ernie Rutledge, the owner, who told us much of the history of the area. He especially talked about the time since the part of the river we had walked along was given a "Wild and Scenic River" designation. It seems that the rough draft of the Wild and Scenic River act was written in the Illahe Lodge dining room.

We ate dinner at the very same table, feeling very happy that the beautiful river and trail would be preserved as wilderness. We were also very happy that the lodges along the route were kept intact as inholdings. This is one of only a few places in the USA where Inn-to-Inn hiking is possible. We decided that the experience was to be treasured; we had had a wonderful time. Next morning, we had expected to be picked up at 10:00 a.m. for transport back to Merlin and our cars.

Breakfast was very leisurely, amid much conversation. The driver from Rogue Wilderness suddenly appeared at 9. We hurriedly finished our packing, put our packs and ourselves in the waiting van, (our bag lunches were already inside the van),and we were back to our cars at 11:00.

logistics info >
< previous page