Sunday’s hike began on the Yana Trail at Perry’s Riffle, but the destination was off-trail: a promontory above the Sacramento River, about a mile south of Massacre Flat.
A good deal of our fondness for the Sacramento River Bend Recreation Area is due to the fact that off-trail exploration is not only allowed but encouraged. Hikers will therefore find many unmarked trails leading to unknown adventures and increased solitude. While we have visited this particular point many times, we have never once seen another soul in the vicinity.
To get to this special place, go north on the Yana Trail from Perry’s Riffle Trailhead (at the very end of Bend Ferry Road, Bend, Tehama County) for about 2.7 miles to where the trail splits.
The left-hand trail will take you to Massacre Flat along a riparian route very close to the water’s edge. The right-hand loop will also get you to Massacre Flat, but this route is quite circuitous and is much longer. This longer route facilitates horseback riders, but both trails are highly recommended for hikers. To get to the promontory, however, go through a gate in the fence just to the right of where the trail splits, and hike the abandoned and rutted, unmaintained road that wraps up and around a little hill.
Where this road crests at the back of the hill, you’ll get a great view of the promontory destination.
At this point, we generally leave the trail and climb to the promontory wherever we feel it’s not too steep or dangerous. (The farther north you hike, the easier the climb, but the farther away the promontory.)
Gorgeous views await at the top. We like to have a bite to eat on the rocky point, and then walk along the rim as far as we can. On this particular Sunday, this is where we found a few species still in bloom.
With the sun getting low, we picked our way down to the Yana Trail and got back to the trailhead just after sunset. Always an exhilarating adventure, we’d rank the difficulty of this ~6.3-mile round-trip hike as moderate due to the off-trail and rough-road conditions.
We hope you’ll enjoy this short slideshow of some of our more interesting finds. All photos by Don Burk. ~Laurie & Don Burk
