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Cedar Creek Trail, June 30, 2024

Cedar Creek Trail,
June 30, 2024

Cedar Creek Upper Trailhead. D. Burk.
Cedar Creek Upper Trailhead, Warner Mountains, Modoc National Forest. Photo taken on June 30, 2024, by Don Burk.

We spent half of this past June indulging our fascination with Great Basin flora via trips to Nevada. We hiked and explored parts of the Sierra Nevada’s Carson Range west of Reno, the Ruby Mountains outside Elko, and several points in between. We also took an amazing all-day drive-and-stop tour of remote high desert lands near the Hays Canyon Range with friend and Shasta Chapter CNPS member Paul Davis, from Alturas. And on our way home from these excursions, we took one last hike—one of the best—in the Warner Mountains just east of Cedarville.

Warner Mountains from Hays Canyon Mountains. D. Burk.
Looking west from the Hays Canyon Mountains, with the Warner Mountains on the horizon. This photo was taken on June 29, 2024, by Don Burk, on our remote-high-desert tour with Paul Davis.

Cedar Creek Trail is a ~3.3-mile trail that generally follows Cedar Creek through a myriad of vegetation types. Open and dry south-facing slopes are home to junipers and sagebrush; other areas are heavily forested with ponderosa pines and white firs (but not a cedar to be found!). Black cottonwoods, willows, and aspens crowd the creek, and meadows, both wet and dry, are filled with wildflowers. We recorded 73 species in bloom, and this was past peak bloom!

Meadow on upper Cedar Creek Tail. D. Burk.
Lovely green meadows, ringed with conifers and aspens, line much of upper Cedar Creek Trail. June 30, 2024. Photo by Don Burk.
Wild hyacinth. D. Burk.
The most dense patch of wild hyacinth, Tritelia hyacinthina, that we have ever seen was growing on this hillslope along Cedar Creek Trail. Photo taken June 30, 2024, by Don Burk.

The variety in microhabitats, landscapes, and plant species was quite surprising for such a short trail and certainly kept us in a constant state of wonder! If ever you’re out that way, we highly recommend that you take the time to check it out.

Rock formations on lower trail. D. Burk.
Part of Cedar Creek Trail runs beneath some very cool rock formations, only a small part of which are shown here. This is closer to the Lower Trailhead, and shows more influence of the juniper/high desert habitat than the rest of the trail. Photo taken on June 30, 2024, by Don Burk.
Fritillaries on mountain dogbane. D. Burk.
The variety and sheer number of butterflies we saw along Cedar Creek Trail was amazing. The fritillary butterfly was by far the most abundant, but there were many others, a few of which are featured in our slideshow at the end of this article. Most were visiting a dogbane species; the one in this photo is mountain dogbane, Apocynum androsaemifolium. Photo taken June 30, 2024, by Don Burk.

Cedar Creek Trail has two trailheads: Lower and Upper. We started at the Lower Trailhead, ~21 miles east of Alturas on US Highway 299 (south side of the highway, ~3.5 miles west of Cedarville), and hiked up to the Upper Trailhead, which is also home to Cedar Pass Snow Park. The elevation gain is ~800 gradual feet, mostly not very steep, making for a moderately easy round-trip hike of ~6.6 miles.

Cedar Pass Snow Park. D. Burk.
Cedar Pass Snow Park shares a parking lot with Cedar Creek Upper Trailhead.
Photo taken June 30, 2024, by Don Burk.

The lower section of the trail is old road bed, and the upper part is well-maintained footpath. The middle section of ~1 mile is split into a loop, giving hikers the choice of taking the higher road or the lower footpath. We took both—one one direction, and the other on the return trip—and found both to be in good shape.

Road bed section of trail. D. Burk.
Old road bed makes up about two thirds of the higher section of Cedar Creek Trail. The optional footpath section runs parallel to this road, lower down on the slope to the right.
Photo taken June 30, 2024, by Don Burk.
Footpath section of middle-mile loop. D. Burk.
The lower footpath section of the middle-mile loop, closer to Cedar Creek, mostly runs through ponderosa pine and white fir forest. Photo taken June 30, 2024, by Don Burk.

If there was anything disappointing about this trail, it would be that the creek in only accessible in one small spot, off the lower footpath of the middle-mile section. Even that lower trail mostly stays at least 30 feet above the deeply incised and heavily vegetated creek. Most of the time, we couldn’t see the water, but we could almost always hear it rushing, providing a nice background ambiance.

Cedar Creek. D. Burk.
Cedar Creek at the one and only access point along the trail. Here it is not incised but still crowded with vegetation, which probably makes for great wildlife habitat. We did see and hear many, many birds, and even got to see a bald eagle soaring low along the creek corridor! June 30, 2024. Photo by Don Burk.

Here is a slideshow of some of our favorite sights. All photos by Don Burk. Enjoy! ~Laurie & Don Burk