Klamath Basin - Leg 15

Next day we did the Klamath Basin – about 20 miles along roads and canal levees across the southern part of the valley from Malin to Hwy 97. Couple of small ridges, otherwise nothing but trudging on while marveling at the pelicans, hawks, and multitude of other birds like the two below we came on when nearing the last 5 miles or so before Hwy 97. The birds were really neat, but open, dusty, walking without much terrain to marvel at was the rule for this 20 miles.



If you look closely, you'll see three different surveyed monuments in the picture below.

We found several of the earlier mile point monuments protected with a larger diameter pipe driven in later to encase them such as below.

Mile point 83 from 1952.

One of the older Mile points, # 82 dating from 1919.

The whole border is north of the 42d through here. This is looking back straight down the line towards Malin about 6 miles out.

You can see the scar of the pipeline in the distance coming down the western slope towards Malin. Below, Mt Shasta loomed in the distance from its California perch.

Looking back to the east towards Malin about 12 miles distance. Most of our walking was along the canals. There were plenty of side roads and berms, so we were able to avoid any muddy places or having to cross water.

The only rough going was a few hundred yards of tumble weeds and brush to navigate a couple miles short of Hwy 97. The wayside on 97 is at the base of the hill in the distance here. We had a flooded field to slog through on the other side of this brushy part.








The Malin ridge in the far distance looking back east as we climbed out of the basin the last half mile back to the wayside along Hwy 97.

The last mile got a little “damp” and muddy, but the end was in sight.

All in all, tiring, but a lot of miles and beautiful country. Sure would like to know who the folks up Hidden Valley Road are however so we can certainly cross them off our Christmas list.

We'll likely go to the Lakeview area next time out and work west to near Willow Valley Res. Probably avoid doing the other side of the Klamath River canyon until fall - it has a well deserved reputation for being "snaky" and although we only saw a single garter snake in one of the meadows, the sun was out and plenty of lizards (skinks) were out. We've now covered 225 miles of the 375 mile long border by my calculations, so it's down hill from here, figuratively and literally except for the two 5 mile mountain tops we skipped each side of Denio.