A sunny hike on Table Rock yields great views

There has been much bewailing of late about the wintry hiking weather.

Not by me. It must have been my hiking buddies!

So when we began our hike at Lower Table Rock just north of Medford in the mist, clouds, and winter chill, it was just one more reason to call in sick with inclement affective disorder. However, after 10 minutes of hiking, the clouds dissipated. Suddenly there was a giant, golden globe of burning gas in the sky above us that warmed the air. It was so bright that we couldn’t look at it directly, and caused us to remove jackets, pant legs, and sleeves as we offered our pasty white skins to the sun in gratitude.

The last time I hiked with the Friends of the Umpqua under blue skies and a warm sun was at 4:47 p.m. Nov. 3, or to be more precise: Four months, three days, 17 hours, and 56 minutes ago.

To put it in perspective, when I last hiked in the sun, there were still 27 presidential candidates showing up for the debates. It seems like so long ago.

As one leaves Medford heading north on Interstate 5, one can’t help but notice a pair of cliff-rimmed and flat-topped mesas rising prominently over Bear Valley. These distinctive landmarks are Upper and Lower Table Rocks, with Lower Table Rock being the one nearest the freeway. These plateaus are remnants from an ancient lava flow and mark the ancestral path of the Rogue River.

From the Lower Table Rock trailhead, it was a perfunctory 1.6-mile uphill climb through oak savannahs and madrone forests. The oaks flanking the trail were scraggly and leafless, reminding us winter had not yet left the building, despite the spectacular day. Lily plants were sprouting everywhere but the flowers were still a few weeks removed from their spectacular spring show. Occasional views of the valleys of White City and Medford came into view as we hiked upwards.

As we arrived at the summit, we were first greeted by the sight of Wagner Butte floating above the clouds. Lower Table Rock is appropriately named as it is remarkably flat and table-like, and the summit plain stretched ahead of us for about a mile or so, felted with short green grass. It was not quite pool-table smooth, though, as piles of black rocks were strewn about in testimony to the volcanic origin of the Table Rocks.

The lovely purple-eyed grass was in profuse bloom throughout the summit plain. In late March or early April the pastures on top will be colored with goldfield, lilies, and many other flowers in a riotous potpourri of colors. The trail, following an old airplane runway created in 1948, headed unerringly southwest for another mile through bright green grasslands toward the southwest corner of Lower Table Rock.

There were several vernal pools and seeps along the way. These pools collect rainwater that cannot penetrate the impermeable basalt, and that sustain all manner of animals and plant life. Some of the flora and fauna are endemic to these pools, such as the fairy shrimp and the dwarf wooly meadowfoam (it’s a plant). They can only be found here on the Table Rocks and nowhere else in the world.

Later, in spring, the pools will wriggle with bounteous populations of pollywogs, but not on this day. We were here too early in the season to observe the miracle of frog replenishment.

Just past the end of the runway we arrived at the edge of the world, or so it seemed. Sheer cliffs plummeted away from our feet, culminating in piles of black boulders and talus above the Rogue River flowing toward Gold Hill. Normally, I am not an acrophobe, but I slithered serpentlike on my belly to the edge to take a picture looking straight down.

At the bottom of the cliffs were huge boulders; it dawned on me that these boulders were once upon a time part of the cliffs under me before they flaked off. It was deemed prudent at that point to slither in retreat to safer ground before another flaking-off event occurred.

After lunch, several of us went off-trail and explored the north rim of the plateau. About halfway back to our egress point off the mesa, we found an overgrown dirt road that begged further exploration. Lower Table Rock is shaped like a large U, and the road dove down into the valley between the two legs of the U.

The vegetation in the valley was comprised of desiccated leafless oaks and red-barked manzanita. It was not as colorful here as it had been on top of the plateau; the landscape was colored, if you can call it that, in drab shades of gray and brown. Lichens of various hues and tints encrusted the rocks, and my companions amused themselves by pointing out lichen and watching me throw myself prone on the ground to photograph said lichen.

At a small livestock pond clogged with aquatic grass and moss, we turned around and headed back up to the plateau. The nice thing about taking the extra loop was that we got to enjoy the sumptuous views all over again. As we walked along the rim I noticed a flock of turkey vultures swooping and soaring on the thermals rising out of the valley, free and unfettered by the constraints of gravity.

“So graceful, so free to go with the wind” thought I, “how just like me!”

But then as I pondered this further, I realized that the vultures eat dead flesh and have ugly bald little heads and suddenly, I became strangely uncomfortable with this metaphor. It was the bald heads that caused my discomfiture.

As I gazed at all the colors, waters, snow, clouds, mountains and even the circling buzzards arrayed below, my parting thought was eloquently simple: “This is why we hike!”

And with that, we headed back down to the trailhead.



<i>Richard O’Neill is a member of The Friends of the Umpqua Hiking Club. The club will be hiking Saturday and April 5. For more information, see www.friendsoftheumpqua.org.<;/i>