Suttle Tie Trail: a close-to-home walk

The Suttle Tie Trail is a pleasant five-mile (one-way) walk in the woods. I'd never hiked it before simply because it seemed too close to the main highway. I wasn't wrong about the annoying proximity to the road noise from Highway 20, but it turned out to be a very nice and easy hike through an attractive forest ecosystem.

This route also forms an important leg in a trail system that interconnects Sisters, Black Butte Ranch, Camp Sherman, and Suttle Lake. By piecing together the various trail segments, all these communities can be visited from the others by short, easy hikes of only a few hours each.

In order to make this a one-way trip, we used a car drop between Suttle Lake and the clearly marked trail crossing at George McAllister Road, west of Black Butte Ranch. At the west end of the trail, we parked at the Lake Creek Trailhead near Suttle Lake Resort and walked across the bridge where we found clear directions on trail post markers.

The trail follows Lake Creek north from the bridge for a short distance before turning east to circle behind the fire information kiosk (where parking is also available) and crossing the Suttle Lake entrance road.

Trail crews have already cleared winter deadfall, although we did find a couple of newly downed trees across the trail farther east. This is a multi-use trail suitable for equestrians and bicyclists.

The trail soon enters the area where Highway 20 makes its big bend before heading up to the pass. This portion of the forest was thinned and under-burned before the disastrous B & B fire of 2003. The fire touched this area; but, because of the previous treatment, the fire burned mostly under the tree crowns. As a result, the surviving forest stands as a good example of preventive forest management.

There are beautiful views of Mt. Jefferson here; and, as the trail winds deeper into a denser forest, it continues for a time atop what appears to be an old railroad grade, perhaps an old logging spur line. The trail drops off the grade and parallels it for a while, before following an old road that slices through the raised grade. Here, the trail heads east; and the raised grade turns south.

Much of this area looks like a veritable tamarack nursery. The tamarack (or larch) is the only conifer that sheds its needles for the winter. Brilliant green new needles are now sprouting. In the fall, these same needles will turn a bright gold before they are shed. Golden chinkapin is also found in this part of the forest.

At lower elevations on the west side of the Cascades, chinkapin occurs as a tree over 100 feet tall, with trunks up to four feet in diameter; and its wood makes excellent furniture. Here on the east side at high elevations, however, it occurs principally as a shrub. Its narrow, evergreen leaves are two to four inches in length; and the plant's creamy white flowers bloom throughout the summer. The chinkapin's fruit is an edible yellowish brown nut found inside a large spiny burr.

Much of this trail consists of old roads and is very well marked by Forest Service "Roads to Trails" marker posts. In spite of the clear markings, however, we lost the trail about a mile west of George McAllister Road. We were distracted by a vehicle with huge oversize tires that came at us up the trail. While keeping a wary eye on the situation, we marched right on by a sharp (and well-marked) turn to the south and continued straight on the road by which the vehicle had approached.

We realized our error when we hit Road 150, so we found the correct trail crossing on that road and followed it back to where we had been distracted. The trail portion we had missed is the one area that is farther from the highway and its noise. So, we had a quiet forest for a change and stopped for a snack before continuing on.

After retracing the actual trail back across Road 150, we continued on to George McAllister Road. We were enjoying the outing so much that we decided to add more mileage by following the final portion of the Suttle Tie Trail to its terminus at Lower Butte Trail, which skirts the base of Black Butte on the other side of the highway. From there, trails connect to Camp Sherman, Black Butte Ranch, and all the way to Sisters.

This last section of trail, east of George McAllister Road, is lightly traveled and not well defined. A short distance into the woods, there is a trail marker that does not offer directions. Turn left toward the highway and stay off the well-used dirt road. Use caution when crossing Highway 20.

Once across the highway, the forest takes on a mature look with huge ponderosas that resemble the big "yellow-bellies" of old. This area serves as a good example of the Forest Service's use of thinning and under-burning to nudge second-growth forests back toward the original appearance of the region's old-growth

forests.

When we hit Lower Butte Trail, we circled back to where one of our cars was parked on Camp Sherman Road and retrieved the other vehicle from Suttle Lake. Camp Sherman/George McAllister Roads are 9 miles west of Sisters on Highway 20. The Suttle Lake turnoff is on the left, another 4.5 miles to the west.