Easy (to Brookling Creek)
5.8 miles round trip
580 feet elevation gain
Open June through November
Use: hikers, horses
Difficult (Around Indian Creek Butte)
20.3-mile loop
3240 feet elevation gain
Open mid-July to early November
One of the quietest forest canyons of Eastern Oregon slices along the southern edge of the Strawberry Range. A day hike up the East Fork of Canyon Creek offers only humble goals—a few creek views and a couple of park-like groves of big ponderosa pines—but if you’re backpacking or riding a horse you can climb to Indian Creek Butte, where alpine meadows and viewpoints await. Expect to see mule deer and elk along the way. In the fall, dogwood and cottonwood trees fire the canyon with color.
Take Highway 395 south from . . .
Although Hotel De Bum makes a good base for a loop trip around Indian Creek Butte, that trip ends with . . .
This chapter is an excerpt from 100 Hikes: Eastern Oregon