Black Butte Trail Rerouted

Black Butte Trail, one of Central Oregon?s favorite hiking trails, took a new direction this week when it was rerouted to provide better separation of recreation and fire lookout activities.

Starting Tuesday, a youth crew with Northwest Youth Corps defined a trail system on the top of Black Butte to provide clear direction to scenic viewpoints and to move hikers away from Black Butte Lookout. In addition to defining a trail system, the youth crew rehabbed user trails on top of the butte that were impacting vegetation.

Prior to the reroute, confused hikers would wander near the Black Butte lookout trying to find viewpoints on the butte, which was a distraction from fire detection activities by lookouts and created many user trails. The newly defined trail, according to early reports from the public, is much appreciated.

The Tale of Two Rivers partnership, between the National Forest Foundation and Region 6 of the Forest Service, funded the project.

In addition to completing the trail project, the youth crew found a dehydrated golden eagle eaglet in the Black Butte parking lot. They contacted a Forest Service wildlife biologist who worked with wildlife rehabilitation specialists to care for the eaglet. The eaglet was moved to a wildlife rehabilitation facility where it is recovering