And hike to the summit - North entrance
Stevenson, Washington - 10/2/10
For information about the Southern Access to Archer Mountain, click HERE
For information about my first (failed) attempt to find Archer Falls,
click HERE
The Northern access road to the Archer Mountain Trailhead is well marked.
Travelling East on Washington route 14, turn left at milepost 31
and go up Franz Road. After about a mile, turn left on Duncan Creek Road.
Travel about 2 miles to the end of Duncan Creek Road. The road is paved all
the way. There is a sign indicating that you aren't supposed to park in the
turnaround... but I ran into a Skamania County Sheriff Deputy out in the woods
(imagine that....) who asked if that was my bike and said nothing about illegal
parking. So either he liked me (he said he has a Suzuki C50) or there's no problem
parking there. Anyway....
If you turn around, you can see Archer Mountain right behind you.
ABOVE: Just before you go over that little bridge, you come across this
muddy road to the left that is probably the correct way to get closer to
the mountain. I explored the other roads and they led nowhere. I'll come
back again and hike this one that goes past a gate (BELOW) and up, up, up..
I had my brand new DeLorne PN-40 GPSr with me that proved to be nearly
useless... admittedly I have yet to figure out how to use it but it looks like
a fact that topo info about Archer Mountain is noticeably absent in these maps.
In any case, just for fun, I went down the obvious forest road figuring
it must go *SOMEWHERE*!!!
So off along forest road 1854 I go...
About 0.24 miles up this dirt/gravel road, I came upon this promising
trailhead to the left.
I fairly quickly came across this little falls. I believe this is
Duncan Creek but my GPS was not helping me with location ID information...
This trail seems to be well travelled and someone is obviously making
trail improvements.
Maybe a half mile into this trail I came across these falls and stream
which is still (I think) Duncan Creek.
There was no obvious trail on the other side of this water feature. I crossed
at this shallow spot. On the other side was a campfire pit and a LOT of beer bottles.
I'm guessing this is a popular tailgating location for kids.
There were quite a few faint trails on the other side but nothing that screamed
out as a trail I'd want to take. It sort of looks like the main traffic to this
spot is just to drink mass quantities of beer. Any self respecting Hiker would pack
out what they pack in. Since my GPS wasn't helping me much, I backtracked to the
trailhead and turned left to continue up the dirt/gravel road. Maybe a mile along
I came upon this trail to the left.
This is a VERY steep road and a lot of full sized cars/trucks/whatever have
been up it. Lots of chrome on the ground that got ripped off going up/down this
path. After a mile or so, the road completely dead ends... I turned around and
hiked back to forest road 1854 and turned left to continue Northward.
After another mile or so I came to an intersection with this NBR 63 AOL sign
on it. Thinking it was an AOL e-mail address, I sent an e-mail which promptly
bounced. My GPS showed this intersection as a road and since I was well Northeast
of Archer Mountain by this time, I figured any further exploration around here
would be a bust.
Headed back to the turnaround and headed home.
Archer Mountain South access
Ride to Sisters, Oregon and McKenzie Pass
