Rogue River Trail – Peyton Bridge

The Rogue River Trail at Peyton Bridge is a 4-5 mile out and back above Lost Creek Lake that just… peters out…

Driving
– The Rogue River Trail @ Peyton Bridge is a good 1 hour drive from Ashland. Take Interstate 5 to Medford and exit at the Crater Lake exit #33. Turn right towards the big box stores and then take the new expressway away from those dumb stores and their dumb traffic. You will meet back with Crater Lake Highway (Route 62) and take that left towards Crater Lake. Cruise for 20 minutes through some mixed log-pile, farm, & weed landscape and at Shady Cove you will cross the Rogue River. About 10 minutes later you reach the dam.

Continue on Route 62 for 5 more minutes along the lake until you cross the bridge (Peyton Bridge) over the top of the lake. Immediately you turn left on Lewis Road and immediately again you turn left into the parking lot.

Parking
– A well maintained gravel lot with good signage and a pit toilet.

The Adventure
–The trail starts “upstream” and under the bridge. Nice and shady but a little loud – close to Route 62 for the first mile. Then you cross the first cool bridge and now you are far enough from the road to just enjoy the views of the lake. Granted, you are not close enough to just jump in. So you hope to drop down later, right? Not gonna happen.

About mile 2 the trail slowly becomes overgrown. You can fight it for a while. And then, the second bigger bridge is crushed by trees. It’s not a big bridge and you can skirt around it, but… the trail becomes more and more messy. Time to turn around. It’s very unsatisfying not to have an obvious “place” to turn around at. But, there are some great views of the lake along the way.