Viewpoint Mike Trail
The Viewpoint Mike Trail is a 5 mile out and back trail along the loud and long Crater Lake Highway above Lost Creek Lake.
Driving
-The Viewpoint Mike Trail is less than a 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 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. The fish hatchery is to the left – cross the bridge over the Rogue River – and immediately turn right on Crowfoot Road. 200 yards later turn right into the parking lot.
Parking
– Pass the port-a-potty and park somewhere in the grassy asphalt. This used to be more of a “trucks-w-boat-trailers” parking lot than it is now.
The Adventure
– The trail head is across the street from the parking area and you are headed uphill right away. You will always hear the road. Even when the trail bends away from Route 62, you are above the highway so the sound jut rises up to you. But the trail is fantastic. Well maintained. Dipping in and out of Doug fir, then oak scrub, then open field, then back into some shade. Even hiking a hundred yards on a gravel road half way up is visually quaint. But consistently, some loud, jankey truck will blaze up or down Crate Lake Highway and ruin the ambiance.
The last couple hundred yards is some good-looking rock and hillside trail with views and an obvious culmination in a spectacular “Viewpoint” but… the road. So traffic-y sounding. And the view is mostly fantastic – in a “look at all those motorboats from way up here” kind of way. But, looking at the view of a water-ski lake with Route 62 providing the soundtrack really keeps this trail and overlook from being something I’d recommend… unless you are deaf. I SAID, UNLESS YOU ARE DEAF!