Turns out that our earlier June visit only got us to the very tip of Rinehart Canyon. We learned this from a discussion at Farmers Market with an old neighbor, an employee of the Forest Service. So we hit the road at 7am this morning and turned off the highway at Philberg Road. Soon the road became overgrown with brush and weeds, so we parked and hiked as far as the old bridge that crosses the Grande Ronde River. This required nearly three hours of traversing a path that was really the old highway but varied in width from about two to ten feet. In places the brush was dense and higher than our heads, barely allowing clearance to slip through one at a time. In a couple of spots we had to scramble over rock slides and piles. And of course: an abundance of birds.
