Harris Ranch Trail (Oregon Coast #54)(edit)

Mom and I took the Harris ranch Trail down to drift Creek in the drift Creek wilderness. We went up a sketchy partly paved road off of the Alsea Highway about 4 1/2 miles up to the trailhead. The trail starts out along an old road with a single track trail in the middle. Once we entered the wilderness, it turned into a narrower trail through old growth. There are some really gigantic tree in here. The trail was completely overgrown and we had to bushwhack our way through many sections. Luckily, we had our poles with us and use those to whack back the vegetation. We met a couple of hikers coming out and they warned us of how overgrown the trail was, but it was probably more overgrown than even we thought. We had to scramble over a couple of downed trees, one of which was a really big one. Probably the hardest part of the trail was near the bottom when we were side hilling down a steep incline near the creek. The GPS had us covering about 7 1/2 miles, but I think that is a gross overestimate considering that the satellites had a very difficult time tracking us, and there was a lot of chatter in the route. The distance online is only 2.7 miles each way, which is only 5.4 miles round-trip, but that seems a little short so maybe somewhere in the middle is the actual distance. The creek itself was really nice. We were able to sit out on some exposed rocks in the sun And enjoy the water. We were heard that there were a lot of crawdads down here, but only found a couple.  the climb back up the trail was steep and gained a lot of elevation about 1400 feet but we did OK. It was fairly close warm and humid which made the hike a pretty sweaty one. The temperature at the top was about 70° and it was probably in the low 80s down at the creek. 

Scouting a trail for an overnight backpack. Good candidate, could accommodate 6 to 8 tents in 2 or 3 sites. Tough return hike.