Virtual Guidebook to Mount Shasta and the Klamath-Trinity Mountains
The Doctor Rock Trail
Siskiyou Mountains in Six Rivers National Forest California

I had heard about Doctor Rock as a sacred place of the Yurok people, but thought it was impossibly remote. It turned out to be just a couple of miles from the southern segment of the infamous G-O Road. The trail is unsigned, hidden behind a vehicle barrier near the end of the road.

It starts out as a fire road, in places paralleled by a footpath, but gets fainter as it drops down to a saddle and almost disappears as it climbs to the final ridge. I accidentally got on the wrong branch, to an old miners cabin, then bushwhacked up the ridge to the rock. I was not prepared for a long hike and was not carrying water, but a clear spring in serpentinite saved me, though all I had to drink out of was my lens-cap. It was exhilarating on the ridgetop, all alone, a grand panoramic view.