Dutton Creek Trail

Dutton Creek Trail is a 4.6-mile out-and-back from just below the West Rim Drive and Rim Village junction to the Pacific Crest Trail. It drops 2.3 miles through forest, crosses Dutton Creek and opens into grassy meadows; then you climb back about 1,000 feet. Allow around three hours. Choose it for a long forest walk and a little history, not another rim overlook.

The first 1.25 miles down from the trailhead are the steepest, so the hardest uphill comes at the end of the return. A few stream crossings come in the first mile. At about 1.25 miles, the trail reaches a tributary and a backcountry camping area; the grade eases after that, with another mile down to the wet, flat PCT junction. Turn around there. If 4.6 miles sounds like more than you want, turning back at the tributary makes an outing of roughly 2.5 miles, but you’ll miss the lower meadows and the PCT.

The upper trail runs through old mountain hemlock forest. Farther down, lodgepole pines become more open and grassy meadows appear. Dutton Creek and its tributaries shape the route, but expect stream crossings rather than a dry ridge walk.

A group of tourists from Jacksonville blazed a route up Dutton Creek in 1869 to reach the rim from the Army wagon road. Much of today’s trail follows that old track; it remained an important approach until the Munson Valley route was improved in 1905. The creek and trail are named for Captain Clarence E. Dutton, who led the USGS team that first sounded Crater Lake’s depth in 1886.