Apollo 14

Moon Tree Run

Date    October 6, 2012

Time    10:00AM

Location

The Moon Tree Run is held at the historic Siskiyou Smokejumper Base next to the Illinois Valley Airport runway. Lat/Long: 42.103651, -123.681429

Directions

From Interstate 5: Get off the freeway at Exit 55 (beginning of Highway 199) and travel about 30 miles to Cave Junction. Continue another four and a half miles past Cave Junction to where the road opens into four lanes. Get in the right lane and turn on Smokejumper Way. The base is about a fourth of a mile from the entrance.

From Highway 101: From Crescent City, drive three miles north on Highway 101 and turn on to Highway 199. In about 35 miles you cross the Oregon border and five miles more you come to O’Brien, the first flashing yellow light you will see on Highway 199. Continue another three miles to where the road crosses the bridge over Rough & Ready Creek and widens into four lanes. Get in the left lane and make a left turn on to Smokejumper Way about a half mile past the bridge.

The Run Routes

The Moon Tree Run follows roads that meander through the unusual botanical landscape of the Rough and Ready Creek alluvial fan, a deposit of rock, gravel, and sand carried by floods out of the adjacent mountains and deposited in a fan-shaped arrangement at the mouth of Rough and Ready Creek canyon. The watershed of Rough and Ready Creek, the source of the rock, gravel, and sand,  is located in the largest exposure of mantle rock in North America. For that reason, the material making up the alluvial fan is composed almost entirely of this type of rock, which is a poor source of nutrients for plants. For that reason, plants growing on the Rough & Ready Creek alluvial fan are deprived of essential nutrients and this stunts their growth. The second half of the run climbs out of the alluvial fan into richer soils created by sediments that once accumulated on the floor of an ancient ocean. Vegetation seen along this section of the run is significantly more lush and dense.

The main route for the Moon Tree Run is 10 kilometers with two shortcut options that runners can choose to take to reduce the length of the run to roughly 8km or 6km. A third route is a little more than 5km in length.

The Apollo 14 Moon Walk and children’s run route is 2km in length, the approximate distance the Apollo 14 astronauts walked on the moon. This route parallels the east side of the runway and goes from the start line to the north end of the airport and back.

Camping

There is an assortment of both private and public camping facilities within a 30 mile radius of the Moon Tree Run. Only the public and nonprofit sites are mentioned below. Look at the sponsor list to the right for more options.

Lodging

The communities closest to the event site have limited but unique lodging at the Oregon Caves Chateau and Out N About Tree House B&B. The communities that are closest to the event that offer a wider variety of lodging are Grants Pass and Crescent City. Allow about an hour to drive from these locations to the Moon Tree Run.