Angel's Rest and Devil's Rest Dayhike, January 2010

Here are photos from a dayhike I took in January.  I started at Wahkeena Falls, then walked up to a small hill on top of a high ridge, called Devil's Rest.  From there I walked down unofficial, unmaintained trails to a rocky outcrop over the Columbia River called Angel's Rest.

Here are some nice old trees on the ridge leading up to Devil's Rest:

After walking through nice forest for quite a while, I came to several viewpoints.  The weather was mostly cloudy.  Winds from the west were pushing clouds up and over the mid level rim of the Gorge.  There are no views at Devil's Rest, though it is a pleasant spot.  

I arrived at Angel's Rest shortly before sunset, as clouds were beginning to clear up:

At the far end of the outcrop, I took in views of Portland, Gresham, and Camas to the West:

And to the East, I saw Cape Horn (far left), Table Mountain (center) and Hamilton Mountain (far right).

I should point out that I do this hike regularly, and it is only about 30 miles from my house.  What a treasure!

The view from Cape Horn

This is just two photos from recent trips up the Washington side of the Gorge.  I have lots of photos from this viewpoint, and this is the best yet:

From another recent trip, in a very different meteorological mood:

You'll notice that the river is higher in the second photo (both the shoreline and the mudflats surrounding the mid-river rock are more exposed in the first photo- click the image to enlarge, if you need).  The Columbia is tidal all the way up to Bonneville Dam, which is just beyond the final curve of the river in these photos.  Lewis and Clark noticed this back when the Cascades of the Columbia were the limit of tidal influence, and not the dam.  There is also some seasonal variation in water levels, due to snowmelt.   

River level is also affected by the Army Corps of Engineers' and Bonneville Power Administration's decisions regarding power demand, flood control, and fishery health (for salmon going both up and downstream).  I met a BPA "scheduler" recently.  As he described the different priorities that he and his co-workers must weigh in managing the dam flows up and down the Columbia, I conceived of an enormous act of institutional juggling.  Juggling huge labor, energy, and financial resources with economic and environmental effects that will outlast all who have ever worked on these dams.  Not a job for the indecisive. 

Tanner Butte and Eagle Creek, late October 2009

I took an overnight trip in late October that follows a classic route: up and over Tanner Butte, then down Eagle Creek back to the car.  I've been to Eagle Creek several times, and have camped on the creek before.  But Tanner Butte was brand new to me.  Because of changing weather, the setting sun, and fallen snow, I didn't end up getting to the top of Tanner Butte.  But I still had fun.  Here are my photos:

I started out at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife fish hatchery at Eagle Creek.  Here are several spawning or post-spawn chinook salmon.  These huge fish spend one year in the hatchery, then leave for the sea.  After three or four years of getting fat on sea life, they return to the hatchery to spawn. They weigh from 10 to 45 pounds.  I think that's why they're called "King" salmon.  These are just a few of them.  There are schools of hundreds crowding up the small creek!  

They swim in circles or go up and down small riffles repeatedly.  They seem to be aimless, but I think they're spawning.  They change colors when they start spawning.

After spawning (they release eggs and sperm on the creek's rock beds with a vigorous method that looks like they're scratching their sides on the rocks), they rot from the inside out, while still alive.  It's a really bizarre life cycle.  The dead fish pile up, and the whole head of the canyon smells like dead fish.  Here are a few trapped up in slack water in part of the fishery structures:

At the end stage of their life, they lie in the water, merely living:

I walked up a ridge out of the Eagle Creek drainage.  I found some nice views out of the forest to the Columbia, framed by fall color (the large clouded ridge at the background is Hamilton Mtn, which I've visited too many times to remember):

I walked up and and up the ridge on the Tanner Butte Trail.  I entered a quiet second growth forest:

On the way, I noticed a wire running parallel to the trail.  I found it again, several times, and at least once, found the wire coming out of the insides of trees.  I'm pretty sure that this is a telegraph wire that was never cleaned up when it was decommissioned.  There was a fire lookout on the top of the Butte, and possibly the line ran all the way to the lookout.  

I didn't know whether or not I'd hit snow on this trip.  In the shoulder seasons, sometimes I just head out and find out.  I found a small amount once I got over about 3,000 feet.  In positive news, the sun had actually started to come out of the clouds!

I took a left turn at a spur trail to visit Dublin Lake (and pick up some water to drink).  The lake was surrounded by fall color, but I wasn't able to frame a satisfying composition without hand-holding the camera.  And in the light conditions, I was unable to hold the camera still enough to avoid a blurry photo.  I did, however, manage a composition of a nearby pond that had frozen over, along with a blazing red huckleberry bush behind it!

By this time, as usual, I was running slightly late on schedule.  Well, not really.  I try to time my trips so that I'm in the most spectacular locations (biggest views) in the hours right before sunset.  So, while the sun was about an hour or two from setting, I was about an hour or two from the top of the mountain.  My intended campsite (a creekside old-growth cedar grove) was some hour or so beyond that.  After filling up enough water to get me to camp, I hightailed it back out the spur to the main trail, and walked up the mountain through increasingly deep recent snow.

The trail picks up and follows a very old, overgrown logging grade at this point.  So I had no trouble following the route.  As I walked along, I noticed a set of tracks in the snow.  It looked like a coyote,  while walking along the road in the opposite direction from me, turned right uphill and scrambled (lots of messy snow everywhere) up an embankment off the road.  I thought that was kind of cool.  Maybe it saw some prey.  

I walked a little further, following the coyote tracks back from whence they came.  I was only cursorily glancing at the tracks, when one of them made me double take:

That's no coyote!  It's sort of hard for a person of my inexperience to tell the difference between canine (coyotes and dogs, because there aren't any wolves in Western Oregon) and feline (bobcat and mountain lion), but there are several clues that identify this as a mountain lion.  Size is the first (the preceding coyote tracks were smaller) and shape (oval for coyotes, compared to roughly circular for kitties) is the second.  I was really happy to see this, and to be heading in the opposite direction, too, as the sun went down.  I'm guessing the kitty scared off the coyote.  But that's a guess.  Here are more kitty tracks:

Within a minute of taking this photo, I walked up on a buck deer, also walking down trail, just like the coyote and cougar.  It's an interesting thing.  Surely he smelled the cougar's passage?  

As I approached the summit, the clouds covered up most of the mountain, and the light grew dimmer yet.  In light of my small supply of water, the large supply of snow covering the route, and the low supply of light for photography and navigation, I opted not to take the bushwack-spur up from the road to the summit.  While it's a neat feeling to be at the top of a mountain in a white-out, I decided I'd like to come back when I can take some nice sunset photos.  One further concern was that the night was predicted to be rainy/snowy, and I didn't want to be stuck high on the ridge, weathering a deep snowfall in my tiny tarp.  

I did get one photo of the summit area of the mountain, from a meadow on the ridge, though:

I walked along the ridge's road, hoping that the trail leading down the canyon to my campsite would be marked.  Otherwise, it might have been hard to see, especially given that I was now using my headlamp for illumination.  Sure enough, the Forest Service came through, and the trail was clearly marked.  I took the left turn, and headed down.  

The snow was less prevalent the lower I went.  But this trail was badly overgrown.  I hike at night very often (it goes with the sunset on the summit photography strategy), and am quite comfortable negotiating trails in the dark.  But this one was so overgrown and occasionally eroded by seasonal water flows (which make their own "paths" that intersect the trail, and create a braided mess) that I dropped off trail several times.  Once off, I would stop and slowly walk in a spiral until I found the trail.  Or sometimes it made the most sense to back up and try again.  Often I'd find the tread of the trail in great shape, buried under dark masses of overgrown bear grass.

One time, the trail clearly led straight into a small pond.  The pond was on my map, which  was heartening, but appeared to stop right there.  My feet were already quite wet from the snow, but I wasn't interested in finding out how deep the water would be.  I backed up and tried again, thinking I'd missed the real trail, but it clearly led to the lake.  Finally, I noticed pieces of wood in the lake, spaced at footstep intervals.  I took several steps out, and as my headlamp lit up the lake, saw that the trail led right through one corner of it, right on partially submerged steps made of a cut up tree!  After this, the going got a little easier, and I made it to the campsite.  The cedars were huge and inviting.  I slept soundly.  

I woke up to rain.  So I stayed in the tarp for a good hour, just psyching myself to get out of bed and hike 12 miles down the canyon in the rain.  And enjoying the pitter patter of our very civilized, polite northwestern-style rain.  I made it out of my tarp and hacked my way down the still quite overgrown trail.  I even lost it briefly in the daytime!   There was a deep and rushing ford of Eagle Creek, and a long walk out, down a trail I've been down several times.  I was wet, and really ready to be out, so I made the 12 miles in something like 4 hours of steady walking.  During the walk, I managed to convince myself I needed new rain jacket.  Mine was so ripped up and wasn't that protective in the first place that I felt like just throwing it away!  It's done well, though, considering it cost me $10, weighs a few ounces, and has been used continuously for about two and a half years.  

There's only one photo from the second day, really.  Just a shot of Eagle Creek from a bridge about halfway down.  It's hard to get the camera out on days like this: I didn't feel like stopping and cooling down, I've never made a satisfactory photo of the spectacular falls along the creek, and my lack of a full size tripod means I'm limited in my compositions, given the low light.  

My car was warm and dry, and I was back in Portland within 45 minutes.  Isn't it great to live in a place like that!  Hope you enjoyed.

Multnomah Creek and Larch Mountain Overnighter, mid October 2009

I took an over night backpack trip up to the top of Larch Mountain back in October, and here are the photos.  I arrived at the Multnomah Falls Lodge in rain, and waited in the car until it slacked off a little.  Still, when I headed up through the crowds of tourists and hikers, it was misting and raining a little.  Multnomah Falls never disappoints, no matter the weather:

As I continued up the paved trail to the top of the falls, I passed through bands of clouds hugging the walls of the Gorge.  The weather didn't look promising:

This is the view from the top of the falls.  It's a little stream, and then suddenly it disappears over a 500 foot cliff!

Walking up Multnomah Creek further, I saw Wiesendager Falls.  

I don't know if this canyon was logged or not.  There are some large trees up there, but no real obvious ancients.  Still, it's a very pleasant walk: the highway noise is covered by the sound of the creek, the crowds are thinned out (at least by this time of year), and the woods are lovely.

Though the fall color in the northwest doesn't compare to the fall color of the Southern Appalachians, there are at least the bright yellow leaves of the vine maple trees:

Eventually I arrived at Franklin Ridge Trail, which leads up from the creek to the ridgeline.  Ascending through second growth in light fog:

The trails all head uphill to the summit of Larch Mountain, which is an extinct volcano, which bears evidence of possible glaciation on its north side.  A road travels all the way up the very broad, gradually inclined west face of the mountain to a parking lot.  My trail intersected that road just down hill of the lot.

At the parking lot, I took the short paved trail to the tip of the mountain at Sherrard Point.  

This is the eroded plug of the volcano.  No views tonight.  The clouds had evaporated in the afternoon, which made for pleasantly dry walking, but they returned in the evening.  Luckily it wasn't raining.  This summit is a full 4,055 feet above where I began at Multnomah Falls.  

It was dark as I made my way off the summit area.  I walked down into the crater, which is the headwaters of Multnomah Creek.  I found a spot to camp right at the creek.  This turned into a real hassle of a place to camp, as the nearby tree and logs were in the way anytime I did anything!  Here's a photo from the next morning.

On the way back down along Multnomah Creek the next morning, I was surprised to find a huge grove of old growth.  Awesome trees.  I didn't realize that this area hadn't been logged.  It's designated Wilderness now, and would literally require an act of Congress to be logged.  Nice!

Here's some nice fall color on the trail:

When I got down to the area above the falls, I walked through one final cloud bank.

One final picture: a view of the parking lot at Multnomah Falls.  As always, I was glad to see my car.  Usually I don't see the car from 800 feet above though.  

Hope you enjoyed!

Spencer Butte, Early October, 2009

After Laura broke her arm, I drove down to Eugene to help out with the doctor's visit.  They put her arm in a cast, and told her she was good to go.  We thought it'd be nice to go for a hike, so we went to a city park with a 2,052' summit- Spencer Butte.  Laura's holding her poor arm:

The summit had lots of people on it, enjoying the views and scrambling around on the exposed bedrock.

There are great distant  views of Eugene down below.  Autzen Stadium is on the upper right side of town:

Here's a view facing south, into the final nooks and crannies of the Willamette Valley.  South of here much further and it's only mountains, till the Rogue and Umpqua Rivers' valleys.  

Here's another view of the summit near sunset:

Finally, heading back down to the car, we had nice views of evening light on the doug firs and oaks:

Thanks for reading!

Klickitat Rail Trail, November and December 2009

Here's my first trip report.  I got a new mountain bike back in November.  It's designed for long rides and racing, rather than the gnarliest terrain, and it's quite a pleasure to ride.  Here the bike is, on Fisher Hill Road, near Lyle, Washington.  

In late November and early December, I made several trips out to the Klickitat Rail Trail.  It's in Lyle, Washington.  On the other side of the Cascades, it is dry and usually sunny.  On my first trip, though, I rode out under overcast skies.  

The trail follows the Klickitat River upstream from its confluence with the Columbia.  This is a salmon river, and Indians from the Yakama Reservation nearby make quite an industry out of fishing out and selling the salmon.  Their commerce is protected by treaty rights signed many years ago.  

The trail is one of many "rails to trails" in Washington.  These are railroad corridors that have fallen out of use, been bought by the state or a non-profit, and retrofitted as multi-use trails.  Some are paved, but luckily this one isn't.  In some places the trail is overgrown, and provides an easy singletrack experience.

As the day ended, the clouds opened up a little and the sunlight was real nice on the autumn colors!

Here's light on the hills surrounding the river:

Hope you enjoyed reading!