Wallowa Lake, and day trips

While I was at Brass Camp, I didn't have much time to do anything but teach and eat and try to sleep.  I think the sleeping was the hardest- the sun was up before 6 each morning, and it took me several days to realize that it was coming right through the window and waking me up.  Some heavy blankets solved that problem.

This selection of photos is fairly random.  Most were made at less than ideal times of day, and none were made in real wild areas, which are my usual habits.  The light on the lake was often confounding: though it's very scenic, the mountain that backdrop the lake get no sunset light at this time of year, and the area on the other side of the lake is a small town.  So, while I did see some amazing light, the nearby scenery wasn't helpful:

That's the best light, but there wasn't any way to get a no-clutter photo of it.  Oh well, this one was pretty nice, with an assist from the moon:

I did manage to take a few trips.  One, on my mountain bike, was to ride out of camp and down the road to Joseph for about a mile.  Then, after crawling under a fence, I'd enter a local rancher's property.  He has placed the land under some kind of conservation easement, and allows folks to visit.  Cattle are still grazing here, though, and avoiding cow patties was the main technical difficulty on the ride.  The main difficulty was aerobic: climbing the absurdly steep road at this high (for me) elevation.  It was burning lungs time.  Great fun!

The rewards are obvious:

They call this whole area around the Wallowas the "Oregon Alps" or "Little Switzerland".  With all due respects to the community in North Carolina that calls itself the same, I think the Wallowas fit the bill more perfectly.  It's not just the impressive vertical relief of the mountains, but the fact that they are surrounded by miles of lush green pasture and farm land.  It's certainly not the politics!

The road goes to the top of what's called The Moraine, a giant ridge of material dumped by the continuous movement of the glacier that created the lake thousands of year ago.  At the top of the ridge, the road heads up to the trees of the Wallowa Whitman National Forest:

I didn't have time for that (had to get back to teaching trombone!) so I turned back around and explored a tiny bit down the pasture, where I found a typically amazing bucolic scene, complete with cows:

After screaming down the road (and scaring one poor cow out of her wits!) I stopped to look at the lake close up:

One of the evenings we had a social event in Joseph, the small town nearby.  Afterwards I took a while photographing downtown under moonlight:

One of the days, I took a friend hiking.  This friend has some notorious bad luck with outdoor adventures.  I thought maybe we could take a short easy trip, so he could see how nice it can be withouth getting lost.  Sure enough, we reached a creek that, according to my guidebook, would be a shallow ford.  Not so.  It was swollen from much recent rain.  I stepped in with my trekking poles to check it out.  The water raged over very slick rocks with moss growth.  20 feet downstream was a precipitous waterfall.  It was a bad scene!

I probably could have done it, and might have done it myself, but being in a group can make me cautious (that's probably backwards, I know, but since I hike so much, I feel more responsible for anyone hiking with me than I feel for myself).  We turned back around and found a boot path heading back down our way.  We couldn't find any other way over the water, and were bushwacking over steep slopes in heavy brush in no time.  I swear I just wanted to take him on an easy 2.5 mile hike!  We got out (through someone's backyard accidentally), and I promised my friend that that kind of thing doesn't normally happen to me when I hike.  Maybe his bad luck rubbed off on me.

Anyway.  By the end of the week, I was still trying to get that calendar shot of Wallowa Lake.  I had some close ones:

Now this one was real close, but that guy in the boat never drifted out of the picture.  Just kept making exasperating circles!

Since I felt that I hadn't quite gotten what I wanted with sunlight, I took one last photo of the lake.  Using the flash and an centered framing isn't my main mode, so it turned out rather different:

Hope you enjoyed reading!

Wallowa Lake Trip, Day 2 and 3, N. Fork Umatilla River

Arriving in the evening, I walked out from my car into a dark and densely forested canyon.  As I walked, I was wetted by the bushes encroaching on the badly overgrown trail.  Since the trail is in a congressionally designated Wilderness area, some trail maintenance techniques and machines are not allowed.  Falling back on older, more traditional methods takes more labor hours, and is thus prohibitively expensive.

As a result, the Forest Service maintains important wilderness trails less frequently, and unimportant ones very little.  Some trails eventually disappear into the forest.  Some local hikers in the Portland area make great sport of finding and hiking the abandoned trails.  For them it is a detective game involving old maps, first hand accounts of elderly explorers, and Forest Service records.  They can often find old blazes on trees, disappearing bench cuts on traversing terrain, and the occasional lost bridge or rockwork.  At any rate, I was just getting wet, and wished that someone would have come in during the spring and brushed out the trail.

I found a lovely campsite (flat, dryish ground in spite of the day's rain).

I walked on up the canyon the next morning.  I found that, after a certain point, the trail had been brushed out!  I was curious why this portion had been cleared, but the first miles had not.  As I walked along, I passed over some horse droppings right on the trail.  It's more common on the East side of the state to see horses, because a lot of travelers prefer horsepacking.  So I didn't think too much of it.

I came to a large campsite, with several very dirty men standing around a smokey fire.  I waved.  After greetings, they asked me if they'd seen any mules back down the trail.  The mules had escaped in the night during a storm (I slept straight through it apparently).  I told them about the droppings, but they had guessed that the horses headed up hill to a big meadow.

Turns out that they are a maintenance crew working on clearing out the trail.  They're contractors, not Forest Service employees.  Aside: the Federal Goverment doesn't do anything anymore, just pays for-profit companies to do things for it.  They said they'd been out for about a month, and would be out for about another two.  They looked like it, too.  They were standing there in a fine drizzle, wearing cotton hoodies and jeans.  I asked them if they ever get dry.  They claimed that if they can keep their sleeping bag dry, it's not too bad.  Seems like misery to me!  Later on, I got to look at their site while they were gone:

The younger guys slept in a tent (smelly, yathink?) while the older gent, possibly wiser, slept out under this generous tarp.  That's his bag on the green sleeping pad.  I was very surprised to see all of their stores of food sitting out on the ground.  Sure, there are bears occasionally, and that's a great reason to hang a bear bag.  But, think also about the ground squirrels that seem to live in every tree in the woods.  They'll steal anything that's not too big or tied down.  I can't believe it's possible to get away with this!

Anyway, back to the hiking:

The trail turned hard to the left and headed up an open meadow, with increasing views.  

I walked along and very soon came upon the mules.  They didn't look happy to see me, and ran up the trail ahead of me.  I shouted down to the camp, and waited to see if the guys would come up to take the animals.  Nobody came up, so I headed up.  

The trail work had made the trail picture perfect in its grade and dimensions, but the wet weather (this spring will live on in infamy, I'm sure) had turned the trail into a mucky mess:

The views were pleasant.  Here's an old Ponderosa with a young fir.  I think.  They all look alike.

Views increasing, in spite of fog that never lifted:

Here I discovered a lovely field of yellow lupine, which I'd never seen before:

Another view:

Hope you enjoyed!

Trip to Wallowa Lake, OR, June 2010, Day 1 and 2

I taught at a brass camp in Wallowa Lake, Oregon.  Naturally I brought my bike and my camping gear (it's amazing what one can squeeze into the trunk of a '99 Honda Civic).  I left Portland in the afternoon, and stopped on the Deschutes River to camp one night:

This site seemed attractive at the time, but turned into a hard place to camp- not quite flat ground and barbed stickers in the grass.  I was pulling out those annoying seeds for a couple of weeks.

The Deschutes always looks different.  I've been there about 10 times now and it never disappoints.

Next I drove on to the town of Echo, where a private landowner has allowed a local mountain biker to build a network of trails on his property.  Wow!  Though the trails were very overgrown and a little rough, they were very well designed for the bike.  All the turns were wide enough to be comfortable, and the grades were gradual.  It was a lot of fun.  Located on the flat land of the Columbia Plateau, there wouldn't be that much climbing anyway.

Here's a trail side view of the local flora:

Looks like Iowa, huh?  Sure does to me.  Agriculture is the business here.  In nearby Hermiston, the watermelons are legendary, apparently.  Funny to think that this is the same state as the deserts I've visited, as well as the numerous rainforested mountains I've visited.  A real land of contrasts!

Here's a more native selection of plants- sagebrush and bunchgrass steppe, with a storm about to roll over.

I got out of there as the storm came up, and had a meal in Echo proper.  On my way further east, I came upon an incredibly clear double rainbow!

I followed the rainbow (it followed me rather, as a rainbow's location is determined by the eyes of its observers) several more miles, till I found its end.  Turns out that the rainbow ends in a ravine near Pendleton, Oregon:

I passed Pendleton, drove through the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and spent the night on National Forest land.  That's up next.
Thanks for reading.

Mt. Mitchell, Washington, 6-13-10

Here are photos from a day trip back in June.  Mt. Mitchell is just south of Mt. St. Helens (MSH), and the views are the attraction.  Actually, the walk up was pleasant, but I didn't bother to take any photos- just second growth forest (and one view of a clearcut).  At the top, there are rock fins and wildflowers:

This used to be a lookout site, and though the lookout itself was destroyed (probably on purpose), there is a very derelict outhouse resting against one crag:

Looking down Lewis River Canyon:

MSH with yours truly:

A snag with great evening light through its cracking wood:

Detail of the snag:

Finally, two shots of MSH in the sunset:

I walked back to the car in the cool dark after sunset.  A nice afternoon trip!
Thanks for reading.