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!