I have two counterparts here, both with the same job as me,
which officially is “backcountry trail interns for the Deschutes National
Forest” (and I swore I’d never do another internship again—at least this one is
paid-ish). All three of us are sponsored by a group called the Student
Conservation Association, and two of us are also double dipping as
Americorps-ers (the third already spent a year in the Utah Conservation Corps,
and wants to save her eligibility to do the Hawaii Conservation Corps.)
Except for an OSHA-mandated week of orientation in the
dreaded indoors covering subjects such as defensive driving (which was probably
a fair one, because I’m pretty green to driving a massive pick-up, and our rig
is paid for by the tax payers), sexual harassment, CPR, first aid, general
safety concerns, and my favorite, how to fight off a (black) bear or cougar,
we’ve been true to our job title, out working on backcountry trails (I’ll go
into what that actually entails in later posts).
And while we’ve worked on some pretty incredible trails, and
I’ve seen some of the most beautiful wilderness of my life working on those
trails, you’re still working, and when you’re working on trails, you move at a
glacial speed. Each of the three of us came here to explore (and to backpack,
which we’ll be doing as part of our job later in the summer, but hadn’t had the
chance to do yet), and this weekend was our first real opportunity to get out
into the Forest.
Before going on, I should go on a brief tangent to explain
what a national forest is and what wilderness is, because before coming here I
had no idea what either of those were.
I really only remember going to one national forest before
this, which was in North Carolina. I told everyone coming here that I was
working at a national park, which it turns out is a completely different thing
(to certain people who care, you really can lump them into the same category
and not lose sleep over). The main
difference is that a national park is operated under the Department of the Interior
and a national forest is operated under the Department of Agriculture. While a
national park is mostly an area that people can visit and nature can run its
course, a national forest is still viewed as a resource (hence it being under
the Department of Agriculture), meaning that while conservation is still a
priority, land management also focuses on harvesting, logging, grazing, etc.
There aren’t too many in the East, but the West is littered with them, Oregon
especially. I’m in the Deschutes National
Forest (obviously the best one, and the namesake of one of the best breweries
in the country), which is bordered by the Willamette National Forest, the
Fremont National Forest, the Ochoco National Forest, the Umpqua National
Forest, the Mount Hood National Forest, and the Winema National Forest, and
there’s still at least six or seven other ones in the state. They’re huge
too—the Deschutes alone is over 1.5 million acres.
The best part of the forests is the wilderness, which is an
actual legal term, and where we do most of our work. The Wilderness Act of 1964
(it’s the fiftieth anniversary this year) set aside the distinction for
federally managed land, usually within national parks or forest, that were to
be preserved entirely in their natural condition. There are endless rules and
regulations, but essentially it means that within these areas, man is just a
visitor, and must make as much of an effort as possible to not disturb the
land—for us, this means that we cannot bring any sort of machines in to do work
on the trails (including even simple machines like wheelbarrows), and need to
use old-fashioned tools like crosscut saws. Needless to say, they’re pretty
incredible. The Deschutes has five huge wilderness areas. We spend most of our
time in three of them—the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, the Mount Washington
Wilderness, and the Three Sisters Wilderness. For those keeping track at home,
those are all centered around Cascade mountains in my area—Mount Jefferson (the
second highest peak in Oregon at around 10,500 feet), Mount Washington, and the
three Sisters Mountains, each of which are over 10,000 feet.
Although everything being at enormous elevation means
incredible beauty, it also means that a solid amount of land is covered in snow
for about 90% of the year. Really anything above 6,000 or 6,500 feet, we’ve
come to realize, will have snow until the middle of July or even August, and
then only until the end of September will the area be fully navigable. Since
most of the good backpacking loops cover a lot of ground and tend to go into
areas with higher elevation, the options are pretty limited until later in the
summer.
We were planning on doing a 22 mile loop around a mountain
called Broken Top from Saturday through Sunday, but someone we know who ‘s
actually familiar with this area told us there would be way too much snow to do
the hike this early in the season. We
went to see some live music in Sisters on Friday night, and our friend from a
nearby town came and stayed with us. He told us about his favorite hike in the
area, which goes right through the Three Sisters Wilderness. We figured this
would be appropriate first trip, since we’re living in the eponymous Sisters,
Oregon. The hike follows the Pacific Crest Trail (the West Coast equivalent of
the Appalachian Trail) down twelve miles from the Lava Lake Trailhead (the
entire area is volcanic and littered with once flowing lava fields that
deposited massive mounds of volcanic rock) to Obsidian Falls and a natural
spring, passing the Collier Cone (7,500 feet) and going right to the west of
the North and Middle Sisters. We would hike out about six miles to a different
trailhead along the same highway the next day, and get a hitch back to the car.
The three of us woke up a little worse for wear on Saturday
morning, but luckily had everything packed up—way too much food, cooking gear,
tents, sleeping bags and mats, clothing, moleskin, etc. We managed to get on
the road by around 9:30—not the worst start, but with only about ten miles
planned for the first day, pretty reasonable. The trailhead was right on the
McKenzie Pass, which is this beautiful scenic highway that connects the east
and west sides of the Cascades. It’s closed to automobiles for a good portion
of the year and actually just opened up a couple weeks ago, so it was our first
time on it. A couple miles into the highway, the view opened up on to a massive
lava field with views of the mountains, slightly obscured by clouds, in the
background. (This is my first of many pictures in the post).
We got to the trailhead and got our gear
together, hitting the trail around 10:00, 10:15. We started hiking through this
dense, wet forest, with all the trees covered in Spanish moss (I assume it’s
not called Spanish moss out here, but that’s what it looks like).We were
already pretty high up though and started to hit snow immediately, first in
innocent patches to the sides of the trail, and then on the trail itself—huge
packed mounds, sometimes five or six feet high, that we had to climb over,
often with a steep downslope next to us. Still, we expected it, and the trail
was perfectly manageable, with incredible views hiking toward North Sister
(picture number two, with Sean looking pretty thrilled.) We got to our first
landmark, this gorgeous mountain lake called South Matthieu (picture number three),
that was just a little bit too cold to jump into.
It was smooth sailing up to that point, but then we started
to hit some serious snow. I’ve obviously
hiked in the snow before, but having spent just about my entire life in the
Northeast, I’ve never done summer snow hiking. It’s pretty strange wearing a
t-shirt and tramping through fields of snow that look like it should be the
middle of February, but there’s always a first for everything. It’s also not my
favorite, because a) no matter how waterproof your boots are, they’re not
actually waterproof unless they’re made from pure rubber, so your feet are
inevitably going to get cold and wet b) snow is fucking blinding to walk
through with a summer sun above you, and c) not only are you walking much
slower, but you’re constantly, constantly losing the trail, and having to find
the trail in areas with less snow, only to lose it again when the snow picks up
again. All of these, and especially point c, considered, while you can pretty
easily do three miles an hour normally, in snow you’re lucky to do two. It’s
slow moving.
For a while, the snow wasn’t so constant that it blanketed
everywhere, and we could generally follow where we thought the trail would be,
and find traces of it when there were dry patches. It’s still super frustrating
to celebrate finding the trail, and 100 feet later lose it again to snow,
having to basically guess at where it’s going to go based on your map and the
contour of the land. Here’s a picture pretty much summing up the experience,
right at the base of the Yapoah Crater—Sean put his walking sticks right where
the trail disappears into the snow. We ended up walking on the crater, which
doesn’t look too steep, but covered by snow, was pretty difficult to
circumnavigate, as you kept slipping down the face. We made it probably a mile
past the crater, but we kept going higher and higher in elevation, until we
were in an area that was just completely blanketed. We trudged through this huge
clearing, probably half a mile, that went into a forest, but realized that
since the trail (or at least the idea of the trail) kept going higher and
higher, there would only be more and more snow, and we’d never be able to find
it again. We’d have to do the other six miles or so by guessing where we
thought it would roughly follow.
It was about 3:30 at this point, and we’d covered maybe six
miles or so. Sean, who’s much more, I guess you would say adventurous, wanted
to keep going, following the landmarks on the map, happy to camp on top of the
snow if need be. I advocated going back to this dry spot we had seen back near
the crater, setting up camp, and having a nice big fire and lots of food.
Already having soaking wet feet, with the prospect of several more miles of
hiking through snow, took away any of my desire to finish what we had started,
and luckily Donna agreed. We trooped back and set up camp in a miraculously
“dry” area with fields of snow all around us, miles and miles away from the
next human (who else would be stupid enough to come into these conditions,
although that’s the beauty of wilderness).
When you’re hiking, you don’t really feel the cold too much,
but when you stop, it starts to bite away at you. And it was cold. It really
did start to feel like February in July, and by some miracle we managed to get
a fire started despite only having snow-soaked wood at our disposal. Once we
got it started, we kept it raging for the next four hours. It stays light out
here until about 9:30, but as the hours crept on, so did the fog, and by about
eight or so, we were completely enveloped in a cloud, with a visibility of
maybe twenty feet around us. This post is already too long for me to talk about
what it’s like to be in a place like that, especially after spending the past
four years in NYC, but all I can say is that it’s just pure tranquility. Below
is a picture of the camp site when we got there, and the same view a few hours
later. There’s also a picture of what our set up looked like.
The great part about setting up camp with fours hours of
daylight ahead of you is that you can take your time with everything—we got
four hours worth of wood, for one, and made a verifiable camping feast, with
spam and rice (my dish, admittedly not the fanciest), and the creation of my
two, backcountry chefs—mac and cheese with beans, spinach, mushrooms, peppers,
and onions. We went to bed once it got dark out, in the middle of a cloud, with
the wind howling around our tents.
I woke up around 2 am, having drunk too much water to sleep
through the night, and went outside. Somehow, the clouds had all cleared, and
up above was the clearest, brightest night sky I’ve ever seen—and I’ve seen
some pretty spectacular night skies—with a fully defined Milky Way. In my
sleepy stupor I tried to take a picture, but of course when I woke up in the
morning and checked, it was just a picture of blackness. Probably for the best.
Still, the clouds had stayed cleared up in the morning, and we got a full
panorama of where we had camped. Here’s the final shot of the same vantage
point as the other two, showing North Sister in all its glory.
In the morning, after breakfast and packing up, we got
another late start, getting on the “trail” at 10 again. Our plan, rather than backtracking,
was to go down about a mile to where we had made it the day before, where there
was a junction between the Pacific Crest Trail and another trail that went due
west for about six miles, eventually linking up to the McKenzie Highway. We
figured the other trail, although it gradually went down in elevation, would
still be covered in snow, and since it twisted and turned, there was really no
hope of following it. We decided just to head due west at the junction.
We went a couple miles, trekking mostly through snow, before
we hit a little volcanic formation called the Four in One Cone (essentially
four little peaks). We decided that rather than go around it, we would climb it
for the view. We started up, but since it was made of this soft, loose volcanic
stone, with every step you took, you would slide down about a foot, especially
because it had a pretty steep incline. Finally, we made it to the top, and the
view was worth it (a few pictures of the three views from the top, with a
picture of the cone itself first—a lot steeper and taller than it looks).
We could see the highway, our destination, way ahead of us,
snaking through the horizon. In front of us was a massive field of mounds of
lava rock, and to the right of the lava field was a forest. We opted initially
to try and make our way the five miles to the highway through the lava field,
since it was relatively open, but it’s a lot harder once you’re in it than
looking at it from above. The huge mounds are made of this loose, porous rock
that you’re constantly climbing up and down, slipping and falling and dodging
pretty large spiders that call the rocks home. We pretty quickly made a bee
line for the forest, and eventually just followed the boundary of the field and
the trees, which roughly went west. The only problem was there was a stream
that at points turned into a pretty fast flowing river straddling the field and
forest. We got tired of constantly crossing the stream back and forth to follow
whatever clear paths we could find, and decided just to go into the forest and
bushwhack our way the three miles or so to the highway. Luckily we were low enough
in elevation that there were only patches of snow, but there were plenty of
other obstacles, mainly in the form of thick, thick brush that always pushed
you in the direction you didn’t want to go.
Three very long miles later, we hit the highway, about four
miles away from where our car was. It’s a windy road with a downslope on both
sides, so not the safest path to walk on, and luckily pretty early on a woman
(who told us she was about to leave to hike the John Muir Trail) picked us up
and gave us a ride to our car. Pretty soon, we were on our way back to Sisters.
To anyone who actually made it this far, I guess I should
probably sum this all up. There’s not really a point to everything except to
demonstrate how incredible the National Forest and the Wilderness is. In the
first thirty minutes of our trip, we saw two groups of people, but were
completely on our own (and man does it feel like you’re on your own) for the
rest of the time, until we hit the highway. You’re just our there with the
mountains and the trees and the snow, and it really feels like a different
world, especially because when we came out, it was sunny and bright and about
70 degrees. As I said earlier, this isn’t the post where I talk about what it
means to be in nature and the wild and all that—this is just an account of what
it’s like, with an excuse to show some pretty pictures. To all you people still
stuck in the city, try to get out for a weekend. It feels pretty good.
