As planned, Stephanie and I left Aunt Laura's house to go explore the wonderful city of Portlandia. We started the trip off with an 8 mile hike around Silver Falls(without packs!) that took us to 10 different waterfalls. So needless to say, it was awesome. The next night we stayed closer to Portland, went out for a drink and got up early the next day to explore the city. We walked around and bought a few things from the Saturday farmers market and craft show then made our way to a park where we discovered The World Forestry Center! This place is great and has all kinds of interactive activities including practicing being a firefighter jumping from an airplane.
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| Behind a waterfall at Silver Springs |
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| I taught this stuff! |
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| So many colors at the Farmer's Market |
After our Portland adventures we took off towards the town of Ashland. The plan was this: Leave Stephanie's car in Ashland, OR, and hitch down to the town of Etna, CA. There we would go on a 120 mile (12 day) hike back up to the city of Ashland where Stephanie would pick up her car and leave for LA whilst Aunt Laura came to get me and bring me back to Florence to see Johnny (my little not-so-little Brother who was flying up from Texas).
All went well, we got two very easy hitches into Etna and then stopped by the hostel there to see if anyone was giving rides to the trailhead, and they were. So before 2 pm Steph and I were on our way to twelve glorious days of walking. The weather was perfect save for some lightning storms off in the distance and the views were some of my favorite so far. Not to mention I was testing out using a Hennessy Hammock as a new shelter, so I was feeling rather spoiled not having to sleep on hard ground.
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| One of our favorite campsites |
Then the trail took a change. Remember those lightning storms I just mentioned? Well, they started a forest fire. A small one at first, of course, but over the next couple of days it spread significantly. By the time we reached Siead Valley (our resupply stop), which was about 3 days after we initially saw smoke, the sky was a great smokey haze raining ash.We found out that the portion of the trail we had just hiked was mostly on fire and had been closed. Then we found out that another large fire was spreading down from the north and that the fire department was very likely to shut down the next portion of the trail as well. If we had wanted to, we could have made it to the trailhead before any official closure (as some hikers did), but Steph and I decided that hiking up mountains while inhaling ash/ risking death by fire wasn't the route we wanted to take.So instead we got a ride back to Etna from The Animal and his girlfriend so we could hitch up the freeway back to Ashland. It was fun, we spent that night at karaoke bar where we met a trail angel who gave us a real bed to sleep in (we had been sleeping in the back of Stephanie's car mostly). We also went and saw the movie Lucy, which I do not recommend unless you are looking at it a bit more as some type of weird humor movie. They tried though.
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| The sun dimmed by the smoke, it was like this in every direction. |
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| The Animal, his girlfriend and their friend |
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| Steph and I at the Karaoke Bar |
So we were safe from the fires, but now what? Finding a place to hike that was the right distance for our specific time slot is not as easy as one might think. So we decided, instead of hiking the PCT, we would go hike for a couple days around the Columbia River Gorge. And thus we made our second trip up to Portland. As a bonus we found out that the Portland Slam Poetry Team was performing at an open mic in downtown, so naturally we stopped in to see them before actually making the one hour drive out to the gorge. Worth it!
The next morning we bought a map of the gorge and mapped out a 60 mile, 6 day hike. It was absolutely gorgeous and Stephanie talked about how it reminded her of The Green Tunnel (aka the Appalachian Trail). There were waterfalls everywhere and the mosquitoes were shockingly not too bad. As we hiked, we came across some stunning views of Mt. Saint Helens, Mt .Hood and Mt. Rainier (I think that's right) all at once over the gorge. It was phenomenal.
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| Multnomah Falls, OR |
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| Mt. Hood...I think |
And then pride bit us in the butt, as it often does. We chose a trail labeled as 'Difficult' (the highest rating) because we thought this would be the closest thing to a challenge we could find. First day: we make it to our planned campsite, everything is fine. Second day: We make it to the halfway point and decided to take an early day, everything is still pretty good. Third day: MOUNTAIN OF DEATH. I'm not even sure what we were on constitutes as a trail. First we went almost vertically down for over a mile, then had to climb practically vertically up for 2 or 3 miles (the maps didn't show distance on the trails) with quite literally NO downhill or even flat planes. Not to mention at several points the trail had fallen off. Yes, fallen off. So we were scooching along the sides holding on to roots and things. At another point we had to climb a wall of about 8 feet high made exclusively out of loose dirt. It fell away like sand. I almost fell to my death. Okay death is an exaggeration, but it wasn't fun.
Needless to say we were very thankful to reach the top, which had lake full of salamanders! In fact, we were so happy to be there, we decided to stay an entire extra day....and take a shortcut out of the gorge to make up for lost time. And that is how Stephanie and I cut our 60 mile, 6 day hike into a 30 mile, 6 day hike. . . haha.
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| A water source Stephanie and I had to forge a trail to because, despite whatever the trail map said, there was no longer a path out to it. |
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| That time the tree ate our trail sign |
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| Spotted and Osprey feather! |
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| The State of Oregon = A Fernery |
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| The Columbia River Gorge |
So the next day we managed to walk out to the highway and hitch a ride back to the car, which was awesome. I should also mention that we ran into quite a few black-berry vines on the way, which were amazing and prompted us to say very silly things such as, "Look at us gorging along this gorgeous gorge!" Because we're dorks. Then we made our way, once again, to Portlandia, so we could pick up Johnny at the airport in the morning. Not before stopping for some Cold Stone Creamery ice cream on the way though.
