Decompression Wilderness Retreat

He says:

PDX... and just in time. A volcano in the aleutian islands erupted just as we left anchorage, grounding all alaska air travel. We just barely escaped indefinite airport-waiting hell, the kind you see on tv when there is a blizzard during the holidays. You seldom take the time to appreciate how much it would suck to be trapped for days in an airport, no hotel spaces left, no way to get to your destination, just hours upon hours of waiting in the manufactured strip-mall environment of the modern airport. It has almost a theme park feeling, where everything looks as though it is convenient and comfortable, the way the Disney eiffel tower looks like the eiffel tower. But it isn’t.

The chairs are designed to be comfortable for an hour, no more. The food is designed to be eaten one time in a day, not three. It all looks normal and thoughtful and modern, but it is really an amusement park facimilie of what an actual comfortable environment could be. No matter...we escaped.

We load the car, and drive west to Mt. Hood. Elizabeth sleeps while I stop and run a few errands: NW forest pass, Oregon gazzeteer (forest road maps), National Forest ranger office for info/updates, groceries, and gas. By noon we are parked at the timberline lodge, with our gear spread all over the parking lot. Sorting, organizing, and packing our backpacks for a week-long hike around Mt. Hood.

By 2:00 we are walking. Mo’s pack is filled with about 8 days of food, and I am carrying one large can of meaty goodness to spice things up for him. He’s never carried such a heavy pack, and he doesn’t seem to mind it at all. Alaska has been good to him, and he is stronger and healthier than I can ever remember.

Elizabeth and I have packed food and gear for 8 days out. Our planned route is about 50 miles, with a lot of climbing and descending. The Timberline Trail circumnavigates the mountain, crossing rushing creeks, ridges, and alpine meadows between 3,000’ and 6,000’

above sea level. The trail has become less popular in recent years, mostly because a huge section of the trail was washed out in 2006, and has yet to be repaired. But we are looking forward to bushwhacking our own solution to the problem.

First day out: Clouds and fog, cool temps. We made camp in a high alpine meadow amongst a cluster of trees. Starting easy, and we relax and sip tea and study the map and try to plan out what the days ahead will bring.
The morning breaks sunny and warm. In fact, clouds never re-appear the entire time we are on the trip. Sunny, dry and warm... just what Oregon summers are supposed to be.

“What’s a ‘good’ pace for this trail”
“There’s no such thing as a good pace, just the pace your walking”

We wonder about pace, only because we have so much food, and so much ground to cover. No other reason. We have all the time we need, and we don’t want to finish too quickly. We plan to make this trip last.Stream crossings can be challenging, and we worry about Mo and the very fast moving water. Needless worry. Mo has four legs, and crosses the fasting moving streams with ease. We are amazed to watch him pace the banks looking for the best spot to cross. He even eyes the opposite bank to evaluate how he will get out of the stream beds. Amazing.

We do our best to hop from rocks to logs to the far bank. Some of the more complicated crossings (5 braided streams, with dense bushwhacking through scrub alder between each) take as long as 45 minutes. A total distance of 200 yards in just under an hour. Pace? Fugitaboutit! Now we begin the long, steep climb up and out of the stream gorge. Hot, dusty... why didn’t I splash my face with water when we were at the creek??

We camp in old growth forest, near a small meltwater stream. Mo is happy to have his pack off, and he immediately finds a spot to nap.

The mountain is a huge, living landscape. It is so easy to forget that the earth is constantly changing under our feet. Water, wind and their accomplice, gravity, are always working to undo the works of our optimistic visions. The trail, it seems, is not exempt. The impossibly steep sided canyon that we are traversing has been hit with a series of major landslides in the last year. The trail is gone, and so is everything else, right down to bedrock!! We decide to press on, and the progress is slow and very sketchy. Loose rock, gravel, wet sand and ancient volcanic ash. 

Adrenaline flows at a steady rate, making us hyper aware of the vast wide open space to our lower left. Back on solid trail, we sigh and giggle, mostly as a post-adrenal blow-off... thankfully back to the mundane business of walking!

“How far do we want to go today?”“Let’s walk until we don’t feel like walking anymore”

“Why don’t we stop at the next beautiful campsite?”
“Sounds like perfection to me!”

I’ve never really felt free in the hills, the mountains have always held objectives for me, with timelines and goals. This trip is different. Right now, I am exactly where I want to be. I don’t need to be ‘anywhere’ by tonight, tomorrow night, or monday morning. Our schedule is dictated by how much food we have left, and our desire to walk. So simple. And the thing is, I’ve read about this kind of simple freedom, we all have. Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, Stand By Me....yeah, all about kids, I know. But still, the lesson can get lost if you let that simple fact overshadow the real meaning of those stories. Innocence can be lost, but only when you stop looking for it is it truly gone. On this trip, we are experiencing our newly found innocence, and it is liberating.

Tonight we camp in a stand of trees near a flooded meadow, ringed by snow that shines so bright we have to keep our sunglasses on until dusk. Mo romps in the frigid meltwater, spooking two mule deer that ventured up the ridge, probably hoping to get a drink from Mo’s new swimming hole. The mountain is reddish-pink with alpenglow, the breeze is light and sounds fantastic. I love the sound of wind blowing through stands of alpine fir and spruce. Sounds and feels like music.

Up before the sun, I brew coffee and stand in the meadow with Mo. He took so long to warm up last night, shivering in the tent, that he now avoids the cold pool. 

We watch the red sunrise, an eerie cast. Later that morning, we encounter a group of day-hikers that informs us of a forest fire on the east side of the mountain. The dry heat of the day and the wind have aggravated the situation, and the east side trailheads are now closed. We press on for the rest of the day, but we each know that we need to come up with a plan B. We camp on a high ridge overlooking the desert on the east side, this will be the turn-around point of our trip.

We put together a return trip that takes us down to nearly 2,800’, and back up to a great little spot called Burnt Lake. We camp and swim and swim some more, washing off the trail dust and grime. The temps reached into the high 90’s, and we climbed over 3,000’ today... so there was a lot of grime. We feel renewed. A cool swimming hole was worth every foot of climbing. We sleep hard.

We are up early, and we pack up camp and finish off our breakfast. We have little food left, so it is fitting that we hope to make the Timberline Lodge this afternoon. We encounter an increasing stream of day-hikers. We stop and chat with any and all, and talk about the weather, the fire, politics. There are little kids, tots, on the trail...we are close.

At the lodge we drink water, slowly unpack into the car, and enjoy sitting in our folding chairs (with backs).
“What’s next?”
“I don’t really know yet. East to the desert? West to the ocean? North the the high cascades volcanoes? South to the Willamette Valley?”
“We can’t make a decision in this state...”
“How about Hood River, OR, then. It’s only 40 miles from here, I’m sure we can find a shower there, it’ll be windy there and we can watch the kite-surfers, and Mo can swim in the Columbia River. We can just relax for a few days until we make up our minds.”
“Sounds like perfection.”