Go Backpack With Jenny: HORNETS! LIGHTENING! THUNDER! AND BLINDNESS…OH MY!

The backpack trip this week started out so sweet. Jim drove us to a trailhead up, through, and over the mountains behind the town of Hood River, Oregon--which lies somewhere in the famous Lewis and Clark Columbia River Gorge. After the final leg of the journey there--a 10 mile slog up a winding gravely road--we pulled in at our drop off point. There happened to be a family there who was car camping at the beginning of our trail. I noticed while we unloaded our gear that they had two little boys who were very interested in what we were doing. When I swung my pack up onto my back I noticed one of them was peeking out from behind a small utility trailer, curiously watching me. He continued to spy us until we were out of site up the trail. I hope perhaps we might have inspired him to try out this strange and wonderful pastime himself when he gets older.

Our first night we planned to stay next to ‘Rainy Lake’. As we walked the direction we thought it sat in Ben suddenly said, “This doesn't feel right…we should have come upon a spur trail into the lake by now.” When Ben says, “This doesn’t feel right…” I have learned to interpret this to mean: “we have screwed up”. Over the past several seasons Ben has honed his directional senses to expert level, and I always listen to him.

Finally we pulled up to the top of a ridge-line where we discovered the four-way trail junction that we were supposed to have negotiated through tomorrow. It now seemed that Rainy Lake was just beyond the camp where the little boys were staying with their family but we missed it because their camp was blocking the spur trail down to it; we simply couldn't see it, and now we couldn't see any water either. But we found something better than water. We found a long abandoned shack sitting up at the ridge-line, seemingly waiting for us as an old friend waits to reunite with companions past.

Luckily Ben and I both did have extra water with us. Unsure what the lake water was going to be like, and thinking that we weren’t going to be walking very far to our first nights camp, we happened to have tons of back-up water with us. We decided to take advantage of this happy little accident and stay right where we were; setting up home in the shack.

I am not sure why this shack was here…it was very old. The floor boards were weak, windows long gone, and the door ripped off; but it blocked the wind and we were snug-as-bugs in our sleeping bags that night.

I was up early the next morning eager for my boots to hit the trail. Bella and I decided to pack up and walk up to the top of the mountain we were to traverse that day and wait for Ben. We walked for about an hour through woods that looked very much like the ones in the creepy “Blair Witch” movie. Up on a ridge-line trees are generally smaller and not as thick. There was a lot of blow down (this is hiker lingo for trees laying across the trail) that we had to pick our way around. Before we knew it though we were standing on top of the world.

Down below us, sparkling peacefully in the early morning sunshine, was ‘Rainy Lake’. I was not sad that we hadn’t found it the night before--It looked a little swampy. My memories of ‘Dead Mans Lake’, and the mosquitoes there, was still fresh in my mind. I was happy to be standing far above this one.

Off to my right, not far in the distance, was my old friend Mt. Hood. The snow is finally melting off of her and I think our next hike is going to be the timberline trail that circles around this entire gorgeous mountain. I snapped a picture of her and waved at her peak. “I'll be seeing you soon”, I called out in the clear morning air.

When I turned in the opposite direction, looking to the north, there stood Mt. Adams. I don’t know much about this mountain, I have never hiked Adams, although it always seems to be peeking over my shoulder on many of my trips. Perhaps next summer I will venture up that direction; I would like to get up close and personal with Adams. But until that time I only consider Mt. Adams an acquaintance, not yet a personal friend.

After snapping a few pictures from my perch on top of Green Point Mountain, Bella and I settled down to wait for Ben to catch up with us. We found a shady spot under a scrubby tree. The wind was whipping around us as it raced over the ridge heading down toward the lake glittering below us. I leaned back against my pack to concentrate on the sound the wind made in the trees. Just when I was starting to drift off Bella alerted to the sound of Ben chugging along up the path toward us.

We had some miles to make today, so I slung my pack back on and off we went, zig-zagging our way down toward our next camp for the night. Hopefully we would have better luck locating water there then we had the night before. Our water bladders were full, but a backpacker depends solely on water sources that they come upon in the wilderness. By tonight water would be our main concern.

From here on out we would be steadily descending toward our pick up point with Jim in the Columbia River Gorge. He had promised to show up with a surprise….this was now the direction we set our sights on.

After walking a few miles through a thin forest of skinny trees Ben told me that he wasn’t feeling well; we sat for awhile on a log waiting for his nausea to pass. He thought it was the breakfast bar he had eaten that morning that was giving him trouble. He said it had tasted like ‘dry wall’. While we sat there we talked about how much we missed Jared and Jillian not living up in the Pacific Northwest with us. We are hoping that they will make a trip up to hike with us before the season is over.

Soon Ben started to feel better so we pushed on through the threes heading north until we came to a split in the trail. We got out our maps and took the cut off trail to the left. This trail wasn’t as well traveled as the one we had been on, so I unhooked my bear bell. The tinkling sends out the message “Hey! Bears! Jenny is coming through your forest...so don’t eat me!”

After a mile or so we came upon another split in the trail. We again got out our maps and that is when I discovered that I had lost my glasses. Without my reading glasses a map just looks like a bunch of small worms on a napkin. I didn’t want to back-track to try to find them, so from here on out I was going to have to rely on Ben’s eyes. He tried holding the map out from me a couple of feet to see if I could make out the direction that we should take, but it was useless. I was now blind.

The next few miles we descended into thicker trees and we started to look for tonight’s camping spot.

I was going to need water and Ben had been feeling ill most of the day, so it was getting important that the map we were using was accurate. The problem was that we had used this map as a guide once before on a trip, and it had been wrong. We use three different sources when planning a hike, but in the end you have to hope that the authors of your sources knew what they were talking about.

We found the camp. It is a well established camp on all the maps, and we could tell that it is well used. We were tired. After dropping our packs we went to find the water source. It was easy to find the spur trail that leads to water…except there was no water. We hunted and hunted; we looked and looked--but no water. We could hear it off in the distance down in a canyon a long way off. We figured there must be a spring nearby because there was no route we could find to bushwhack down into that canyon.

We spent about an hour total looking for the water--it was never found. Although difficult to admit defeat, daylight was burning. We were a good two miles away from the next campsite. Hopefully water would be there. So we buckled our packs back on, accepted the situation, and started off down the trail again.

Along the trail we came to a sign board that Ben stopped to look at. He was ahead of me so I had a front row seat to what happened next. As he stood in front of the sign board he didn’t notice that there was a hornets nest right at the top of it until a very angry hornet flew down and stung him on the upper arm.

Ben did a “hornet jig” down the trail in front of me for a few feet before I realized what was happening. I had to pass by the same nest, but I waited a few minutes for the hornets to calm down before I ran past as fast as I could! Ben’s arm started to swell but we kept on going since I was now blind without my glasses and not able to see if there was a stinger.

The next camp looked as well used as the last camp, and once again we dropped our packs to look for the water. I walked out toward the back of the camp where a faint trail led. All I found was a little used camp several yards away from the main camp. It was a great relief to hear Ben’s yells flying through the trees toward me, “WATER!”

It turned out that the water was a little further down the trail beyond the camp. Just a trickling small stream that crosses the trail…but it was enough for us!

Ben built a fire as I purified some water with my Steripen. Dinner was a quick affair; we were both beat. Just as we were getting ready to turn in for the night rain drops started to fall. It was a clear sky and warm. The last thing we expected was rain. Holy hell!!

We hastily put out the fire, hung our food in a tree, and dove into our separate little tents just as the first bolts of shocking white lightening lit up the sky over our heads. Mother Nature had decided to quite suddenly show up!

For at least three hours the lightening veined out above our heads and the thunder rolled...

(One of the fun weird things about this hike that I haven’t mentioned was I had cell phone service the whole way. This is unusual, so when the first rain drops started to fall I called Jim back in Vancouver and asked him what the weather report was. “Clear” was his answer. Of course it was “clear” stupid Portland weather forecasters’!!!! Insert bad words here______!!!!)

Just as I started to get tired and drift to sleep, my cell phone went off. It seemed so strange to be out in the wilderness and be jarred awake to the sound of my phone. I automatically dug through my stuff and answered it half asleep. It was my oldest son calling from California. I explained where I was and that there was a lightning storm raging over my head. We talked for a bit, but it was late, and I was tired. I hung up finally going to sleep with the sound of thunder in my ears.

We got a late start the next morning. As we were leaving camp a Boy Scout troop arrived. We left them sitting where we had spent the night but they soon caught up with us at a lookout point about a mile further down the trail.

Ben very much wanted to see this point high above the Columbia gorge, so we climbed down a terrible trail that took us out onto a very scary look-out called “Indian Point”. At one point on the way back to the main trail I got so spooked that I had to crawl on my hands and knees until I felt it was safe enough for me to stand up again…yea, not very smart. I won’t be going out on that look out point again, believe me. But Ben did get some kick ass pictures of the gorge from there...

The rest of the day was spent going down switch-backs. Dozens and dozens of switch-backs, all the way down to the Columbia River Gorge (there I am in the middle of the picture, looking back up the very steep hillside).

The views were breathtaking, as the Columbia River winded its way west looking for the Pacific Ocean just exactly as Lewis and Clark did so many years ago ...

Sometimes it is unbelievable to look out across from where we are standing and just to take in the thousands of trees that spread out below us in and over the many canyons.