It Was The Best Of Times...It Was The Worst Of Times

Trapper Creek wildness: 15 miles round trip. 2600 Elevation gain.

Difficulty of hike: almost killed me.

Ben's truck parked at the trail head.

This backpack trip started out ill fated. When I stepped out of Ben's truck at the trail head, I walked twenty feet over to a small bridge, where I promptly fell backwards to the ground. I landed on my backpack, but on the way down I managed to twisted my left knee, hurt my ankle and snap my neck back hard.

So right out of the box I started hiking injured....and we started late in the day, leaving the truck at 2:45pm.

Ben did this trail two years ago. He has always wanted to take me on this hike. You can not get a better view of all the volcanoes that call this area home, than from the top of observation peak. But to get up to this look out you have to hike up. All trails to this peak go up.
We started this hike at the far end of the Government Mineral Springs Campground. Health conscious people were first attracted to the Trapper Creek area by Bubbling Mike, a metallic tasting soda spring.
Here is a shot of Bubbling Mike. The water gushes from an old iron pump.

Yummm...a nice drink of fizzy, metallic water....that smells like rotten eggs!

Ben & Bella sitting by Bubbling Mike

The trail is fairly level for the first 3/4 mile. Here we had to cross a fat log high above the rushing Trapper Creek below.

The first stretch is through an Old Growth forest. Giant trees reach for the sky here.

The map that we were carrying says, "I can't explain why so few people have heard of Trapper Creek. It's barely an hour from Portland, it's loaded with trails, and it couldn't be any prettier."

This is what I would like to say to the guy who wrote those words:

Well clown mouth...let me tell you why people don't do this trail very often.....it is a killer.

Ben had forgotten how hard this trail becomes, and I had no idea what we were in for. We were in an area that has the highest population of black bears in this region, by 6:45pm I was wishing one would come along and chew my head off so I could just stop hiking.

A full moon rose at about 7:15pm. At 7:30pm we put our head lamps on. We still had at least another mile to go before we would reach our camp for the night.

I never complain when I am hiking....well folks, I complained this trip out. Loudly!

At one point I was doing a chant to make myself keep climbing. It went sort of like this:

"OWE,EEE,HA...OWE,EEE,HA...OWE,EEE,HA"

Ben told me to stop doing it because I sounded like a wounded animal. He was afraid a Cougar would be attracted to us!

I yelled back at him, "I AM A WOUNDED ANIMAL!!!"

The picture below says it all.

We set up camp in the dark. Ben cooked our food. I climbing in the tent, and started blowing up our air mattresses. I had hit a wall physically. I was just glad that I had lived through the last couple of hours.

~~Day two dawned warm and sunny~~

Even though we were pretty beat up when we got into Berry Camp, we managed to hang our food bag. This is it in the morning. I thought for sure, to top everything off, a bear would show up and eat our food in the night...but nope....no bears were seen or heard.

This is Bella patiently waiting for her breakfast
Berry Camp is a 'rustic' backpacking spot near the top of Observation Peak on the edge of the Trapper Creek Wilderness. There is a spring near by, so we had a water source here.

Even though it was September 24th the sun was shining. I didn't even build a fire. The weather was one of the best things about this hike. To get weather like this in September, in this part of the country was unbelievable!
Bella says, "Yummmm....breakfast!"
This is a picture of me at the bottom of the trail #132A at the bottom of Observation Peak
This is Ben at the top...waiting for me to catch up......as usual. 

Just a little further to the top.....Almost there!!!

Bella says, "Come on...move that butt!"

I might be old, fat, beat up, and slow....but here I am at the top of Observation Peak!

This is the first in a panoramic shot that Ben took of the horizon. This is
 Mt. St. Helen's and Mt. Rainer to the North of where we stood at the peak.

Mt. Adams to the East
Mt. Adams with the Indian Heaven wilderness at it's feet.
Mt. Adams as Ben pans the camera to the South East
This is the range off to the right of Mt. Adams
Mt. Hood to the South

DARN! The camera picked it up but you can't see it when I posted it to this blog, but Mt. Jefferson is off to the right of Mt. Hood in this picture. This shot is taken directly south of where we stood on the peak.

You have seen all the volcanoes in this area from this one look out in these pictures. From the North, East and South off of Observation Peak.

This is a picture of a couple named "Nancy & Terry" and their two dogs. They came up right after Ben and I. Nancy agreed that the trail is a butt kicker!

We still had a full day of hiking stretching out in front of us, so we said good-bye to all the mountains around us, and got our boots back down the trail.

Bear poop on the path! I unhooked my bear bell to let it tinkle our approach. We also sang, and practiced yodeling through this part of the woods. I can do a pretty good Tarzan yell if I put my mind to it!
The trail is very confusing though the section we now made our way through. Can you see any sign of a trail here? We had to watch closely for markers on the trees to find our way.
Many times on a hike we come across downed trees that have fallen across the path. This was a really difficult one to pick our way through because of all the limbs that had not rotted away yet.

This marked the beginning of a trail that isn't on any maps...I thought what we were hiking was pretty primitive. I actually hiked up a little ways past this tree to see if I could spot a trail....I could not see any sign of one.

What lay before us now was a few miles of very narrow, and extremely steep switch backs.

I was impossibly slow on this part of our journey. One miss step would have sent me rocketing off the side of the mountain. Slow and steady was what was called for.
Bella & Ben again patiently waiting for me to catch up to them.
Here I tried to catch the steepness of the mountain below the trail.
About half way down a beautiful waterfall greeted us.
At this point in the day we realized that because the trail had been so technical...and I had been so slow negotiating it...we were most likely going to be hiking after dark...again. We tried to up our speed to make up for the time we had lost on the switch backs.

At four o'clock I ran out of water in my water bladder, but did not want to take the time to stop and purify more, so I just carried on waterless.

At 5:45pm I was starting to hope that I would come upon a bear, and he would at least eat my face off. I figured if I got eaten I would not have to walk any more today.


It is funny how a few hours earlier I was singing my way through the forest to warn the bears I was coming, and now I wanted them to find me and finish me off!

At 6:30pm I came upon Ben laying in the middle of the trail where it forks with a different trail. We both took some Ibuprofen, hoping that it would give us the relief that we needed to carry on.

The trail just went on and on and on....and it was getting darker and darker.

Finally the trail flattened out as we raced as fast as we could toward the end of the trail.

This is the picture that we were able to take before it got too dark to snap any more. At this point we still had another mile or so to go. This is a bridge that we were very grateful for. Picking your way over rocks in a river in the dark when you are blown up and running of fumes is not fun.
On we went heading toward another bridge that Ben had walked over two years ago.  It would take us back to where we had started our hike..........except when we got there there was no bridge. This huge old car bridge had collapsed! We tried to take a picture of it because it was just so funny that just at the end of this hellish day, when we thought our pain and suffering would be over, we were now going to have to make a river crossing in almost complete darkness!

I saw a spur trail off to our left, so we head down it to see what the crossing down at the bottom of it would be like. We lucked out! Here we only had to cross over a small tributary that ran into the bigger water crossing of Trapper Creek.

It was only a hop, skip, and a jump, over the water here. We were on our way again!

About another 1/2 mile, past the warm lights shining out from the windows of a few primitive cabins that sit in the woods close to the end of the trail, and we were back to the truck!

So....you are thinking that our drama is over here right? Not so.

I turned on my cell phone to let Jim know that we were OK, and on our way home. We were much later than we thought we would be, and I knew he would be worried. I could not get cell service until the town of Carson, but as soon as I could I placed a call to Jim's phone. He didn't answer, so I called Joleen's to see what was up.

In a very shaky voice she told me that Jim and gotten very sick the day before. He had been taken to the hospital a few hours earlier and  they had given him some IV fluids.  She needed me to get home RIGHT NOW!

When I am out in the woods, off the grid, I know that the world continues on without me. An atomic bomb could be dropped but I wouldn't know it. It was very unsettling to hear that my poor Jim had been so ill, and I had no clue.

Like I said at the beginning of this write up....this whole trip was ill fated from the beginning.

I.WOULD.DO.THE.WHOLE.THING.ALL.OVER.AGAIN.


I.LOVE.BACKPACKING.

I am glad that I never know what is ahead of me until it is all over and done (sort of like life...huh?).

I need to start planning my 2011 season!

Thanks Walter Houston For The Dance!

I had mixed feelings going out on this backpack trip. It might wind up being the last one of this 2010 season, yet I was out with my daughters Joleen and Jewel....and they are a ton of fun to be with!

Let the adventure begin!!
Friday morning dawned overcast. It was September 10th, so this was not a big surprise. It had rained off and on most of the week, so should we really have expected sunny skies? We were going no matter what.

This was going to be the only opportunity for the three of us to go, so sun or no sun, we were going. As soon as Jewel's kids were on the bus we were speeding down the Columbia Gorge headed for our trail head.
Of course we had to make a quick stop at "The Plaque Shack". This is a hamburger joint that is located in the town of Cascade Locks. It seems that whenever we have a hike that takes us through that area, we find ourselves standing at "The Plaque Shack" window ordering onion rings, and a shake. You may be asking why we call it "The Plaque Shack"?
Several years ago when we first stopped there to eat, a girl who was working the window taking orders, had the most yellow, disgusting, unbrushed mouthful of teeth that we had ever seen....so forever more this hamburger stand will be known as "The Plaque Shack" to our family.
While Jim drove us over the toll bridge, that spans the Colombia River between Oregon and Washington, we sucked on shakes and chopped on greasy onion rings. We were heading up past the town of Trout Lake to hike in the Indian Heaven Wilderness, which is about a two hour drive east of Vancouver.
At the trail head we snapped a fast picture (which makes me look much fatter than I really am..yet I don't understand why my daughters still look skinny in this picture) buckled on our packs, and off we went into the wilderness.
The directions we were following said, "After crossing a trickling creek, the trail begins going uphill moderately steep." Actually....this trail is a butt kicker all the way to the summit. Two miles of steady up hill. "Moderately steep is a lie!"
I picked this particular trail to hike with Jewel, and Jo, because I thought it sounded:
a) Beautiful

b) Not really difficult.
This was Jewel's first time out with us on a backpack trip. I wanted to make sure that it would be an enjoyable time for her. Good thing that she is in good shape, and was ready to rock and roll with us!

Right out of the box this was not a trail for the faint of heart!
We chugged up to the top through a fairly dense forest. The clouds got grayer the higher we went.
Our first stop for the night was to be at a lake called "Cultus Lake". I was nervous that it was Friday night. I was afraid that we might not be able to get a good camp site. I was worried for nothing..there was not another soul at this lake. We looked around for a bit for a place to pitch our tent because everything was covered by a heavy dew. Jewel was hiking in tennis shoes, and her feet were completely soaked with in just a few moments after stepping off the trail.
We saw a camp right down by the edge of the lake, but I have learned that it can get mighty cold right down by the water once the sunsets, so we chose a place up above the lake. Right by a small creek for the water we would need.
The girls went in search of firewood while I set up our tent. We had decided to share one tent between us all, and all three of us carried a part of it. This makes a larger tent manageable when you split up the weight.
Jewel and Jo came back to camp with a really pitiful bunch of sticks. They reported that there wasn't any wood around, and what there was, was all wet. I said, "Well...if we are going to get your socks dry we have to have a fire." So they went out again.

When they came back this time they had more wood, although it was a pretty sorry offering.

We were next to a meadow. The whole place had been picked clean of any wood. Jewel was able to get a fire going after a huge effort, while Jo continued to hunt for anything that might burn.
Once the sun went down the wind came up off the lake to chilled us with September gusts of damp air. When all the wood was burned we dove into our sleeping bags to laugh, and talk, until one by one we dropped of to sleep.
In the middle of the night Jewel made a quick dash out of the tent for a potty break when she caught a look at the night sky. OH MY GOODNESS! The sky had cleared up. The stars looked like chips of ice flung out across a black blanket.
When I heard the zipper of the tent, I decided to brave the cold and step outside too. The milky way was a bright smear right over my head. It was worth leaving my warm sleeping bag to get a look at it.
It was breezy the next morning. I was anxious to get packed up and out of that damp meadow. Hopefully wood would be more plentiful at our next camp site. We really needed to dry out some of Jewel's stuff.
Jewel was up early and trying to get a fire going while I got our drinking water ready for breakfast. Jo said she hated us for both snoring, and disturbing her. She rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour.
Poor Jewel...her toes were freezing and she wanted a fire!!! But it was not to be. What little wood she had was just too wet. She even came out of the tent carrying a sweat shirt that she had brought asking me if I thought it might burn!
After awhile she started running around, and around, and around, the camp to get warm while Jo and I packed up the gear.
Just as we stepped back out on the trail to hike for our second day, the sun came out. We were so happy to see blue sky! Yippee!!


We hiked through meadows that day. One after another, a beautiful meadow was around every turn in the trail that greeted us.
At one point Jewel hiked on ahead of Jo and me. We were excited that even though her toes had almost frozen off, and she was willing to burn up her clothes to get warm, she was enjoying the trail.






Sometimes it is nice to hike alone for awhile.
Just to walk alone and listen to the trees, smell the grass....the damp earth......it is a thrill.

Jo and I crested a ridge to find Jewel sitting on a rock with tears in her eyes. She had been waiting for us to catch up....while she sat frozen with fear, looking at the next part of the trail.
It was an exposed trail that radiates off the northeast shoulder of jagged Lemei Rock.

Jewel.Is.Deathly.Afraid.Of.Heights.

I didn't expect this part of the trail to be so exposed on the ridge, or I would not have taken her here. But once I explained to Jewel that the trail itsself was not crumbly. If she just kept her eyes on the path, and didn't panic, she could do it.
The view from up there was spectacular.
I am not a fan of heights myself, but I have taught myself not to panic when I get somewhere that makes me nervous.
I snapped a couple of fast pictures of Lake Wapiki that was below us. This is where we would be spending the night. The color of that lake is an unbelievable blue. Sort of a coke bottle blue/green that makes you stare at the unusual hue.

I got in front, a VERY nervous Jewel was in the middle, and Joleen behind. Off we went.

I just kept chanting to keep planting our feet firmly on the trail, and reminding Jewel not to look up or around.
-Panic is not your friend in a situation like this-
Once we reached the other side, I snapped a breath taking picture of Joleen with Mt. Adams in the background. Jewel was sprinting down the trail that was descending rapidly. I yelled after her to take it slower. "Don't run off a cliff!" I shouted. This slowed her down to a trot.
Jo in front of Mt. Adams
We had a steady decent for about a mile when we came to a junction in the trail. Here we took a spur trail up to the lake that we had been standing above only about a half hour before. It was a stiff .5 mile climb up to the lake. We scouted around for a camp site. For sure we wanted something that would catch the morning sun when it rose from the east in the morning....and lots of wood!
We found a somewhat secluded spot. We all started gathering wood. I told the girls to gather in wood for the evening, but also to make sure that they got enough wood so we could also have"morning wood". This made us all laugh uncontrollably for about two minutes!! I know silly...but come on...funny!

It took a bit of doing, but we got a roaring fire going. A pair of bow and arrow hunters walked by our camp, otherwise we were alone until later in the evening when a couple showed up with a pony packing their gear.

We heard a huge whinny. I thought it was for sure a big pack horse...but nope....a tiny darling little pony made that great big whinny!
Here is a couple of pictures that I snapped across the lake of it.
Later in the evening two more bow and arrow hunters came past our camp. I was glad that they just kept walking....

I did not make any midnight potty runs this night, but Jewel reported that when she got up she was greeting by a thousand glowing eyes. Tiny mice were all over our camp! (This is why I always sleep zipped up in a tent...you never know what comes out after it gets dark.)

The next morning we were all up early. It is a joint effort to get water purified for our water bladders, breakfast cooked and cleaned up, camp broke down. We three gals are a good team.

Before taking off that day we stood on the shore of that blue/green lake, that fills the center of an old volcanic crater. All three of us hopped around doing the crazy Walter Houston dance from the movie "The Treasure of The Sierra Madre".

We were just so happy to be there...doing what we were doing...and doing it together!

Before we knew it our boots (and tennis shoes) were flying down the trail for the third, and last day of this trek. It would be down hill all the way today, through a forest that is thick with huckleberry bushes. All of the Indian Heaven wilderness is covered with huckleberry's. That area of Washington is actually very famous for these tasty little purple berries.
At one point in the hike I was ahead of both of the girls. I stepped behind a tree just when Jewel came up first. I screamed and tried to snapped a pictures of her terror! So funny!! She jumped up in the air...but my darn camera has a delay when you push the button, so this picture is after she has landed back on her feet HA!

We were walking along marveling at the trees that surrounded us, when we heard heavy hoof falls. Jewel called over her shoulder from the front, "Horse rider on the trail!" so all three of us stepped up off the path, onto the shoulder. But no one came toward us. It was then that we realized that it had not been a horse that we had all heard....it had been an Elk.

Oh....That is what those hunters we had seen the night before had been after! Elk.

Not ten minutes down the trail Jewel was out in front again when we saw her waving back at us to hurry up to where she was standing still. We rushed up to where she was but saw nothing. She told us that when she had come around the curve, she had seen a giant Elk standing just off to the side. When she had motioned to us to hurry, he had moved off into the trees. Darn! I missed the shot, but at least Jewel got to see something unusual on her first backpack trip out.
The picture below is an interesting shot of some very berry poop. Bear do you think?
I tried to capture in pictures how outstanding the Indian Heaven wilderness is (poop and all) in these snap shots, but it is impossible.

You just have to be on that trail to appreciate it.

Jim picked us up at the Lemei Trail head. We threw our gear into the back of the Jeep for one more pass at "The Plaque Shack" before heading home. We had earned those shakes.

I am so lucky to have daughters like these: Good hiking buddies. Good friends. Good women.

How fortunate am I?

Beyond words....that is how fortunate I am.

Now everybody do the Walter Houston dance for a super

backpack trip!!!!!!