Timberline Trail-Day 2

The low temp last night was only about 66°. So it wasn’t exactly chilly when I got up in the morning at 4:45 again. I did want to get a jump on the day because the first thing I had to do was climb 2000 feet in 4 miles to the nearest water. I’m not going to lie, it was a grind, but it was nice to watch the day begin, and I got treated to some really lovely views of the mountain.

I wasn’t sure of what to expect of the trail today as I would edge around to the west end onto the north side of Mount Hood. I would be more consistently above 5000 feet today, so it should be a little cooler. Also, there’s more snow for longer on the north side, so the glacial streams can be gnarly. I also saw that I would be traveling through an old fire scar from the Dollar Lake fire of 2011 .

It took a couple hours, but I made it to that first water source and the air temperature was a cool 57° there. I had a delightful trail breakfast next to the little stream, filled my containers, and headed up again. Overall I would walk 14 miles and climb over 4,500 ft. today. I would also cross two of the most dangerous streams on the mountain.

Most of my walking today was through alpine forest. Trees that enjoy only a couple months of warm weather. Snow lingers on the north side into July and comes again as early as September, so it’s a short growing season. Throughout the day, I passed dozens and dozens of people backpacking. It was quite surprising.

Today was also supposed to be the hottest day of the year, so I was hoping to get all my dangerous snow melt streams crossed as early as possible. But, as it turned out, it was 1 PM when I got over the worst one.

But let me back up a bit. About 10 miles into my day, I came upon the first significant crossing. The Coe Branch, is a churning mass of glacial water confined to a narrow ravine. The roar of the water was deafening. Word was that an old slippery log got you half way across and stone hopping the other half. To get to the log a few stone hops were required, but that was not bad and the sketchy log , which was sitting in the water, wet, and washed by waves periodically was doable with care, trekking poles, and a lack of good sense. The stepping stones for the second half of the crossing were a different matter. They were about basketball size, wet, and egg shaped with the narrow end up. There were about a dozen of them. Balancing on each and then hopping to the next would take more than a lack of good sense to accomplish. Perhaps a death wish. The other options for a “ dry” crossing were equally bad. I spent several minutes pondering then decided to see if I could wade across. The steep ravine made for a strong fast current, but I needed to get across. I committed my right foot and sunk almost to my knee in ice water. The current tryed to push me down, however, once I understood the force I was able to counter it with my left foot and trekking poles. I inched across hoping it didn’t get any deeper. It didn’t. And after about 2 hours, or maybe 30 seconds, I was across. One down and one to go.

Three miles later I dropped into the Eliot Branch ravine. Everything the Coe Branch had, the Eliot had in spades. It was a bigger stream, had a more fearsome drop (so stronger current), was louder, and somehow angrier than the Coe. The access to the river was by descending a 30 foot “cliff” of loose boulders held together with sand and dirt. To accomplish this, some old sun baked climbing ropes were tied off to a tree and one backed down the embankment gripping the rope and trying not to dislodge any boulders. If you survived this, then you worked your way down stream about 30 yards and found the “logs.”

Four small “logs” had been tied together with some more of that old climbing rope and been laid across this roaring torrent. Probably, earlier in the day, the water was down and not flowing over the tops of these “logs,” but it was 1PM and the logs were somewhat submerged. Not having the sense god gave geese, I decided to give the logs a try. I sure as hell wasn’t gonna wade this thing, you could hear the current pushing boulders along the bottom. So I stepped out on the submerged logs and made my way across one breath at a time. This turned out to go much better than I had any right to expect, and suddenly I was across. I climbed the remaining 1,100 feet to tree line and hung my hammock for the night.

Tomorrow I climb a moonscape and hopefully make it back to my starting point to end this journey.