Backpacking Trip
date: 17-19 Sep 2009 -- updated: 31 Dec 2009
Shelby and I have planned to go backpacking together for some time, and we finally got it together. He travelled down from Seattle on Wednesday evening, then Sally and the kids took us up the Columbia Gorge to the Eagle Creek trailhead next morning. The plan was to make for Timberline, arriving by noon on Sunday. Our route after coming up the Eagle Creek watershed was to join the Pacific Crest Trail at Indian Spring and follow it most of the rest of the way to our destination, approximately 42 miles of hiking and a cumulative elevation gain of about 12,000 feet (and 6,000 descent). The weather report looked good, with a chance of rain by Saturday. We didn't plan it this way, but by day two we had turned our 'hike' into a practical marathon and endurance challenge. It was fun, trust me.
Shelby has written an account of the trek on his blog. Also, here, here and here. Bear in mind that his retelling is naturally inaccurate, revisionist and prejudicial. I have, of course, stuck to the truth.
It was a brilliant morning on the way up to Eagle Creek.
A couple of doddering old fools, carrying too much, ready to go trotting up the trail. My back hurts already. I was to come in for quite a deal of ridicule due to the map I carried around my neck, and Shelby insisted on carrying it after the first day. Not that it improved his navigation or predictive powers about the trail ahead. Such things remained fanciful throughout...
I stopped to take a few photographs and Shelby reached High Bridge, whereupon he collapsed on the nearest place to sit down. I think he was already beginning to realize that black jeans are not ideal for this activity.
When I told Shelby that we'd likely not be allowed to make fires he was crushed. Imagine our delight when the entrance sign to the wilderness informed us that the fire restriction had been lifted just two days prior. As I was to discover, Shelby doesn't go in for small fires scaled appropriately for two people, but rather for bonfires that singe the whiskers on snaffles hundreds of meters away. Good thing I brought my hatchet, which he used to chop down half the forest for his dark, satanic mills.
About five miles in, we stopped for a pleasant little snack, got some water from the creek, and then made our way along.
Shelby about to pass through the tunnel behind Tunnel Falls, part of the dynamite-constructed trail we had been on thus far.
