Lost in the Woods

If I had to guess, one of C’s biggest fears for this summer is that I would get lost on an afternoon hike, be soaking wet in the snow, miles from civilization, at high-elevation, where I would be out of breathe and near a high edge just as the sun starts to decline into the horizon.

Note to C: if this is true, don’t read this blog…just skip it and read the next one.

In fact, the only thing that would make this story worse is if there were thousands of swarming mosquitoes following my every move just waiting for my insect repellant to wear off and if I were halfway through a book entitled “Over the Edge: Death at the Grand Canyon” that detailed all of the horrible ways people have perished while hiking one the seven wonders of the world’s (most seemed to either fall or become severely dehydrated).

Yup, that would be a terrible experience. For my neighbor S and buddy N & I, that was our Sunday (I’m worn out from this adventure).

The original plan was to hike the 4.5 mile trail that led to the peak of Mount Theilson (just north of Crater Lake National Park); yet, the last 200 feet of that hike required harnesses and climbing gear (and probably ice pick, b/c there’s still a lot of snow). But at the last minute, our sherpas (the two other seasonal park employees who had the requisite gear) bailed. So instead we decided to climb the easier Union Peak (located within the park). Union Peak on paper seemed much easier, it tops out at only 7,700 feet above sea level (not bad considering we would start at around 6,000 ft), the trail was 6 miles out and 6 back (an average of a 5.3% grade), the temperature was going to hit 75 degrees and nearly all of the snow in the park has melted.

What we failed realize until we started, was the first 4 miles was covered in up to 5 feet of snow, extremely poorly marked (we lost the trail so many times, we had to make up our own utilizing a compass and a map) and rose just a few hundred feet in elevation (average of a 2% grade), mile 5 rose only 200 feet but it was up a loose pumice hill (hard to get a footing & exhausting) and the last mile appeared to rise almost vertically, 1000+ feet of this monster crag. Oh and the last mile, like the rest of the hike was entirely covered in either loose rock and/or snow… add in the high elevation & you have one exhausted M. I almost forgot to mention the swarms of mosquitoes that followed us through the entire walk – at points on the trail behind us we thought we were being chased by smoggy clouds; nope those were hordes of hundreds of mosquitoes, just waiting for us to stop.

SO we finally made it up the snow fields and loose rock, and the views were awesome!

The view from the top to the SE (mount shasta in CA is just barely visible on the right of the photo)

Looking North to the peaks around Crater Lake (the lake is in the void)

Me, goofying around up top


Doing my Hulk-a-mania poses - Oh Yeah

If you look closely, you can even see Mount Shasta over 100 miles away.

Anyway, after a late lunch and plenty of picture posing right at the edge (a cause of many deaths in the “Death at Grand Canyon” book), we headed back.

We even had a little fun taking shortcuts down the snowy mountainside.

S, skiing on her feet - quite a time saver & a lot of fun (we had to snake up this snowbank to get to the top)

N, decending on loose rocks

Although the fun ended when we realized we were not returning the same way we came. In fact after about half an hour, nothing looked familiar. There we were, in the middle of the woods, miles from our car (certainly not about to retrace our steps back up the peak) and miles from the nearest person or cellular tower. You could say we were lost – although I preferred to think of it as simply taking another, unmarked, completely confusing way back (another cause of frequent deaths in Grand Canyon per the book).

Trying to navigate our way back on 5 feet of snow

However, thanks to our trusty compass and topographical map (and our understanding to keep going NE & downhill), we eventually found one of the trails. Our confused way back even ended up being a short-cut and saved us 15 minutes of hiking.

As you can tell from this blog, we made it back – although, I was terribly sore and my boots, socks, insoles and pants were drenched (there were even pools of water forming in my shoes from all of the snow).

All of the photos from the hike are listed here.

You can check out photos from the prior week’s camping trip to Big Hole, Hole-in-the-Ground, Fort Rock & Crack-in-the-Ground. Yes, those were really their names.

Here you can see photos from my hike to Godfrey Glen (where I'm going to C on a private picnic) w/ AA & G

Also, here are some great pictures from a purple sunset the other day.