Jefferson Wilderness | Tales from the Hutt

Sunday, 05-June-2022

My hike started with a good deed.

I know, right? Hella good way to start some time in the woods, yeah? Build up that karma, and get a little bit of a workout at the same time? Sign me up!

You see, dear reader, there was a tree blocking the road to the trailhead. Well… sort of blocking the road. The road was a loop, so… you could just go around, I guess. But who wants to go around? Not me! I’m an American, and I drive where I want!

I parked, I saw the tree, I pulled out my trusty hatchet from my trusty emergency stash in the trunk, and I used my trusty hands to trustily hack the tree apart. Great initial success!

After using the word “trusty” way too many times, I was on my way into the woods.

This seems to be a theme, in my blog, that I mention how it’s not really viable to write a blog about hiking. That it’s just walking, and that I can’t quite describe the feeling of being in the woods in a technological format. Maybe I should just write one post summarizing what it’s like to hike, and then link it to hiking posts?

I dono, we’ll see how I feel.

On this hike, I felt good. I felt strong, I felt calm(ish), and I enjoyed the weather. We were on the cusp between winter and summer, with quite a bit of snow on the ground but with warm breezes and long days shining bright light through the canopy.

I love hiking in the Pacific Northwest – the moss on the trees, and the hanging vegetation it’s not quite as verdant as West Virginia, but it’s just a different type of alive. It’s beautiful.

I hiked, traversing from dirt to mud to snow and back again quite a few times. As I gained elevation though, the snow began winning out in the land-grab, and soon enough I was in a world of melting out snow. Bridges were non-existent, and the trail was on the verge of vanishing in the snow. Trail markers seemed to be absent, and frankly I couldn’t quite remember if they’d even been there the last time I was at Duffy…

I turned around, once the trail was fully lost at a river crossing.

If it was critical, I’m sure I could have found a safe crossing… there were quite a few options, though none had an obvious boot path leading through them. Some seemed more sketchy than others, but there were a few that could probably have supported my weight…

It wasn’t worth the risk, by any stretch of the imagination.

I still remember crashing through the snow on the trail to Elk Meadows, and I had no desire to recreate that “adventure” again, regardless of how sure I was of my safety. Duffy is pretty, sure, but remember the rule of the backcountry – “The mountains don’t care about you”.

I turned around, and headed home.

Through the rain and the sun, I drove back – happy in my hike, and absolutely content in how far I’d made it.

Sunday, 06-Sept-2020

Wildfire season has started.

Growing up, I was used to the four traditional seasons – in Winter we had blizzards, Spring had rain and sometimes hurricane remnants, Summer we melted, and in Autumn it was beautiful and perfect.

Out here in Oregon, we sort of have three seasons. Rainy, Sunny, and on fire.

Right now, we’re on fire.

I don’t want to get into the specifics and stressors of said fires, since that’s just unpleasant and not something that I can really affect in any way, so instead I’ll talk about the hike I went on right before the fires hit. Immediately before, in fact. Like… very close before. I started the hike before the fires were really bad… and by the time we got back to the trailhead, the wilderness was closed due to the fires.

The trail in question? Duffy Lake, out in the Jefferson Wilderness. Nothing crazy or long, or with huge elevation gain… but a lovely looking trail, and a really great way to get out into the woods.

I really enjoyed it, got to meet and pet some horses, and had amazing views of the lake while eating lunch. At this point the smoke from the nearby fires was pretty minimal, and instead of cloying the smoke just sort of hung above the forest, giving this interestingly misty / ethereal haze to everything. It was… beautiful, in a way.