Thoughts on the Oregon Trail

One general theme of this (and past trips) has been the greater appreciation we’ve been having for the early settlers. We’ve been stopping at historical markers and just looking at the land. It’s absolutely unbelievable the places people went with Conestoga wagons. And the distances they covered. People actually took oxen and wagons through Craters of the Moon! It took us hours to drive some of the distances through mind-numbing flat/hill/sagebrush terrain and we were in an air conditioned car (with music) on a paved highway!

Classic Roadfood.com experience

We chased another Roadfood recommendation into the southwest section of Portland. Our map didn’t do quite what we thought it would do so we ended up with a nice tour of some of the residential areas in the city. After a long, convoluted route made more complicated by construction and one way streets we ended up at our restaurant. Which was closed. So we grabbed a random Thai place and had a fantastic meal.

Columbia River Gorge a Bust

After Mount Saint Helens we decided we had enough time to swing through at least part of the Columbia River Gorge on our way to the hotel. The map listed a place called the Columbia River Gorge Interpretive Center about 40 miles along the river that we thought might be interesting to check out. We took Route 14 along the edge of the river but despite the grand entrance sign proclaiming it a national scenic area there really wasn’t much to look at. The views that weren’t blocked by roadside trees weren’t of huge rock cliff faces that we’d been expecting but more river and meadow valley. Not once did we even think about reaching for the camera.

We crossed the grandly named Bridge of the Gods ($1 per car) and drove to Portland along I-84. Yes that’s the same I-84 we have back in CT. Turns out it ends in Portland. We’ve now been to both ends of the road. Haven’t done a whole lot of the middle, but we’ve seen both ends.

It Wasn’t $9 So We Didn’t Bother

We decided to push on to the last visitor center, rather than stopping all along the way. The AAA book said it would be $3, instead it was $8 per person. Honestly, if it had been $8 and less of a mob scene complete with frantic rushing to make the next talk, we would have paid. If it had been free and with mob scene, we would have fought the mob. We settled for going to a nearby outlook and getting the same view without interpretive exhibits.

Mount Saint Helens

We headed off to Mount Saint Helens. There’s no direct way to get there. As the crow flies it would have been quite short. As we went was 2 – 3 hours. The views of Mount Saint Helens are remarkably beautiful; the mountain is covered in strips of snow. It turns out that the volcano became active again in 2004 (hence the sale on the “here we go again” t-shirts from 2006), and this day was no exception with pretty continual wisps of steam coming from the center of the crater.

There are a ton of visitor centers, and it’s tough to tell which is about what. We stopped at the free Forest Learning Center, which close observation of the nature of the exhibits shows it is probably brought to us by the forest products company, Weyerhaeuser, which owns most of the land in the area.

Some areas of the mountain have been reforested by Weyerhaeuser starting in 1982, and some of those have been fertilized as well. Other areas have been left to recover on their own. It’s very interesting to see which what has happened where. The least amount of re-growth has occurred on the crater side of the mountain. The opposite side of the mountain almost looks like a regular mountain with snow capped peak and forests.

Back to Mount Rainier

For our route back to the Portland airport, we decided to spend the day at Mt. St. Helens and Columbia River Gorge. In order to have enough time for them both in one day, we would need to spend the night in the area. Thus, we rationalized going back to Mt. Rainier. We spent the last camping night of our trip back at our favorite place, but we did try a different campground (Cougar Rock, nice, but not nearly as nice as Ohanapecosh).

We were set up around 5, perfect length of time to take a hike. A glance at the map on the board in front of the ranger station led us to Carter Falls, a 2.2 mile round trip trail with a 500’ elevation gain on the way up. Sounded perfect. We took it nice and easy on the way up, stopping every so often to look at plants, trees, etc. There were actually two waterfalls at the top, well worth the effort. Plus, going down was fun. At the base of the hike is the Nisqually River, which comes from glacial melt, as opposed to melting snow. It really does look very different – very milky, churned. The other is exceedingly clear.

Our last ranger program of the trip was the right note to go out on. Ranger Jim’s presentation was a tour de force. It began with a primer on plate tectonics and how they cause various geological features (like mountains and volcanoes), and segued seamlessly (how, we’re still not sure) into plant and animal adaptations. It basically covered pretty much an entire high school earth science class with a liberal helping of biology as well. He was only momentarily thrown when his laptop went into ‘hibernate’ mode (‘gone the way of the marmot,’ he quipped as he went to check on it) forcing him to finish without the aid of slides. As most of the evening talks we’d been to this trip had lasted on the order of 20 minutes, we were surprised to be there well past dark (and after 10). But it was worth it.

Decision Time

It was 11:45 and check out time at the campground was noon. It was decision time. Should we stay or should we go? The main choice seemed to be whether to head back to Mount Rainier or spend another day here. We waffled and ended up deciding to stay and make the eastward drive to see the rest of the North Cascades Scenic Highway. We’d heard from our neighbors at the campground that it was worth it.

This turned out to be one of the best decisions of the trip. As it happens, Colonial Creek is essentially the line of demarcation in this area between boring, obstructed views of North Cascades and gorgeous vistas of the mountains. We’d stayed west of our campground and missed the jaw-dropping scenery that makes up “the most beautiful mountain drive in Washington.” One particular spot, the Washington Pass, was indescribable. (It’s worth noting, though, that by the time we hit this we were into national forest land as opposed to the park itself).

NCI to the Rescue

While at The Eatery, Amy found a brochure about North Cascades Institute, a local non-profit organization with naturalist-led programming and (generally) paid excursions (hikes, canoe trips, retreats, etc.) in the area. They happened to have free first come, first served offerings on Saturdays throughout the summer. These take the form of short canoe trips and hikes.

This seemed promising so we scrambled to get to NCI by 8:30 a.m. to sign up for the naturalist walk. After that walk we would decide if we were leaving North Cascades and, if so, where we were going. Turns out we were the only people signed up for the 9:15 hike. After we declined the canoe trip, there were two of us, an NCI naturalist (Adam), and an NCI grad student (Lauren) hiking the 1.75 mile (one way) Sourdough Creek Trail.

After sitting and/or walking through an inordinate number of first time ranger/student volunteer hikes/talks over the past couple of weeks it was a huge relief to be with two people who actually knew what they were doing. Adam had been with NCI for two years and really knew the land and the trail. Lauren was towards the tail end of her year-long internship and seemed to have an interest in plants, which was great for Amy. They were both more than amiable and we had very interesting conversation as we went.

We kept a pretty good pace but stopped frequently to look at plants, slugs, mosses, etc. Midway through the trip up Lauren pulled out a plant reference book and kept it close at hand for the duration. There was a nice hidden water fall at the top of the trail and Lauren took a picture of us (we got our feet wet fording the stream). These free hikes are meant to illustrate what NCI has to offer and usually last on the order of just over an hour. We started at 9:15 and returned at 11:45.

Maybe a half-mile up the trail we passed a stone wall and Adam announced we were now within the borders of North Cascades National Park. Yay!

A Cool Program

We slid into our campsite with just a whisp of time left to make the 9 p.m. ranger program. The ranger was part of a new teacher to ranger to teacher program, so even though it was the first time she had given this talk, it was great. She presented great information on old growth forests that really tied together and illuminated lots of bits and pieces we’d learned along the way. An upgrade from the college kids and first-time public speakers we’d seen a lot of this trip.

Marblemount – Dining Mecca

The nearest town to our campground was the tiny hamlet of Marblemount. We were referred there for showers by a ranger at our campground, Colonial Creek (we asked, there weren’t complaints or anything) and we decided to grab some grub as well. We eneded up eating breakfast and dinner there at two different places. Surprisingly, both had great food and atmosphere. The great grandmother of the folks who own The Eatery pretty much started the town with a roadhouse to serve the miners in the late 1800s. In the 1890s she caught Nome Fever and off to Alaska she went to open a roadhouse there for two years. She kept a diary while up north and when she returned to Marblemount she wrote it up. They had copies of it lying about. Pretty interesting.

At dinner, we had an awesome view of too many hummingbirds to count. The Diner had feeders set up at each window and the show was amazing. The food was pretty darn good, the chef came out to see how it was, urge us to stay as long as we wanted, and suggest places to visit in the area.

The Weather

During our drive through small towns in Oregon and Idaho, we’d seen bank thermometers reading 96 degrees. At Crater Lake, we saw an overnight low of 32. We may have gone below that mark at Seven Devils Campground in Riggins, Idaho. We’d slept in everything from nearly nothing to fleece tops, sweatpants and double socks.

One thing we had been fortunate to dodge until recently, though, was rain. Yup. Rain. But we’ve been in the Pacific Northwest for quite some time; makes sense we got some of the fabled wet weather. It’s not hard, pounding, all day rain. It’s intermittent, drippy, make you grumpy rain.

Why It’s So Hard to Enjoy the Park

For those who expect their national parks to be vast expanses of stunning vistas and unspoiled wilderness, this park is different. While those features are here, it is very difficult to enjoy them without doing some serious backpacking.

An organization of mountaineers called Mazama started lobbying for national parkhood in the late 1800s. The area was national forest, and three hydroelectric dams were built to harness the power of the Skagit (rhymes with ‘gadget’) River from the 1930s to the 1950s, and still efforts continued to make it a national park. They were finally successful in 1968, but by then the three dams were in place (today they supply around ¼ of the power to Seattle), and the park was carved (rather awkwardly) out of the two recreational areas and the two national forests in the region. Turns out national forests and national parks have quite different goals. National forests are much more interested in managing the land for lots of uses (including camping, hiking, logging, and hunting, among other interests). National parks are more about preservation.

Because neither unit of the national park is near a road, the park itself is inaccessible unless you’re hiking – often a significant distance. We talked to one ranger who’s been here a month and hasn’t yet stepped foot in the park. The land along the only road, Route 20 (a.k.a. the Northern Cascades Highway), is technically the Ross Lake National Recreation Area. And the views of the park from this land are often intruded upon by huge power stanchions, power lines, and/or the dams. This may also be the reason why North Cascades National Park is the least-visited park in the system. Hundreds of thousands of people come to the two recreation areas a year, but in 2004 less than seventeen thousand of them actually traveled within the borders of the park itself.