Olallie Ridge

Three day weekends are awesome because it means that I can spend one day out hiking and still have two days off. Our school had a four day school week and it was fantastic. It wasn't the best for learning, of course, but for weekend adventures it was great. On this weekend I chose to drive the 1993 Road up to the Olallie North Trailhead that would take me up the O'Leary Trail to the slopes of O'Leary Mountain and eventually over to the Olallie Ridge. You would think that in January, this would be a strange proposition, but during this January the base of the trail and the roads were free from snow. That meant that I could hike to my heart's content until I reached the snows above.

The O'Leary Trail is not a friendly one to people just out for a pleasant stroll. It gains elevation at such a rapid pace that it is popular with downhill bikers who can actually access the trailhead from another location on the other side of the road. This part of the road was actually closed due to extensive logging operations and the other way in was too high of elevation to escape the snows. So safe to say, I would not be running into any bikers on this day. In fact, I would not see anybody out here as I may be the only one wanting to see these trails in the winter when they obviously would be much more scenic in the summer time. I knew that I would likely be back in all four seasons on many of these trails, so why not see it in the winter. I climbed steadily with not much of a break. It was a steady push uphill with not much of a break from the evergreen forest and moist ground below. It was perfect weather, which in January one needs to take advantage of. I soon crossed a dirt road and came to a sign that led of in the direction of McLennan and McDuff Mountain. I saved that for another day and instead kept going toward the Olallie Ridge.

I was handsomely rewarded almost immediately with a spectacular view of the Three Sisters cloaked in white with the snows of a winter that had seen plenty of precipitation at the higher elevations. This was a spectacular spot and the only drawback was that since it was so open, I was now going to have to fight the couple of inches of snow on the ground. Still it was not bad and I was able to continue on my way for as long as I could continue to find the trail. The Three Sisters looked amazing and this was the perfect place to take in their alpenglow. I turned a corner and also got great views of Mt. Jefferson and Mt. Bachelor.

I was able to continue on the way until I ran into the trail for Horse Pasture Mountain. Having to fight snow is never much fun, so since I had been to this spot previously, I figured this was a good opportunity to turn around. I would live to fight another day and I was sure that I would return to this point again to continue the Olallie Ridge. Oregon was sure turning out to be different than Utah, but it was still providing me with opportunities to hit the trail and explore places even in the winter months. I turned around and fought the snows back to the solid ground where hiking back to the trailhead mostly all downhill was a piece of cake. 

Rebel Creek

One of the big advantages of it being a snow free winter at the lower elevations is that most of the trails are still open for hiking. After hiking French Pete Creek over Christmas break, I decided to take a hike just down the road a little way along Rebel Creek. The trailhead was vacant when I got there. The trail was an uphill hike from the beginning with lots of switchbacks right away which put me above Rebel Creek. From there it was following the forest trail which brought me uphill gradually. I was in a zone quickly and really enjoying being out and about in the cool, but moderate Oregon winter.
After a few miles of forest walking and elevation gain, the color of the trees began to change. This was of course because I was finding out where the snow was located. This was the danger of hiking in the winter that the trail would eventually lead me to a wintery wonderland that would be impossible to continue travelling through. For at least the beginning of this snowy world, the trail remained snow free for quite some time before giving way to a trace of snow which continued to be more and more until the entire trail became difficult to find in many places. I continued on because it wasn't dangerous or anything, but after a while finding the trail was just not happening. 

So when I got to a point where finding the trail was just not happening, I instead fought the brush and the trees to try to get to a viewpoint. The view was not really spectacular as it was a view of more trees just farther down below. It looked like a great place to continue hiking, but it was going to have to wait until the snow melted because finding the trail and enjoying it was a spring or summer activity here.

Turning around, I found my way back to the trail and soon enough the snow free trail. This was always such a relief and a disappointment at the same time, because while it is much easier to hike downhill than uphill, the experience of finding something new around the next corner has kind of disappeared. Still, it had been a great hike and I was glad I got out to somewhere new on this long Martin Luther King weekend. Oregon still had many different trails and opportunities to offer. 

Mt. Pisgah

Not exactly my idea of a wilderness hike, but Jesse Callaway, the Language Arts teacher at McKenzie and his family, offered to take us hiking up Mt. Pisgah right outside of Eugene and Springfield. Not knowing anything about this hike or the local area, I was all for it. This was rather ambitious of us considering it would mean that there would be four children under the age of five going for a hike together. We all met at the trailhead and got ourselves together which would take some time. Jesse and I both had backpacks to carry the kids and I would spend most of the time carrying Conrad while he carried his daughter Amelia some of the time because she was a little bit older.

The day was nice and the company was great. Jesse and I were rather different, but for the most part we got along together fairly well. Jacqueline and his wife Katie seemed to hit it off right away and we could tell that they were going to be friends with how much they seemed to have in common. The kids were doing even better. Zyla seemed to take really well to Jesse son Elliot and they spent most of the day together when they weren't bugging their respective parents. The hike itself was uphill on a wide dirt track. It was fairly busy as we were obviously closer to the city down here.

Unfortunately when we reached the top, the fog had settled in and the views were not that spectacular. We got a brief clearing where we could see out to the Three Sisters, but it quickly enveloped us and we spent much of the hike down in the fog. Elliot and Zyla were laughing and enjoying the hike down much more than the hike up. After we were back to the trailhead, we decided to go out and have pizza in Springfield. It sure was fun to hang out with the Edson-Callaways and their kids. They seemed like such awesome people and we would have to spend much more time with them again in the future. 

Hiking the Westside Road

Hiking the Westside Road in Mt. Rainier National Park is one of my favorite places to go. There is rarely another soul out there, yet it still feels pretty wild because the road is closed to automobiles. If I had my cross country skis it would be even better because the grade is just about perfect where you can just coast all the way back down after making the long trudge uphill. My friend Tim from Zion was up visiting his parents in Graham just as I was up visiting my mom in Eatonville. Tim came over for New Years Eve to play games and we decided to try to do a hike a few days later. Naturally I chose the West Side Road. As far as adventure goes, this was not a very adventurous hike. There was plenty of snow on the ground with Tahoma Creek rushing right next to us, but mostly this was just a walk through snow. We did not have all day to make the trek, so our goal was to make it up to the pass near the trail to Lake George and Gobbler's Knob. We achieved that by passing by the only true obstacle the whole way which was Tahoma Creek partially running over the road where it was washed out. The only difficult part of this was just keeping the feet dry.

The main scenery we saw all day was a road cut with very large trees dusted in snow. It made for an enjoyable sight given that we had not had any snow down at the lower elevations yet this year. Well it turned out to be an enjoyable day and it was good to catch up with Tim. I knew in the future we would have to find something more adventurous to do.