Hike - PCT to Peter Grubb Hut

Nancy crossing a small stream in the meadow to the west of Castle Peak.

We did another day hike on the Pacific Crest Trail from i-80, this time heading north to the Peter Grubb Hut. The trail is a lot rockier than the section we did last week, and it climbs steadily to a saddle between Andesite Peak and Castle Peak.

The Peter Grubb Hut.

The hut is mainly used by back-country skiers in the winter. We didn't see anyone out, except for some fresh mountain bike tire tracks (illegal on the PCT) in the dirt on the way back.

We hiked past the hut up towards Basin Peak for a mile or so, until we got tired of tromping through the snow.

Hike - PCT to Hwy 40

Near the start of the trail, with Castle Peak in the background.

We took advantage of a sunny, chilly day to hike a short section of the Pacific Rim Trail from I-80 to Highway 40 and back. The trail is only about four miles each way, but the scenery is terrific.

Mt. Judah and the train sheds.

The entire trail segment is lined with granite slabs and there's a nature loop near the start that points out the effects of glaciation. The trail is fairly flat, except for a short climb up a knob next to Highway 40 to access dramatic views of Donner Lake, Donner Peak and Mt. Judah.

We kept wishing that we had our bikes for this trail, except that mountain bikes aren't allowed on the PCT.

Bret looking down at Donner Lake.

It's a great spot for a lunch, or maybe to come up on a Fourth of July to watch the fireworks on the lake.

Nancy free climbing on the local granite.

Nancy spotted a nice line in the granite on the walk back and decided to do a little free climbing. Too bad we didn't have a rope, but Nancy is like a gecko on the rock.

Bike - Flume Trail

Marlette Lake is gorgeous in the fall.

Since we hadn’t ridden the Flume Trail yet this year, Nancy—stoked to be in a state that is not known for its constant rainfall—suggested a quick out-and-back ride.

Climbing out of Marlette Lake.

Nancy claims that one day she will be able to ride the “cardiac hill” up to Marlette Lake without stopping, but today was not that day. However, the autumn trees were absolutely spectacular, with flurries of leaves cascading in the wind.

There are a few rock overhangs on the trail.

The Flume Trail is flat and smooth, which makes it unique in Tahoe. It’s an easy ride except for the four-mile climb up to Marlette.

A new obstacle on the trail.

There was always one rocky spot that you had to walk through, and now there are two. A flake broke loose sometime in the past year to create a new obstacle.

Looking down to Sand Harbor.

As usual, the Flume Trail was an awesome ride, and the weather was perfect. We weren’t alone; there were more people out riding today than we had ever seen.

NW Trip - Day 14 - North California Coast

Nancy likes ’em big.

Upon crossing into California, you begin driving through a series of redwood groves. There is a 32-mile drive between Pepperwood and Phillipsville called the “Avenue of the Giants” that is the home of the tallest trees in the world.

The tree in the background has two burls, which are large clusters of dormant buds.

The Avenue of the Giants has a series of stops with short trails, as well as a visitor’s center at Humboldt Redwoods State Park. The redwoods here are HUGE—I must have said, “That's a big hunkin’ tree!” at least twenty times.

This large redwood in the Founders Grove has suffered severe fire damage, yet is still alive.

Humboldt Redwoods State Park contains the Founders Grove, a half-mile walk through some of the park’s largest trees. Seeing so many giant trees in one space is amazing—it's enough to make you religious.

The Dyerville Giant fell in 1991. It was 362’ tall and had a 17’ diameter.

The visitor’s center includes exhibits of local history, most of which are concerned with floods. The Eel River had a massive flood in 1964 which wiped out several towns and caused others—like Weott—to relocate.

A huge nurse tree in Bolling Grove on the Avenue of the Giants.

As you drive along the Avenue of the Giants, there are signs showing how high the water got in the 1964 flood. The water was ten feet deep in the Founders Grove, and 35 feet deep in Weott.

Almost home! Going a little stir-crazy outside of Colusa.

It was a good vacation—we got to see a lot of new areas, and Nancy was especially blown away (hehe) by Mt. St. Helens.

NW Trip - Day 13 - South Oregon Coast

Shore Acres State Park features trails along the cliffs with dramatic views of the ocean.

Sunset Bay is a terrific place to camp—it has a protected, sandy beach on one side, a golf course on the other, several miles of trails along cliffs bordering the ocean, a park with a formal garden, and a reef area with hundreds of seals and sea lions.

The park also has seven acres of gardens, including this monkey in a monkey puzzle tree.

Just south of Sunset Bay is Shore Acres State Park. It was once the estate of a lumber and shipping baron, Louis Simpson. It had a mansion and a large, formal garden. The mansion is gone, but the garden is still maintained and open to the public.

Another mile south is Simpson Reef and Shell Island, a favorite haulout area for seals and sea lions. The outer rocks were covered with barking sea lions, and we saw seals everywhere in the water as we walked along the trails.

The southern Oregon Coast has miles and miles of free-standing rocks and deserted beaches. This beach is near Cape Sebastian.

The weather was still gray and windy, and we didn’t see the sun until we got close to California. More than coincidence?

After a fine dinner of rice and turkey, we went beachcombing on Harris Beach until it got dark.

We stopped for the night at Harris Beach Campground in Brookings. It has a nice beach with lots of standing rocks and tide pools, but the campground is right next to the highway.

I always wonder why so many popular campgrounds are next to highways, but I figure for people coming from an urban environment, traffic noise is more comforting than silence.

NW Trip - Day 12 - South Oregon Coast

The parking lot and bridge at Heceta Head beach.

After a couple of days in Eugene, we continued our volcano and lighthouse tour, heading up to Heceta Head, 12 miles north of Florence.

Heceta Head is probably the single most photographed spot on the Oregon Coast—every gift shop has postcards and refrigerator magnets for sale with a picture of the lighthouse and the Keeper's House.

The Keeper’s House was built in 1893 and is now a bed and breakfast.

I attended Lane Community College in the early 80s, and my college had a lease of some sort on the Keeper's House so that faculty and students could use the house. My Mass Communications class spent three days on a retreat here in 1984.

The Keeper’s House is considered one of the ten most haunted houses in America. We spent the three days exploring the beach, watching films, fooling around with a view camera and other camera gear, and looking for ghosts.

We took a lot of pictures, but never did see any ghosts.

A quarter-mile trail leads from the beach to the lighthouse, which offers dramatic views of the ocean.

Retirees volunteer at the lighthouses to give tours and provide info. Our tour at Heceta Head was provided by Wendell, who was very, very slow, which was more entertaining than the lighthouse.

By the time the tour was over—and thanks to Wendell, it took awhile—the fog had rolled back in. We had lunch at Honeyman Park, and drove on down to Coos Bay to spend the night at Sunset Bay Campground.

NW Trip - Day 9 - North Oregon Coast

Cape Kiwanda features eroded sandstone cliffs.

Despite having a secluded camping spot, we were woken by a howling wind, so we knew the weather was going to be snotty.

If you go to Pacific City and hike up the small hill at the north end of the beach, you’ll find yourself on Cape Kiwanda, which has a short trail with spectacular views along sandstone cliffs.

Amazingly, this light can be seen twenty miles away.

Our volcano/cheese/lighthouse tour continued on to the Yaquina Head Lighthouse, which is a national park. The lighthouse is still functioning, and the BLM has built a visitor's center in an abandoned quarry next to the lighthouse.

If you survive the 93 feet up the Yaquina Head Lighthouse, you can buy a button that reads, “I survived the 93 feet at Yaquina Head Lighthouse.”

Although we did, indeed, survive the 93 feet at Yaquina Head Lighthouse, we opted not to purchase the button, so we have no actual proof of our survival.

The Yaquina Head lighthouse. The tourists are huddled inside.

Back in the day, the lighthouses were run by a lighthouse keeper and two assistants. They would take turns staying up all night, tending to the light to make sure it didn’t go out. The keepers were often European immigrants with few obvious skills except for a talent for polishing glass and social indifference.

There are trails at the park leading down to the beach to explore tide pools, but the rain and screaming wind didn’t make that seem like a whole lot of fun.

Nancy making friends with some murrelets.

The town of Newport features the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which is well worth a visit. Its most dramatic exhibit is the Passages of the Deep, which is a clear hallway surrounded by an aquarium. Sharks and skates glide over the top of your head; at times, it feels as if you are in the tank with them.

After that, we drove back to Eugene to dry out for a couple of days.

NW Trip - Day 8 - North Oregon Coast

The wreck of the Peter Iredale. The last time I was here was 1966.

We stumbled into Astoria on a gray morning, got some groceries, and drove out to Fort Stevens State Park to cook up some breakfast.

In 1966, our family was living in Montana, and we made a big summer tour of the national parks of the West. One of our stops was at the wreck of the Peter Iredale. It ran aground in 1906, and I was surprised to see that any wreckage still exists.

The ruins of the replica of Fort Clatsop.

This is the bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark expedition reaching the Pacific, and spending the winter of 1805-06 camping near present-day Astoria. The expedition built a small log building for the winter, named Fort Clatsop.

Unfortunately, the fort was burned in a fire ten days before we arrived. The cause of the fire is still undetermined, but arson is suspected, and locals aren't too happy about the dispatcher who reported it.

Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach.

As we continued down the coast, the sun came out and tried to burn through the fog, with occasional success.

Sunshine in Oregon? I knew it was theoretically possible, but never thought I’d actually see it...

We took a long walk on Cannon Beach and had a traditional lunch of wine, cheese and trail mix while crows, sea gulls, and other winged vermin circled us like Indians around a wagon train.

The Octopus Tree, a giant sitka spruce next to the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

As the fog moved back in, we continued south. We stopped at the Tillamook cheese factory to gawk at the assembly line workers and scarf down as many cheese samples as possible without looking too conspicuous.

A scenic roads heads southwest out of Tillamook bay to a series of parks, including the Cape Meares Lighthouse.

By now the fog was so thick that we couldn’t see a thing, so we toured a trail along the cliffs that had a series of signs informing us of all the wildlife we would see if we could see, taunted with promises of murres and puffins.

On the Oregon coast, mushrooms grow as big as lighthouses.

As a consolation, there were banana slugs everywhere—on the trail, in the trees, climbing fences, stuck to our shoes, etc.

Being from California, Nancy was astonished at proliferation of gastropods. Being from Oregon, I've seen bigger.

Cooking burritos at the Cape Lookout campground.

We spent the night at the Cape Lookout campground. The campgrounds are only about one-quarter full this time of year, and most of the campers are retirees in gargantuan motor homes with satellite dishes strung all over the roads.

It seems odd to go camping to watch TV, but if we really wanted to get away from it all, we wouldn’t be in a campground.

Taking a stroll after dinner at Cape Lookout beach.

NW Trip - Day 7 - Mt. St. Helens

Click for a large (450K) 360° panorama of Mt. St. Helens from Windy Ridge.

Meta Lake, eight miles from the mountain.

We thought about doing another ride, but the weather looked iffy so we spent a day touristing at the Mt. St. Helens blast site.

A winding road snakes its way through the forest up to Windy Ridge, the closest you can get to the volcano on its northeast side. At one point, you come around a bend and suddenly you are in the blast zone—everything on the right side of the ridge is green, everything on the left side is blown down.

A crushed, rusting car has been left next to Meta Lake as an exhibit. A family of three had driven up to their mine the day before the eruption and were killed by it. The blast threw the car sixty feet.

Spirit Lake.

The Windy Ridge road runs above the east side of Spirit Lake. Spirit Lake is approximately the same size as Donner Lake. The 1980 blast and massive landslide raised the lake level by 200 feet, and a wave splashed 500 feet higher. Nearly half the lake surface is still covered with floating logs.

The view from the Windy Ridge overlook.

From Windy Ridge you can see Mt. Adams to the east and Mt. Hood to the south, but the dome in St. Helens’ crater is obscured by a ridge. However, smoke, dust and heat distortions constantly billow up from volcanic activity in the crater.

Walking back down the 360 steps.

When I first visited the area in 1986, the blast zone was uniformly gray. A few years later, significant patches of green growth began appearing.

Twenty-five years later, however, there are still very few trees on the ridges, although there is some undergrowth.

“Look pensive, yet alluring...”

We hiked down to Spirit Lake to have lunch on the “beach.” When I first hiked this trail nearly twenty years ago, the trail was lined with small trees, stripped clean and bent over double (insert Tijuana joke here) by the force of the blast.

The route is now lined by bushes, with a few large logs still blown over the trail. The water, once a sulphuric lake of death, recovered very quickly. It’s a terrific place for a swim in the summer.

An example of the force of the blast.

On the way out, we stopped at the Bear Meadows viewpoint (site of the famous photographs of St. Helens exploding) and hiked up the Strawberry Mt. trail.

The trail is short and steep and comes out on a sharp ridge next to Strawberry Mountain. You can literally straddle the blast zone—the east side appears completely unaffected, and the west side is bare.

We made it to the top just as it started to rain, and then hustled out of there, headed for the Oregon coast.

Iron Creek Falls, on the road north to Randle.

We stopped at the Gnat Creek Campground—which is just a few picnic tables next to the highway—about twenty miles outside of Astoria, heated up some soup in the rain, threw a tarp over the truck to cover the leaky shell windows and hit the sack.

NW Trip - Day 6 - Bike Lewis River Trail

Utterly worthless.

Nancy noticed an article in the May 2005 issue of Mountain Bike magazine which described several trails in the Mt. St. Helens area. In particular, it lavished praise on the Lewis River Trail as the “smoothest, most pristine singletrack in America.”

We crossed the “Bridge of the Gods” at Cascade Locks into Washington and drove up Road 30 to Lewis River.

In 1853, George McClellan surveyed this area as a member of Isaac Stevens’ party and—scouting for the best location for a new railroad—proclaimed it “utterly worthless.” McClellan and Stevens would later serve as Union generals in the Civil War, with Stevens being killed in action in 1862.

Stevens’ son, Hazard, is the first recorded person to summit Mt. Rainier.

Upper Falls is about two and a half miles above the Lower Falls Campground.

We didn’t have the time or the legs to ride the entire 29 mile out-and-back, so we started at the Lower Falls Campground and rode upstream to see the waterfalls.

The trail hugs a steep ridge for this section—you could drop 50 feet into the river if you’re not paying attention.

This part of the trail reminded me of House of Flying Daggers

The Lewis River Trail is the smoothest trail I’ve ever ridden. There are no technical sections, although there are short, steep pitches, some tight switchbacks and a few small, rocky creeks to splash through.

It felt strange to be riding a trail smooth enough to be in a city park, yet in an area so remote that the access road is prone to washouts.

The trail leaves the river about two miles below Lower Falls.

The trail is similar to the lower part of the McKenzie River Trail, except it’s smoother, it has more up-and-downs, and it has normal bridges instead of the MRT’s single-log bridges.

It’s also extremely lush, with moss and mushrooms covering everything...including the road. The asphalt has a green tinge from moss growing on it.

The trail is very well maintained, except for this one little bridge.

We rode back downstream four miles below the Lower Falls campground and found a sunny spot to have lunch. The trail gets away from the river in this area and swoops up and down through all the little creeks and gullies that feed into the Lewis.

Lower Falls, right next to the campground.

By the time we got back the sun had dropped behind the ridge and it was getting chilly, so we decided to spend the night at the campground. It’s a beautiful area, with tons of trails and a large waterfall nearby. The campground is primitive, with no running water.

The bottom of the Lewis River Trail has overlooks of Curly Creek Falls and Miller Falls.

Although the Lewis River Trail is a popular ride (from what I’ve read), we didn't see a soul all day, on the trail or at the campground. It was an odd feeling to be on such a well-maintained trail with so little evidence of use.