Mosquito Camp - June 2012

Summer!

Like a seal with a beach ball perched on his nose, waiting, waiting.  Waiting collectively for the color blue on the horizon, for that warm sun to come back from the promised land.  It always does, somehow right on time.

It also means that the snow has melted from all but the highest elevations, freeing the high country for a short season of fertility.  Mountain meadows are exquisite with an explosion of color.  It is a time of life, and for celebrating life.

Mosquitoes are a formidable force in the few weeks after a snow melt.  Let me tell you.

Black Wolf is a very ancient place.  Humans have been passing through or hanging out for thousands of years, as it was once the crossroads of a well defined network of cross-Cascades trails.  Like many of the historic sites on public land, the area has survived by accident rather than design.  Camp sites are hard to find in the area, and the impact of past logging activities is significant.  But there is still that feeling of ancient when you travel these lonely mountain meadows.

You know, I was only here once before, in the very late Autumn.  I camped here alone, with frost covering all.  It was a very beautiful experience, and I wanted to come back.  

"Black Wolf, Kids!", I said to my kids.  2 of them, both girls by no fault of their own.  They are my sweethearts, and I'm always very excited to spend a few days in the wilderness with them.

After packing and planning for 5 days in the backcountry, it is wonderful to finally climb like a bird into the high mountains, where the air is pure and all is right with the world.  

As we open the doors, we are accosted by mosquitoes.  In the first 5 minutes, before we could stop them, they flew off with:

a sleeping bag

a watermelon

my extra underwear

pack of gum

a whistle

At that point, I knew we were in for it.  

Clouds of them.  Deet ineffective.

Ok then.

find the mosquito

Somehow, like idiots we decide to stay.  It is incredible - the relentless blood sucking swarm that nature unleashes upon mammals.  I will never again take for granted things like "meadow" or "marsh" in the Cascades high country.  The mosquitoes are the guardians of this place, keeping it wild and free, as only the insane would sit there and take that crap.

But that's the breaks.  Suffer through a long wet cold rainy season, to have summer arrive LATE.  And then what?  Drag your friends and family into a bloodbath.  Man I'll tell you, no breaks.

Well, there's no use in sitting at camp getting eaten alive, let's keep moving and go for a hike.

 cute stuff x2

#724 Trail

The trail ducks through woods and bypasses meadows on its eventual way towards Deschutes Country and beyond.  Stretches are lost to logging and roads, but powerful sections remain.  There is a strange feeling to a trail that you know has been used for thousands of years.  It is an electric and humbling experience.

It is also hard to pay attention, you see, because of those damned mosquitoes - millions of them per acre, buzzing, flying, getting in your eyes...keep moving, keep moving.

In drier seasons, the meadow is a pathway.  In this season, the meadow is a grassy lake.  The Old Guys had a way around this predicament: a blazed trail.  It was thoughtfully abandoned 50 or so years ago.  Keep moving, oh God the mosquitoes...

 the old way around, trees still blazed and faint tread

follow the flagging

The mosquitoes aren't as bad in the windy meadow.  But it is too boggy to linger.

cute stuff

The trail, like most Cascades trails keeps going, to God knows what fate or end befalls either the hiker or the mountain.  We are in it lockstep together - mountain, man, and mosquito.

"Maybe the mosquitoes won't be as bad once we get past the meadows and into the forest."

 a little bit of trail work

As the mosquitoes steal my hat and my ham sandwich, I realize it's a lost cause.

They didn't stop attacking for 5 days - until it rained.  And then it made them meaner.

 1938 map - once useful, then obsolete, now useful again.

The other end of the trail, semi-abandoned on this stretch.  Over 20 down logs in 2 miles!  The trail continued east at this point, but it is now abandoned and it's fate unknown.

And then rain!  Oh God the cold wet mosquito-stopping RAIN.  At this point it could rain frogs, as long as it stopped those DAMNED mosquitoes.

So we eat frogs and run off feral into the woods.

The end.

P.S. stay the hell away from mountain meadows or water bodies in the early summer.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

      

Cot Creek - May 2012

Winter sure does like to linger, especially in our godsend-Cascades.  We of the wild-persuasion tend to sit and sulk under leaden winter skies, dreaming of the Big Thaw - a yearly miracle.  But even the welcome warmth contains a drop of  the next season, when it all goes back to sleep.

Itching to get out, but pushed down into the lower elevations, Don, Randy and I head into a very early mountain spring.  May in Oregon just means the snow left an hour ago.

Olallie Butte still blanketed

Of course, a camp without trails is no fun at all.  "Back Then", a first class trail climbed up the mountain, heading for the deep forests and high country, ducking through meadows and passing lonely cabins.

Along Cot Creek, we have seen the passing of Man, Machine, Domestic Beast, and Fire.  Loggers have taken a more than ample swath from ridges, but new wilderness designation has protected a patchwork of old growth and clearcuts - preserving fire-regenerated forest and a maze of abandoned roads.  Wilderness designation has also protected the vast and incredible Roaring River Wilderness, a land with very little damage in spite of it all.

Trail 705 has graced these slopes for some time, and lies largely forgotten, in spite of its still active status.  Its lowermost section has been lost to clearcuts.  Fortunately, the higher reaches are largely intact.

Otherwise, it is still 1928 out there along #705.

The Green Mother always tries to reclaim her own.  It is an eternal struggle to maintain a linear path.

But we give it our damnedest.

Out of the woods and into the glacial bowl summit, the cold winter still blows.  Large snowdrifts block the road; it will be another few weeks before it all melts out - and bringing clouds of mosquitoes under the warm blue heavens.

The trail has been bisected by another unfortunate clearcut at the base of a large series of meadows.  This clearcut divides the trail into two isolated sections, much like early interstate highways divided neighborhoods as they split their way through old city blocks.  Each year, we get closer to restoring this lost stretch, working from both ends to meet in the middle like Promontory Point.
  

With the snow and weather, we can go no further.  Time to head back to camp, I can hear a beer calling.

poorly recovering forest of lodgepole pines and firs

What happened to the old axe that cut this blaze?

that's the ticket

and a meal fit for royalty, or crows

Our camp really isn't much of one.  In the pre-roaded days it was just another nameless ridgeside.  Then came the roads, followed by big trucks heavy with ancient timber.  One day, the creek decided to wash out the bridge, putting a stop to all this foolishness.

.

In spite of a 100 yard linear berm constructed by a most eager heavy-equipment operator, the end of the road is beginning to grow into a mediocre camp.  In another 20 years, perhaps the scars will have healed.  But it's good enough for 3 bums.

"Contains no whiskey?"

And the night falls on another adventure.

So we eat galactic technicolor psychedelic steaks and howl at the clouds.

Good night!