Steen's Mountain - Day 3

Elevation Profile - Frenchglen to Alvord Playa

Going up the northern end of Steen's Mountain Loop Road from Page Springs Campground is deceptive in that you have no idea that you're climbing nearly a mile, the slope is so gradual. Steen's was once a flat basalt plain, no different than any of the rest of the area.  Then magma began pushing the Steen's basaltic plate upward, creating a gradual slope from Frenchglen upward to the edge of where the plate was ripped from its neighbor to the east, creating what is in essence a mile-high cliff.  The fault-block mountain was named after Enoch Steen, an army officer who (among other things) chased the native Paiute off what, at that time, was called "Snowy Mountain" by the early fur traders in the area.

Sage in bloom.

Washboards are the rule on gravel roads, and the Loop road excels at washboard. I had recently taken the Baja into the shop because I could hear a loose heat shield vibrating.  After the loop road, the heat shield no longer rattles, probably because it's lying in the gravel somewhere after being shaken from the car.  

The landscape is that dusty sage green dotted with juniper trees.  Some of the sage is in bloom, creating bright yellow spots among the green.  Part way up the mountain is a test patch to see how best to control the spread of juniper which the Paiute used to control with fire.  Since fires are suppressed now, juniper is taking over the landscape (each tree consumes 30-40 gallons of water a day which leaves little for anything else).

Lilly Lake

Lily Lake is (I assume) named for the luxurious lily pads spread across the surface of the lake.  It's like an oasis in an otherwise arid a dry sagebrush environment.  Grass grows abundantly around the lake. Turning off the main road, I discovered a picnic/camp site on the other side that would be a lovely place to spend a few days, though it's probably intended to be a day use area only.  No toilet.  Across the lake, a mule deer looked at me looking at her. We each elected to pretend the other didn't exist.

Fish Lake campground is situated (as you would expect) on Fish Lake, which is stocked with a kind of rainbow called "redsides."  I didn't try to fish as it was mid-day when I was there.  The campground offers camp sites at both it's eastern and western ends.  I would choose the eastern end for the aspen trees offering shelter from the sun.  The other end is pretty open to the sun.  There is a boat ramp of sorts, but no motors allowed. At about 7,500 feet, it probably gets pretty chilly during the night.  There is water at the campground, and vault toilets.

Speaking of aspen trees, some of the valleys on Steen's Mountain are quite spectacular, filled with aspen and grass, which must indicate a fair amount of ground water.

I imagined that all of Steen's Mountain was public property, but in fact a large chunk of it is private.  The aspen valley shown in the photo, for example, might be for sale by the Steens Mountain Packers.  I don't quite understand what that organization does, but they do have a valley for sale for around $750,000 if you're interested.  That price apparently includes a cabin.

Kiger Gorge

The first view of that precipice is not far past Fish Lake at the head of the Kiger Gorge – home range of the Kiger mustangs.

Now, I confess to being a guy afraid of heights.  But the head of the Kiger gorge is so high that you can't even get a sense of how high you are.  It's as though the world is lying before you (though in this case a smoky world because of all the forest fires).  From the parking area it's a hop, skip and jump to the edge, and to signage that explains what you're looking at.  If you take the uphill path from the signs, you end up at the head of the gorge, which is when you realize that the Steen's Mountain loop road is built on a very narrow land bridge between peaks. Steen's is carved into two sections; north and south.  The loop road crosses between them There is so little soil (relative to a mountain) between each viewpoint that it's easy to see that Steen's is actually a very sharp ridge, with nothing to the left, and nothing to the right.

Further along the road, the Little Blitzen Canyon yawns on your right.  The scale of these canyons is hard to imagine.  Huge just doesn't cut it.  Amazing comes close.  Awe-inspiring is good, too. (If you click on the link, click on the image then select view all sizes, then select the original, you can pan across a big view of the canyon.)

The rocks near the top are home to a brilliant orange lichen.  At one place I thought I was seeing a tree that was changing colors, but the binoculars revealed it was a huge boulder completely covered in the lichen.

Also near Little Blitzen Canyon is a rock structure that might have been a shelter at one time.  Three walls stand, though it looks to me like passers-by have been adding to the structure.  In any case it certainly would give relief from the prevailing winds.

A little bit further down the road on the right is the sign identifying Little Blitzen Canyon.  If you pull over and walk a little east on the other side, you come to an unmarked viewpoint that will take your breath away.  This is the first view of the Alvord Desert side of Steen's Mountain.  The link shows a panorama that you can zoom in on and look around.

The next viewpoint up the road is the official look at the Alvord Desert, with Mann Lake to the north, and the Alvord Playa to the south.  Even higher here, the scale of the thing defies imagination.  And way down there, in the Alvord Desert, are ranches and irrigated fields.  Amazing what you can do if you can get some water.  I did not bother taking a picture because it was so smoky that not much would have shown.

From the South Steen's, the road drops back down to level.  But it does it by becoming much narrower and clinging to the side of what would be a 4,000 foot rolling mess if you happened to drop off the edge of the road.  I decided I liked going down better because you can cling to the inside of the road for the most part, and pray that you don't meet anyone coming the other direction (which I did not, thank you).

All in all, Steen's Mountain is a spectacular place.  I want to come back next spring (which is late July around here) and see it when the air is clear and the grass is green.

Steen's Mountain - Day 2

Day 2 – Page Springs Campground, near Frenchglen

Before departing Lake Chickahominy, I spent 15 minutes watching a team of chipmunks devour an apple that a previous camper had pitched under a rock.  By the time the chipmunks found it, it had been conquered by ants.  The first chipmunk to find the apple would dive in and snatch a bite, then push his head and chest through the sand to scrape off the ants.  Ultimately, one bold monk grabbed hold of the apple and dragged it out from under the rock and away from the ants.  Smart guy.  It sometimes takes a bold one to lead the rest out of the fog.

Ponderosa Hotel, Hines, Oregon

In passing through Hines and Burns before heading south, I ran across a strange building that looked modern yet abandoned, as though half-finished.  The building clearly wasn't completed because rebar still emerges from the concrete on the eastern side. A little Google work told me that it was going to be the Ponderosa Hotel in Hines (I can't tell where Hines ends and Burns begins). Locally called the Grey Ghost, the hotel concrete was poured in 1929, but the Great Depression brought construction to a halt, and the hotel was never completed.  It's apparently used to store "stuff" now.  Too bad.  It's a cool building.

Page Springs Campground

The drive to Frenchglen was unenlightening, but Page Springs Campground about 3 miles outside the village is a delight.  Each spot is huge compared to other campgrounds – I feel like I have my own lawn surrounding the parking spot and picnic table.  Backed up to a little creek at the foot of a bluff – it's lovely.  I could live here.

Upon arriving, there were very few other campers, but as the afternoon wore on more and more arrived. I can't see my neighbors to the south, but the family to the north is visible, and I watched with feelings of days past as they erected a giant, canvas, army-surplus tent.  I can so strongly remember the smell of those tents when I was a child and forced to lay down to take a nap during the hottest time of the day (mostly to give the parents a break, I suspect).  Canvas has a peculiar odor, and hot canvas an even more powerful one.  The tent triggered smells for me – of the canvas, and of eggs fried in a deep layer of bacon grease and bitter coffee cooked too long in the aluminum percolator.  The smell of woods in the morning, and dust kicked up by young boys doing what young boys do on a camping trip.

Once the trailer was set up, I backtracked into Frenchglen for ice.  Upon entering the store, I encountered a guy about my age, all sweaty, and at his feet a backpack.  I asked for the ice, and picked a six-pack of beer out of the cooler.  While I was getting the beer, the backpack guy asked me if I happened to be going back to Page Springs Campground.  Yes, I was.  He asked for a lift, and when I agreed he offered to pay for the ice.  It turns out that he and a couple of friends had hiked up the Blitzen River the day before and fished, camping on the river through the night. The next morning, this gentleman decided to work his way downstream while his buddies went up.  By 3PM (90+ degrees), he found himself at Frenchglen wanting a ride back to the campground.  I was happy to oblige.

Tomorrow, up to the top of Steen's Mountain.

To Steen's Mountain - Day 1

8:06 PM, Lake Chickahominy, Oregon, September 4

How remarkable it is to sit in dry, brown central Oregon and watch the sun set ruby red over a lake.  As the red fades to a soft orange, the coyotes start their evening song, only to be interrupted by flight after flight of Canada geese seeking a resting place for the night.  It's so quiet here that you can hear the sound of the heavy goose bodies hitting the water, creating almost a roar of waves.

Birds are a vocal lot.  Tonight, sandpipers warble to one another, geese keep up their constant conversation, but the ducks have gone strangely quiet. Maybe, like me, their attention is drawn to stars and planets as they emerge from overhead gray, the Big Dipper coming visible.

I'm on my way to Steen's Mountain, a place where I've spent little time and a place I want to get to know better.  The first night's journey has brought me to Lake Chickahominy, a reservoir which is fed, appropriately enough, by Chickahominy Creek.  If you check your map, this place is about smack in the middle of Oregon, and only 5.6 miles from Riley.  Riley, Oregon is a one-building town, home to the "Riley Store and Archery".  The store is something of an oasis in these parts, as it's another 30-some odd miles to Baker to the east, a little further to Wagontire to the south, and even further back west to Hamilton, which wouldn't do you any good as there isn't anything there any more.  If there ever was.

My little pop-up is parked in a campground on Lake Chickahominy, and it must be noted that for the very first time in my life I entered a vault toilet here that was clean and actually smelled good, sort of a minty, chewing gum kind of smell. Remarkable.

The lake must be good fishing, for whoever established this campground (only $5/night, many of the sites on the water) built a fish-cleaning station, which, it must be said, is closed, perhaps for the season.

I had forgotten how quiet in can be in central Oregon.  This campground is far enough from Highway 20 that car traffic doesn't impose much, and there is so little of it that there are long patches of only the sounds of nature.  Here, that's the breeze, the birds, and coyotes when they can get a word in edgewise.

Tomorrow, a quick stop in Burns, then south to Frenchglen.

Guns, Guns, Guns

I grew up (this is where I insert my bona fides) in North Central Idaho, where everybody had a gun or two or three.  My dad took me hunting (a futile act as I was blind as a bat and couldn't see anything to shoot at). I personally had a rifle and/or handgun in the house much of time time as a young man, but at some point in my mid-thirties I gave my last weapon away, and haven't had one since.

This morning over breakfast and USA Today I read a disturbing column written by Stefani Carter, a GOP state representative from Texas.  In a rather transparent attempt to show that the GOP is welcoming to women and particularly women of color, Representative Carter wrote that the good news is that black women are the fastest growing demographic in the fair state of Texas of those seeking a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

In short (according to Carter) black women in Texas are arming themselves because in 2009 in the United States nearly 2 1/2 times as many black women were killed as white women.  And, more than 90% of those women knew their assailant. Representative Carter goes on to say that, "Nationally, GOP women, 30 to 44 years old, and who live in rural areas, are the fastest-growing group of gun owners."

Stafani Carter belongs to that group of people who seem to believe that we all need to be armed all the time - that the world is a very dangerous place and the only way to make it safer is to pass laws that give you the right to shoot whomever you think might be a threat.

When I look at her arguments, particularly those surrounding women of color, I wonder at the outcome of arming everyone.  Since more than 90% of black women knew their assailant, it likely means that when armed, they'll be shooting their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons. Hmmm.  That doesn't seem like a useful outcome.

Which brought me to the question of how many personal weapons are floating around in the US?  According to the Small Arms Survey, 89 out of every 100 persons in the United States is armed today.  We're packing around 270,000,000 weapons in this country.  The next most highly armed country in the world is Yemen with 55 guns per 100 people.  Following them is Switzerland and Finland, with about 45/100.  Our Canadian friends have about 31/100, and south of the border in Mexico, about 15 guns per 100 people.  In our old cold war enemy Russia, about 9 out of a hundred own a gun, while across the pond the good folks in England and Wales carry about 6 guns per 100 people.

Clearly, we're the most heavily armed population in the world.  Do we feel safer?  Apparently not.  We're more afraid than ever before, and the GOP and NRA want to make sure we have enough guns to protect ourselves.

Yesterday, Terrance Taylor walked into a New Jersey grocery store and shot two co-workers before killing himself.  I suppose that had his co-workers been armed at the time, they might have killed him first.  Assuming that they were at least as good a shots as the highly trained New York City police officers who accidentally wounded nine innocent bystanders while trying to take out one shooter, the the store clerks probably wouldn't have killed more than 10 or 20 other people.  Of course, if those 10 or 20 had also been armed...

See, the thing is that about 30,000 people in the United States die every year of gunshot wounds.  Will giving everyone a gun make that go up or down?

Personally, I don't want everybody to have a gun.  Human beings are not universally qualified to carry weapons.  I don't see it as a right, God-given or otherwise.  I think you need to prove you're qualified to carry, and must receive a psychological evaluation that somehow disproves that you're the kind of guy that wants to kill all his co-workers, or everybody he sees in the next 10 minutes, or a bunch of Sikhs because he mixed them up with a bunch of Muslims, or people that go to Batman movies.  Once your brains are cleared, then you should get some training on how to be responsible with a weapon.  Then you can carry.

Better yet, we should all receive some training on how we really don't need to be afraid of everyone that's different than we are.  The Earth is a planet of xenophobes - one characteristic we could do without.

Art. What?

I think about art a lot - what is it, who gets to define it, who gets to judge it, and other imponderables that are purely subjective.  That old saw "I don't know anything about art but I know what I like" is actually true.

The Joseph Beuys exhibit at PAM is a case in point.  Beuys was a German fluxus - one who mixes or blends different media and art forms.  PAM exhibited his Lightening With Stag In Its Glare which consists of a huge piece of iron dangling from the ceiling (the lightening), and scattered on the floor below the various and sundry other bits of metal, a steel cart, blocks of stone, and a tripod table.
A friend and I were on the balcony above the piece, looking down at the twisted shapes littering the floor.  It came to me.  "Those look to me like coprolites."  She said, "I was thinking exactly the same thing.

We simply could not understand the sculpture.  We later talked to one of the room attendants, who pointed out what each piece represented (I think the steel cart was the stag - I don't recall), which helped.

It reminded me of an art show I attended in Eugene years ago.  The painter was there, along with patrons and guests drinking wine and talking about art.  The artist had been collared by a middle-aged woman with money and attitude.  She had her arm hooked through his, gesturing with her wine glass at a painting they were standing in front of.  "What were you trying to achieve with that slash of mauve across the lower right?  Is that a statement of lost hope, or perhaps even despair?"  The artist, without missing a beat said, "I just liked the color."

Art is like that.  You get it or you don't.  But it can depend on how you're exposed to it.  For years I thought that Mark Rothko's stuff was nonsense.  Certainly I could paint something like this.  How hard could a light red O on a dark red background be?  Until the Rothko retrospective at PAM, I had only seen his paintings in magazines.

Seeing them in person changed my perspective entirely, partly due to their size (most of them are enormous canvases), but mostly because in person I could begin to see the subtle way he had done them.  They started to make sense to me in a way they hadn't before.  He hadn't just slopped some paint onto a canvas and called it art, he had worked on them.  They meant something to him. Seeing them in person and to scale changed my perception of what he was doing.

I still don't know if I like them, but I appreciate them as art just the same.

One definition of art, I suppose, is the transformation of emotion into a physical entity. Rothko was feeling something when he painted his abstracts.  He was trying to explain something that was going on inside him; some vague or perhaps even crystal clear feeling that he could only express by laying paint on canvas.  I've been listening to a lot of 50's and 60's jazz lately, and that same thing comes through when "Fatha" Hines lays his hands on a keyboard.  He's expressing something from inside that only comes out through his fingers.

I know, I know, this is all very trite, and I'm only covering ground that has been well-trod.  But abstract art always makes me wonder about what art is.  Is this art...

A banged up old wooden dining room table, painted over and over again, nicks and scratches everywhere, sits sort of off to the side of a large museum gallery, alone, with nothing nearby.  Around the table apron are painted eyes.  When an innocent bystander happens to walk near the table, the table begins to make a noise.  As the bystander gets closer, the table begins to shake violently, and doesn't stop until the person backs off.

Is that art?  Well, maybe.  Let's say my intention was to portray the feelings of someone suffering from anthropophobia.  Heck, we all get tired of people once in a while.  For us introverts, we do better without a bunch of people around anyway.  Perhaps I built the table to reflect how I feel when perfect strangers approach me.  In that case, in my opinion it is art.  I might build that table just to see what it's like to express an emotion through a physical entity.  In this case, the table would be an expression of an emotion, and I think that's what art is.

But, I might be all wet.

PAM is having a great show on California Impressionism, which is one of my favorite styles of landscape painting - abstract enough to be interesting, but you can still see the trees.  You should go.  They have AC.

A Clear Lake Sojourn

Clear Lake is almost due south of Mount Hood, and one of the busiest recreation sites in the Mt. Hood National Forest.  I reserved a camp site for Wednesday and Thursday night this week (one of the many bliss's of being retired).  It was this year's first trip for the popup (I really should come up with a name, and finish the paint job design) with its new canvas.

The tow up the mountain was easy (thank you, Subaru, though I still don't know what "partial zero emissions" means), and arrived at the reserved site about 2PM.  The description was that it was a pull-through, but to my eye, it was more of a wide spot in the road, and the door to the popup would be right on the pavement of the camping ground road.  Fortune smiled, though, and right across the road was a genuine pull-through, vacant the same days I had reserved.

The camp host came around in a little while, and we settled the paperwork, making one family without reservations very happy to get a shoreline site on chance.  This was the second year she and her husband had been campground hosts.  I asked if she liked it.  She was quiet for a moment, then said, "Well, the 80-20 rule still applies.  My days off are Monday and Tuesday, and I'm more than ready for them."  It was interesting to see their vehicles parked side-by-side - a 30-foot motor home and a Smart Car.

The wind started coming up as it does every afternoon on Clear Lake, and the water got pretty choppy.  I chilled at the camp site, looking at maps and deciding the activity for the next day.  About 7PM it started to cool, and after dinner required a fire and fleece.

Morning was blue sky crisp.  My alarm was the slamming of the out-house doors and the cries of kids wanting to do anything but sit down and eat breakfast.

I had decided the night before that I'd hike around the lake, which according to the Forest Service was 6.7 miles.  Actually, they said that was the shore line of Clear Lake.  Although no trails appeared to run on the south side, it appeared that an old Forest Service logging road followed the length of the south shore.

After breakfast, the day pack was loaded with water, a Cliff Bar (should be back in time for a late lunch), camera, and emergency supplies.  Turning to the eastern end of the lake, a few minutes had me standing on the rock and fill dam that forms the lake, though before the dam was built, there was a small alpine lake here.

From the air, Clear Lake looks like a bird on the western edge of Wasco County, and serves as a water reservoir for that county.  Clear Creek, the small stream that drains the lake dips into the corner of the Warm Springs Indian Reservation (great museum) and the winds its way northeast, ultimately turning into the White River which feeds the Deschutes between Maupin and the Tygh Valley.

Crossing the dam put me on the south shore.  Though not a clearly identified as a trail, old FS Road 2660 ran right along the shore line, as shown on the maps and has transmogrified into a hiking and bike trail.  For the first mile or so there were lots of casual fire pits (at least there were fire pits).  And sadly, signs of the other 20% the camp host mentioned.  Their scat seems to be beer cans and toilet paper.

Not too much further, and Mt. Hood rears above the far shore canopy, giving the first of only two viewings from Clear Lake.  (In the camp ground the day before, a motorcycle pulled up along side me and a man sporting a neatly-trimmed beard asked where a good spot to see Mt. Hood would be.  Had to send him south to Timothy Lake.)

I don't know how long its been since the south shore was logged, but there are lots of young trees (disorganized and therefore I assume volunteers), while the older trees don't have a diameter of much more than a foot or two.

Along the way I noticed a strange thing.  It looked like a cat had had a rough night and spit up not one, not two, but seven fur balls.  Coulda been a dog, I suppose.  Or ferrets.  Owl pellets came to mind, but there were no bones.  By the way, I'm easily distracted.

About an hour into the hike, I thought I must be at the half way mark, but it looked like a lot more lake remained to the westward than their should have been.  At this point I confess to being something of a techno-geek.  At the beginning, I launched the MotionX GPS app for my iPhone 4S.  It's my favorite GPS bar none, though it does consume a bit of battery power from the not-so-powerful iPhone.  At any rate, rather than half way, the map made it look as though I was only a quarter of the way.  So, I determined to steam on, and stop for a break at the western-most arm of the lake.

The second view of Mt. Hood came up, better than the first but still pretty stingy as far as Hood views from surrounding lakes are concerned.  Finally, I came around the corner at the end of the lake and spotted the perfect resting roost.

 It had a built-in back rest, and was a perfect place to lift my feet for a while.  Oh, I forgot to mention an extra added bonus on this trip.  No mosquitoes.  I didn't get poked even once, much to my delight.

I did share the rock with a damsel fly, though, which I'm always happy to do.  These dragon fly cousins were thick along the shore, outnumbering their larger brethren probably 10 to 1.  And, it's mating season.  But I didn't look.

After a rest and yawn, I headed back east down the north shore of Clear Lake.

Clear Lake has an official campground on the eastern end, but the entire north shore is littered (and I mean that seriously) with casual campgrounds.  It wasn't long before I was reminded of the campground host's 80/20 rule.  In fairness, it's probably more like 98/2 rule, but the offending 2% really have a huge impact on what is otherwise a beautiful spot.

There must have been a casual camp site every 100 yards along the shore.  Most of them were tidy and clean.  Which made the ones that weren't even more of an eyesore.  The first one I ran across wasn't just a fire pit full of beer cans and other trash, but it looked as though someone had delighted in scattering their junk across the entire site.  Could have been a bear, I suppose, but there were no foodstuffs left behind for a beat to carry around.  Just junk.

The second one was even worse.  It sported a fire pit about 10 feet across connected to another about five feet across, and this one was completely full of trash.  Mostly liquor bottles, beer cans, and soup cans.  Diapers, of course, torn up boxes, and so on and so on.

The most offensive one (though why it's worse than the others is unclear to me) was one back in the woods away from shore.  These folks must have thought they were doing good by leaving the camp site nice and tidy by carrying their trash back into the woods where nobody would see it.  Well, nobody but somebody who occasionally wanders off the beaten path, like me.

I really struggle to understand those who come out into nature, and then just trash it.  My imagination says that the folks with the double fire pit probably played loud music all night and made their neighbors swear off camping ever again.  It's really beyond me.  I wonder if they say to themselves, "No worries, somebody will clean it up."  After all, for the most part they try to leave it all in the fire pit, so it seems that they're trying.  Just not hard enough.  Sigh.

My day brightened when I came around a corner to be greeted by a Mama and her brood.  They looked to be mallards, though the showy guy wasn't doing his part, so far as I could tell.  Deadbeat dad.

About two hours into the hike, my feet wanted a break, so I gave them one.  The water surprised me at its warmth, and explained the occasional swimmer I'd seen here and there.

While cooling my heals, I glanced to the right and spotted what I immediately thought of as "A Monk Contemplates the Fir."  It was a piece of bark that had peeled away from a stump creating a form that so much said to me a tall, thin man with a funny hat leaning on a tree.  Art as nature or nature as art.  Either way works for me.

Finally, just as my feet were beginning to complain, I re-entered the camp ground, completing the loop around the lake.  I flopped down into my chair, opened a beer, and pulled out my iPhone to see whether the lake was 6.7 miles around or not.  The way I went, it was 8.5 miles.  What?  I suppose that the Forest Service is correct when measuring the shoreline, particularly if they did it at the end of summer.  But to us simple hikers, they're off by nearly two miles.  I'd have taken lunch had I known.

As with all persons of a geekish nature, I wondered how many thousands of calories I had consumed in my journey.  Google quickly pointed me to a site that let me enter the distance for a walk, my weight (which I most certainly will not share here), and deliver in calories how much energy you exerted for a walk.  As W.C. Fields used to say, "Godfrey Daniels!"  My 8.5 miles and 2:45 time burned a total of - wait for it - 1100 calories.  I been robbed.  I thought I could eat peach pie for a week.  Nope.  Reality gives me one more dope slap just to keep me alert.  Happy trails!