Misadventure

I had been trying for a week to get out into the woods. I headed up into the mountains south of Hood River to try to find Rainy Lake Campground for a 16 mile loop hike on Thursday afternoon. It was beautiful, and I downloaded all the directions from the Portland Hikers website. I got up towards the top of the mountain, turning down just about every side road I could find, and couldn't find the campground.

I thought I just needed to be more careful about following the directions, and I needed to get more gas since I'd driven a lot farther in my aimless searching than I planned. I drove all the way back down, got gas, and drove up again, paying close attention to my mileage this time so I wouldn't miss it. The directions to find the trailhead get a bit...vague. "Head up FR 2820 for 6.8 miles, keeping to the main track; the road is rubbly and potholed in some places. Keep left at a junction and go 1.0 miles farther to a T-junction.Here, turn left and drive 3.3 miles to make a right turn onto the narrow spur leading to the parking area for the Rainy Lake Campground," the website says. I tried every variation of these instructions that could possibly match them in the four hours I spent driving those "roads" (and I use this term very loosely). Sometimes I could feel rocks hitting the undercarriage of my car. Poor Audrey II, she's a beast and a trouper. I sometimes drive her like she's a truck instead of a little fuel-efficient hatchback. Finally, it was getting near dark, and I settled on a spot to park my car with a fire pit near off a logging road. Upon further inspection, I thought maybe it wasn't such a good idea for a girl by herself to camp so close to the road, so I hiked in a ways to a clearing of sorts.

"Looks like a nice spot to set up camp" I said to the chipmunk that had climbed a tree to yell at me. Or maybe it was just a really tiny squirrel. It turns out the spot wasn't as flat as I thought, and had a giant root growing in the middle, making it nearly impossible to get my tent to stay upright. I finally gave up after ten minutes of fussing with it and decided to admit defeat. I stuffed the rain fly in my tent sack and wadded up my tent. I figured I'd take care of it when I got home, instead of messing with folding it up in the nearly setting sun. I was already pissed I had to take everything out of my pack, everything that I wasn't getting to use on my overnight backpacking trip I wasn't taking because I couldn't find the trailhead. The last thing I wanted to do was to try to shove my tent in there too.

And then, just like that, the sun was set and it was dark. "Fuck," I said to no one in particular as I realized I was in some sort of clearing, but not the clearing attached to the "trail" I followed. Ten steps north, no trail. Ten steps east, no trail. Ten steps south from the original spot, no trail. I panicked for .5 seconds, and took a deep breath. "It's just like going groundtruthing," I told myself. "Except it's in the dark."

On our first groundtruthing outing, Grady from Bark told everyone what to do if you get lost. "Know what direction you need to go to get back to a major landmark--a road or a stream. That way, if you do get lost, you can get back to a place where you can navigate from again." This seemed like a sensible plan of attack for this situation. I knew that I parked east and somewhat north of my current location. I also knew that the road was east of where I was currently located. Hopefully. Assuming my sense of direction wasn't entirely broken, since I hadn't bothered to check what direction I was going when I started walking.

I started bush-pushing through the conifers and stumbled on a mammal carcass I'm pretty sure was a deer. There was a dried pelt, a pile of bones, and whatever mushy thing was hiding underneath that I felt when I kicked it. "Maybe more east," I thought.

I'm still carrying my tent, because it's not practical to find a place to set everything down and try to repack my bag. It very conveniently wrapped itself around branches whenever possible. My hat also got grabbed by trees enough times I finally just wadded it up in the tangle of tent and hoped for the best. It was a casualty of the adventure I'm afraid. I hope my handmade, super soft Homespun yarn hat makes a nice home for some creature and doesn't kill anything. I do my best to LNT, but it's scary in the dark with the dead bodies.

After several false alarms when the full moon shining on trees and other things made me sure I could see my white Honda Fit gleaming just ahead, I made it back to the road. I was quite a bit farther south than I thought, but luckily, having driven around so much trying to find the damn trailhead, I knew where I was, even in the dark. I hiked up the road and laughed a little. At least I know I can trust myself to keep a calm head and use a compass in a situation where I lose the trail. A good skill to have in the off chance you lose track of the PCT, right?

So this was a bit of an adventure fail. But I saw some sort of grouse, and a whole flock of quail, and I didn't die. All positives really, in the grand scheme of things.

At least I got a pretty view of Mt. Hood