PCTA Oregon – The Princess of Perpetual Peace

August 5, 2019January 14, 2021

My First Outing as a Crew Leader

*Eagle Creek is a closed trail. We are working there as volunteers with the Forest Service, with their express permission. Please don’t go into the trails before we have them open again, it’s really dangerous.*

Eagle Creek Trail in the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic area was ground zero for the September 2017 fire that burned nearly 50,000 acres, primarily in Oregon. It’s been closed for almost two years as the Pacific Crest Trail Association volunteers and the U.S. Forest Service have been working to clear logs, rockslides, and fix other damage to the trail.

Eagle Creek trail was originally blasted out of andesite lava cliffs in many sections back in 1915. They even used explosives to create a walking tunnel through rock behind a spectacular waterfall, now known as Tunnel Falls. The trail follows the creek from above (Wahtum Lake end) and from below (close to the Columbia River). It features sheer cliffs, dizzying drops, so many waterfalls, and eagles flying high over the creek. It’s a true jewel of the Gorge.

I’m a freshly minted Trail Work Assistant Crew Leader with the PCTA, so when the chance came up to co-lead a group down into EC from the South, I volunteered right away. We’ve been working on the lower trail for much of 2019, and it’s actually quite passable (and still closed) up to the missing bridge at High Creek, about four miles from the trailhead.

I’ve worked a lot in the burn area the last two years, so I was pretty excited to see how the upper trail fared over the last year since we worked on it in 2018. It’s a long haul into Wahtum Lake, a beautiful blue body of water surrounded by old growth trees and the convergence point for several trails. The PCT passes through here, and the Herman Creek trail ends here, 4,000 feet higher and 11 miles from the river where it starts.

To support a multi-day crew going in the next day, our mission was to hike in six or seven miles, with a full complement of fairly heavy trail tools and create a tool cache for the crew coming next.

Early morning at Wahtum Lake and I’m unloading tools, helping make sure everyone signs the paperwork. We work as Forest Service Volunteers, so we follow their regulations and procedures. We cover the Job Hazard Analysis (JHA), determine our first aid person, check our radios, and do a host of other preparation steps. There’s three ‘Susans’ on this crew, how fun!

We have introductions, I see many familiar faces and a few new ones, and we’re loaded up and headed down to the Pacific Crest Trail. Here the PCT wanders through enormous old growth Doug Firs, and has a side option for taking the currently closed Eagle Creek Trail. We duck under the ribbon, and our group of Sherpas for the day heads out.

The entirety of the Eagle Creek Trail has been closed since September 2017, now almost two years. The South end of the trail saw a lot fewer boots when it was open than the Gorge end, back nearer to the super popular Punchbowl Falls. This end is always a bit wilder, less tamed than the trail before Tunnel Falls.

Now, it’s entirely overgrown in parts, vague and hard to follow. The fireweed is over my head, the Indian Mountain turnoff invisible. We’re quickly back into the burn area again, blackened trunks surrounded by swaths of green as nature renews.

I take the heavy steel rock bar in trade from another volunteer as we work our way down. It’s not enough to begin to move a refrigerator sized boulder laying across the trail. It’s the kind of rock that makes me wish we used explosives, we will have to dig it out and rig it with cables – but not today.

From this part of the Eagle Creek Trail, you have a great view looking up at the ridge where the PCT leaves Wahtum Lake, passing Chinidere Mountain, as it meets the Benson Plateau. We took over one hundred logs off that section last year, in just two days, but that’s literally another story. Tanner Butte looks still severely damaged, worst burn I’ve seen. I see the ridge we climbed two years ago, where I fell and nearly died. These hills hold a lot of personal history for me.

Looking up to Benson Plateau from Upper Eagle Creek Trail

Our mission half completed, we leave an assortment of tools well off the trail, wrapped in Tyvek. It’s just the long hike back up the hill, and I lead us off. The afternoon sun is blazing hot, beating down on us in long pants, work boots, and long sleeves. Wearing your hardhat all the time is mandatory working in the burn area, outside camp. At least I’m not carrying the long rock bar now, easily fifteen pounds of steel.

Thankfully, once we clear the severe burn, it’s cool with ample streams for water. We use a Steri-pen and drink straight from the streams after treating the water. Ten foot tall Devil’s Club threatens to choke out the trail, that’s a future project.

Taking advantage of what little shade we had climbing out

Finally, we’re back at Wahtum Lake, and ready for the long drive home. Bob was kind enough to pack a cooler filled with ice cold non-alcoholic beverages, and a Lacroix is gone thirty seconds after I open it. The next month, we have two work parties, and the third in August. We’re really working this section hard now, while we wait for bridgework. My first crew is done, a pretty easy one, and we didn’t leave anyone behind. 😉

***Eagle Creek Trail is closed and has many hazards***

May 22, 2019

I am the Warrior

Today, I am the Warrior

I stand tall and strong, I will not falter

I will be brave enough for this day

I will allow empathy, compassion, and kindness to rule all my actions

I will thrive and love my self today

Chinidere Mountain, near Wahtum Lake, Oregon. Mt. Hood in the background

I often write short mantras with yoga themes, to help my focus, particularly when I’m suffering from anxiety. I wrote an article last year for the Washington Post Lily on how anxiety affects me, you can read it here. The above is another variation on this, one of my favorites. It focuses on strength, but strength applied with empathy and compassion, to others and self.

#yoga #mantra

Bell Creek, Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. Sadly, this trail is still closed due to the #Eaglecreekfire

May 20, 2019December 16, 2021

Roam

Oregon/ Mark O Hatfield Wilderness/ Herman Creek Trail to Herman Creek Bridge, Pacific Crest Trail to Eagle-Benson and return 20 miles/4775′ e.g./10 hours

Oh girl dancing down those dirty and dusty trails
Take it hip to hip, rocket through the wilderness
Around the world the trip begins with a kiss

Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without wings, without wheels
Roam if you want to
Roam around the world
Roam if you want to
Without anything but the love we feel

– B-52’s, Roam

I had a friend who once told me, he really hates snow. I was really surprised, given his love of the outdoors and hiking. ‘So you don’t even like snowshoeing?’, I had asked. ‘Nope, hate it. I’ll carry them for miles, only use ’em when I have to. Snow just gets in my way, keeps me from doing the hikes I want to.’ I love to ski, snowshoe, make snow angels, so his words really surprised me. ‘I will always love snow’, I told him.

Yet here I sat, scouring Google Earth with Halfmile’s PCT overlay, and NOAA’s daily snow report overlay, looking at the undeniable while planning our weekend Pacific Crest Trail/Herman Creek Trail adventure. There was a lot of snow left above 4500 feet, near Wahtum Lake, on the HCT side, and it was in my way.

Having wandered through there in all seasons, I knew it would add too much time to our usual PCT/HCT loop, meandering through the relatively featureless landscape of trees and beargrass under snow with GPS in hand, route-finding. Too much snow for a twenty-five mile plus day loop.

2019-05-10 09_50_06-Google Earth Pro.png

My mind and heart are already pushing for the big hikes of summer, those all-day affairs where you pick a long target, and just roam all day (and often well into the night). I’m already blessed that ten minutes from any trailhead, my mind quiets, my heart is calm, and everything else is just…somewhere else. It’s the ultimate in-the-moment place and activity for me, no anxiety or runaway thoughts, just putting one foot in front of the other, until we run out of trail.

Lower Herman Creek Trail

I picked the better of the two climbs out of the Columbia River Gorge, on the PCT vs. up Herman Creek. I love both trails dearly, but the rapid rise out of the Gorge to the Benson Plateau on the PCT is a real gem. Like Mt. Defiance, it’s steep and long, but unlike Defiance, it’s really pretty. You climb through 4000′ from nearly sea level in about seven miles, most of that in a three mile stretch below Teakettle Springs.

We found the small HC Trailhead lots crowded with cars by 8:20 AM, a formerly unheard-of density of aspiring hikers for this sleepy spot. With Multnomah Falls and Larch Mountain closed due to new rockfall, plus the Instagram popularity of hiking to Indian Point for photos, there’s nothing left up in the lot anymore on a weekend by 8:30 AM. Thankfully, they virtually all turn left away from the beautiful trails heading deep into the interior, and we’re alone again.

Bridge yoga at Herman Creek Bridge, a staple for me 😀

These trails are inexorably linked for me to the many trips I made last year as a volunteer with the Pacific Crest Trail Association, clearing these fire-damaged trails in the wake of the Eagle Creek Fire. I worked so many hours, over many months last Spring and into early Summer, hiking into the PCT or HCT with a hard hat, tools, and determination to do everything I could to repair the damage. I met the most marvelous people of formidable spirit, we accomplished things beyond what was considered possible.

Now, the trail itself stands as living memory for me. Here, at the bridge trail junction, ‘oh yeah, the huge hole and there’s Bill’s rock work. You’d never know the trail was missing last March.’ One of the beauties of trail work is if you really do it well, almost no one notices what was done.

The damage here in this small section took multiple work parties to fix

When you get to the junction of Herman Creek Bridge Trail and the PCT, and take that left up the hill, you settle in for a long climb. The long switchbacks take you back and forth across the face of the ancient volcanic flows, clawing its way up to the Benson Plateau, an area of incomparable beauty relatively untouched by the fires. On the way, we pass log after log, most have a story.

We spent three hours on removing this stubborn log, due to complex binds and the steep slope it sat upon. The ‘before’ photo from April 2018 is below.

Setting up to roll the upper half once cut. It was a monster Doug fir, felled by the fire

I noted the location of newly fallen logs, to pass along to the volunteer PCTA Caretaker of this section. Thankfully, there were only about three locations that will need a logout crew with a crosscut saw to remove. Last year, we removed twenty-seven from these switchbacks in one day.

Job security, the forest that just keeps giving

Looking across the Columbia into Washington, at Table Mountain and Greenleaf Mountain

We walked past the huge stump snag where we’d cut out a surprisingly tough piece blocking the trail last year. We’d cut it, beat it with axes, and finally broke it by jumping up and down on it.

Helgi, cutting the base in April 2018

What a crew. Hiked 4,000 feet, 12 miles, and worked ten hours in one day. I’m on the upper right with my trademark dirty face. Working in the burn is so messy. 😀

Empressing hard, May 2019 on the same stump

Up we went, past memories, root burn holes long filled with stones and soil, to the Red Cinder Rock viewpoint. I noticed looking over at Nick Eaton ridge, the spaces between the burned trees look so much greener this year than last. Nature knows how to recover, she doesn’t need our help.

We had already climbed most of the elevation to be gained, so we took a break and took in the views.

May 2019 – Mount Adams capping my Warrior II. Nick Eaton ridge to the right, so much more green this year!

June 2018 – yeah I wear the same clothes a lot – I’m actually considering a new system of hike-specific outfits, totally beside the point – look at NE ridge, so brown last year.

Heading up past Teakettle Springs, we stopped to check the water flow, which is still really good. It’s spring water.

COLD water, felt so good on my face

The fingers of fire reached up from Eagle Creek in spots here, severely burning some areas but not most of Benson Plateau. When we first came in, it was hard to find the trail in spots. We scraped half a foot of needle-cast off the trail last year one day, later took one hundred logs off it over two days. It was really a mess.

Close to Benson Way side trail, on the PCT, looking South

Lovely trillium on upper Teakettle section

Branch swirl did not burn, go figure

Once you gain the plateau, you’re in for a treat of ridge walking in deep forest. The trail only rises about 600′ more between Benson Way and Wahtum Lake, so you can really make some time up there on a long day hike. Or stroll, saunter, it’s perfect for everything.

Stubborn snow patch hanging on up on Benson Plateau, in the beargrass. North and west-facing slopes still holding onto a bit as of 5/11/2019

NOAA maps were spot-on in predicting the snow amounts

Near our turn-around for the day at Eagle-Benson Junction

We hiked out to junction with the PCT and Eagle-Benson Trail, still closed as it descends from the PCT into Eagle Creek below Tunnel Falls. The area near Smokey Camp is still the worst burn I’ve seen in the Eagle Creek fire area. It burned before maybe fifteen years ago, so twice-burned now, it’s pretty crisp.

We stopped for some late afternoon snacks, thought briefly about heading to Wahtum Lake over the remaining snow patches, but the thought of late afternoon wandering down upper Herman Creek with my GPS in hand, fading light, eleven miles left to go, wasn’t attractive. As a rule, we’re packed with all the essentials and ready to spend the night if needed, but I try avoid walking eyes-wide-open into situations that land us there. No tracks, one hundred percent snow-covered, it will wait a few weeks.

If you look closely, you can just see Mt. Defiance poking its dome up over the ridge on the right, in the distance

We stopped at a side viewpoint and looked South, toward Mt. Tomlike, Chindere Mtn, and Mt. Hood. It’s one of my favorite viewpoints, it really ties together what it means to hike from Hood to the Gorge. It’s quite an adventure, and though I’ve hiked about every piece of the PCT from Timberline Lodge to the river, I’ve never done it all at once. Maybe this is the year.

Tomlike from the PCT. Besides the usual path from Wahtum Lake, there’s a user/offtrail route from the North, off Herman Creek Trail. It’s a spectacular ridge walk.

Trail work habits die hard. Besides tossing branches and rocks as we hiked, on the way back, I removed over two dozen small logs from the trail with my trusty small Silky hand saw. I cut a few that pushed the capabilities of my little saw, but using techniques I’ve learned with my Katana-boy saw on bigger logs, I was able to remove some really annoying blowdown.

Being a good steward of the trails

We skipped down the trail (literally, at times) in the beautiful light of the afternoon. The lighting all day was just magical, such contrasts and beautiful sunshine.

Cleared a big stack o’logs off here in 2018, you’d hardly know it now

Crossing the scree fields in the late afternoon sunshine. Cascade Locks below.

Looking up, near same location. Sometimes we hear Pikas here

You really have to love a two-hour downhill. Well, mostly. 😀

I can’t resist a good bridge 😀

Looking back across from HCT to the PCT. The latter runs diagonally across the far ridge.

HCT below the bridge trail junction gets a lot of traffic. Good thing we reworked all the lower tread last year, it’s getting hammered now.

We crossed Herman Creek again, the sun setting now, almost ten hours since we passed the same spot in the morning. It’s such a magical spot. I’ve cleaned a lot of tools down in the creek after a long day of trail work. Hiking through here for fun seems almost like cheating.

We ambled back to the jeep, our first pass through here complete for this year. We’ll go back again soon and do the entire loop, once the snow finishes melting out.

We’ve also been intrigued with making some new loops heading up Nick Eaton/Gorton Creek trails, checking out Greenpoint Mtn on the way up to Wahtum Lake, return on the PCT. It’s a bit more climbing (5800′ vs. 5600′ e.g.) but a little shorter at 22-23 miles than the full loop, which usually runs around 25-ish.

2019-05-15 14_25_20-Herman Creek Trailhead to Herman Bridge Trail #406E, Cascade Locks, OR 97014 - G (1).png

The roaming season has just started, so we’ve got time before the snow flies again. Now, someday, backpacking this on snowshoes, that’s another adventure!

April 24, 2019April 26, 2019

Eagle Creek Redux

I laid on my stomach, arms spread widely, grasping desperately for anything to stop my slide toward the cliff edge. Rocks fell behind me, making ghostly sounds as they struck trees far below. I thrust my fingers into the root ball of a shrub, slowing myself, but not stopping my progress toward oblivion. I was falling, out of answers and options. As I slid, I looked back over my shoulder, I thought, ‘I’m going to die. Who will tell my Mom’?

That’s me up next to Rigby, five minutes before I fell, April 30, 2017

Still on my stomach, looking left and a little upslope, I spotted a small oak tree, and I gave up my grip on the shrub that was slowly pulling out of the ground, and I leapt for it, making a last-gasp effort for the little oak. I got several fingers around the base of the trunk, and rolled to my left, rocks now falling in a steady stream a hundred feet or more, down into the forest below. I hung in place with one hand gripping the tree, having arrested my fall for the moment. After several minutes, I swung my body so I could get both hands on it, and pulled myself out of the slide path. I’d survived, if I could get off the rock pile and thirty meters back up to the ridge.

Telling my friends to stay back and not trigger another slide, I inched my way so slowly back up to the ridge top where I’d fallen from. Moments before, as I’d turned a corner near the top, all the rock I was scrambling on had slid out from underneath me, sending me toward an unsurvivable fall over a hundred foot cliff. When I neared the top again, strong arms pulled me over, where I collapsed, sobbing uncontrollably in the aftermath. I’d almost died, and my psyche was utterly traumatized by the experience.

Eagle Creek Trail with High Bridge in the center distance, April 2017

We were in Eagle Creek, before the fire, nearly two years ago this week. We’d left the trail above High Bridge, turning to the West up a long ridge off-trail toward the Tanner watershed and Dublin Lake. It was an eleven-hour odyssey, worthy of its own telling. We finished before dark, twenty-plus miles and over five thousand feet of elevation gain that day. That night, the nightmares started. In my dreams, I’d not stop falling, and I’d see my body lying at the bottom of the cliff, third-person view. I died over and over again, every night for a month. I’d wake up shaking, covered in sweat, every night, until I didn’t want to sleep anymore.

Six weeks after my fall, I’d been experiencing intermittent pain in my lower right abdomen, near my beltline area. I finally woke up one night in June in excruciating pain. Another Emergency Room visit, where I passed out repeatedly from the pain despite the strongest IV pain killers available. I’d had undetected internal injuries, and now a serious infection. Finally I had relief with a nerve-blocking agent injected directly into the nerve bundle. I was so sick. I had to cancel out of my Mt. Saint Helens Climb, my week-long backpacking trip to the Enchantments, all gone as I went on a month of forced rest.

Later that year in September, the Eagle Creek fire burned almost fifty thousand acres on the Oregon side of the Gorge, including Dublin Lake and Tanner Butte. We will likely never do this route again, the fires having destabilized all the steep slopes in that area. Because of the fires, I’d never been back to Eagle Creek since that day, the trail remains closed to the public, with arrest and steep fines awaiting those who would test the closure.

Aerial view of Dublin Lake after the Eagle Creek Fire. It’s really sad up there now.

Now, I was back. Since 2017, I’ve been a volunteer with the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA), working in the burn area of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. We had crews working in Eagle Creek, down from Wahtum Lake to Seven Mile Camp last Fall, but a trail running fall and injuries had kept me away, until last week.

I’d signed up with a PCTA work party to work clearing trail between Fern Creek Bridge and High Bridge, about four miles in from the Gorge trailhead. Other volunteers had carried temporary planks in prior weeks, so we could cross the compromised Fern Creek bridge somewhat safely, one at a time.

Fire-damaged Fern Creek Bridge with temporary planking screwed down tightly

Our goal was to remove all the logs and clear a path to High Bridge, so it could be safely evaluated by engineers from a contractor engaged to replace both bridges.

Fern Creek bridge from the trail, pre-fire 2017

Fern Creek same viewpoint, 2019 post-fire. Amazingly, the tree to the left, right on the trail, didn’t burn completely.

I was working with a chainsaw crew of three, our mission to remove as many logs as we safely could. It’s significantly dangerous working cutting blowdown in Eagle Creek, there are unsurvivable drop-offs right off the trail in so many places. We worked on a four-log pile near High Bridge with no room for error. If you tripped, fell, or got snagged on something going over the edge, it would be your last series of mistakes. It takes a lot of focus to ensure every step you make is a safe one.

Eagle Creek, April 2019

Walking in, past Punchbowl Falls, over Sorenson Creek, I felt a wave of familiar memories. Hiking in a rainstorm here, three years ago, possibly the wettest hike I’ve ever done with water cascading off the cliffs down onto the trail. My first trip to Tunnel Falls and the ‘Vertigo Mile’, where the trail is blasted out of the cliff wall, as are many sections of Eagle Creek Trail. Hand cables line multiple sections, giving you a little more security. Much of the trail was blasted out of the Basalt cliffs back in 1915-1919, and was immediately popular, with 150,000 visitors in 1919 alone. The views are spectacular, no less so now after the fires are out.

Eagle Creek between Fern Creek Bridge and High Bridge, April 2019

Not yet into the Wilderness with its crosscut-only saw restrictions, we used chainsaws to remove log after log. Most were a bit complex, having slid down the steep banks usually end-first into the trail. Sometimes, you have to cut them multiple times just to clear the trail, as the log just keeps sliding down as you remove one section after another.

Logs that just keep giving. We left the largest for another day this week, to return with a longer and more powerful chainsaw.

Many of the burned logs fill with water, their ends opened by fire having burned off the root ball. They literally spit water as you cut into them, and the pieces weigh so much more than normal, being utterly waterlogged. We sent many torpedo logs over cliffs, down into the creek below.

Well, that’s inconvenient. Yep, that’s the trail under all that debris

Rockslides are all along this section, and pieces of the trail have fallen or been knocked off. Our little saw crew did a fabulous amount of work, the three of us removed twenty-three logs last Thursday. The rest of the work party and two seasonal Forest Service employees worked on the tread, making safe passage over the slides. The amount of work done by a dozen or less PCTA volunteers in a day is always so impressive.

Lots of work left to do before this trail opens again

For me, the day was very special. There was no avoiding the memories of my fall, I had to accept some really hard lessons about avoiding exposure and scrambling. I stood on the trail near High Bridge, looking up at the ridge we climbed two years ago. It seems impossibly steep to look at it now, the understory, moss, and brush all gone.

All smiles just above High Bridge in April 2017, you can see the trail below. It’s a 3-4 hour climb to get over to Dublin Lake from here.

Much of the ridge itself can be seen now, an ancient rockpile with its moss burned away. In its current condition, I cannot imagine how it would be more uninviting. Criss-crossed with burned fallen trees, dotted with rock slides, I think I’ll not take that route again in my lifetime.

I will come back, likely again and again, to work on this lovely trail so it may again be enjoyed by thousands of people every year. I’ll come out for day work, then move to overnight weekend work parties when the snow melts out on the higher section. I spent most of 2018 working in the woods, in the burn, helping to open the PCT and Herman Creek Trails. The Forest Service is saying August for new bridges at Fern Creek and High Bridge, so it’s quite possible some portion of Eagle Creek trail will also reopen later in the Fall. It will need more ongoing work as trees and rock keep coming off the steep slopes, but it will be a grand day when the temporary gates and signs come down, and everyone again can enjoy its incomparable beauty.

Akhtar, Rigby and I walking back from the Tanner system to the Eagle Creek TH, April 2017. Thanks to Craig G. for many of the 2017 photos. 🙂

Helpful Links:

Eagle Creek Hike:

https://www.oregonhikers.org/field_guide/Eagle_Creek_to_Tunnel_Falls_Hike

PCTA Volunteer Opportunities:

Volunteer

PCTA Mount Hood Chapter Eventbrite page for work parties:

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/pacific-crest-trail-association-mount-hood-chapter-15326589343

A really cool video showing a slide where we worked:

Check out this rock slide!

Read the latest about repairing the Eagle Creek Trail: https://t.co/7h2tvL8oN8 #PacificCrestTrail #TheGorge @CRGNSA @ForestServiceNW @TravelOregon pic.twitter.com/vs0AlDlUoV

— Pacific Crest Trail (@PCTAssociation) April 25, 2019

April 23, 2019

The Life You Save…

“…there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
― Mary Oliver

top photo: South Summit, Table Mountain in WA State

bottom photo: Pacific Crest Trail, Cascade Locks, Oregon

April 17, 2019April 17, 2019

A Chainsaw is a Girl’s Best Friend

I carefully held the snarling beast in my hands, making precise vertical cuts to relieve side bind in a practice tree. I nudged the tip of the saw in, avoiding the zone of maximum kickback around the top of the tip. Saw curls flying, I cut a little deeper at each pass, watching the log move as it gave up its compression bind.

Working it with David Roe (Terry Hill photo)

I already had more than a passing acquaintance with the log. We follow the U.S. Forest Service guidelines for OHLEC, a relatively new acronym describing how to approach and execute cutting a log (or standing tree, but we generally don’t do that in the PCTA). The tree, felled by the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire, was supported on three points, wedged between two other trees. Working in a burn area, I’d determined hazards, plotted my escape route, and decided on a cut plan. Trees held in unnatural positions tend to move a lot when cut, and if you don’t relieve tension and compression, you might have a bad day when you unleash all that force.

Working under the guidance of an expert sawyer, I finished my relief cuts, and lifted the saw high on the log on the center cut. I worked it on the dogs (teeth near the power head on a chainsaw), slicing down through the log at full throttle. When it finally gave, it still moved two feet away from me, faster than my eyes could register, as the other end dropped near my steel-toed Danner logging boots.

If I’d just cut that log from underneath and above without regard to the side bind and which side I stood on, the log could have moved even faster and farther, straight into my torso with more than enough force to crush me. Thankfully my expert instructor, David, had explained each step along the way and we worked very safely.

I was attending Trail Skills College, an annual event held in Cascade Locks by a consortium of Trail Stewardship organizations (PCTA, WTA, and others) over a three-day period. Friday, I’d re-upped my First Aid and CPR for another two years in another course. It was my first time taking first aid with an eye toward the kind of injuries we might see working on Trail Crews. I finally learned how to use an AED and performed CPR practice on ‘Bob’, until my arms and abs were toast.

Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! 🙂

Saturday’s class was Chainsaw 104, the most complete instruction on chainsaw operation, maintenance, and safety that I’ve ever taken. We first learned all the parts of the saw, and how they worked. We broke the saws down into parts, learning how to change the bar, chain, air filter, and spark plug. We learned how to fuel and oil the saw, how to clean and lubricate the clutch and bearings. We covered different types of chains, and how they behave differently in use. After lunch, we practiced sharpening and reassembly. I had owned my own 20-inch bar Stihl Pro saw years ago, and had never peeled back so many layers into how it actually worked.]

Sharpening vise for chainsaw (Terry Hill photo)

Our last lesson was in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for chainsaw use, from helmets to ear protection, leg chaps, gloves, and face shields. I’d brought my own, newly acquired helmet with integrated ear protection and face shield, and chaps. We spent enough time on all the likely awful things that can go wrong, even if you’re following all guidelines. Chains can break, saws and trees can do unexpected things.

A Chainsaw Surgical Team 🙂 (Terry Hill photo)

At the end of our class, all the saws were fueled, oiled, chains sharp and snug. We were ready for some practice on Sunday.

If you need to cut some logs, this group can definitely help out (Terry Hill photo)

Sunday threatened rain as we drove to Wyeth Campground for Chainsaw Practicum 297, our goal to work on logs near the #400 Trail. After introductions, we split into three smaller groups. Before we headed up the trail, we each started our saws to make sure they ran.

Hey, it runs even after I took it apart and put it back together the day before! (Terry Hill Photo)

Obstacles on the way to work (Terry Hill Photo)

That’s what we call a ‘complex’ log problem across the trail. We did not cut these logs on Sunday, due to the degree of hazard, including triggering another rock and landslide. Some problems do not have immediate solutions. We cut steps into the logs with chainsaw and axe to make them easier to cross for hikers. (Terry Hill photo)

David, our instructor, selected our work area and started asking questions to gauge our baseline knowledge. I’ve done a lot of crosscut logout work parties, so none of the questions about the logs were new to me. Throughout the day, David gave me more and more complex problems to solve, ramping up the difficulty to see where I was.

Our private lesson (Terry Hill photo)

The biggest difference between using a crosscut vs. a chainsaw is everything happens in real time with a chainsaw. With a crosscut, you can hear feedback from the log, feel subtle shifts through the saw, and see it move (usually slowly). Cutting with a chainsaw, you’re through so quickly, you need to be more attuned to the feedback and visuals. Having a motor adds convenience to techniques like offside cuts, where you cut vertically across and down the log to avoid standing on the business side of the tree (the one that moves in a bound log).

Practicing a ‘V’ cut for a high log, so as you cut from underneath and drop it, it won’t let go all at once due to top bind. You can lower it pretty as you please cutting from underneath.

My last log of the day was much harder to read, definitely side-bound as evidenced by the long curve of the log, but very hard to tell what else was going on. Sometimes logs are twisted under load just resting, or when you release the end with the root ball, they can suddenly roll at you. As I made my five side bind relief cuts deeper, the kerf (the slit made by cutting with a saw) opened at the top and closed on the bottom, telling me more about what it was likely to do upon release.

I finished the top cut and the log still moved suddenly several feet away from me, a consequence of being bound up between several trees. I expected and predicted the behavior, so it wasn’t a surprise. David complimented me on my feel and technique, telling me that cut was a classic certification problem used on a ‘B’ level sawyer cert.

I’d refueled and added oil twice already, and five hours of cutting was taking its toll on my grip, my forearms, and my focus. We wrapped up our day, packed up our saws, and headed out.

Tomorrow, I’ll be heading out again with a PCTA work party, into Eagle Creek Trail from the Gorge end. Other volunteers have carried temporary planking three-plus miles in so we can (safely?) cross the Fern Creek Bridge, and remove logs with chainsaws, between there and High Bridge. I’m so fortunate to have had this training, and the opportunities to use it.

Eagle Creek Trail before the 2017 fire, near High Bridge

It will be a long day, hiking in with saws and supplies to feed them, and removing so many trees. I could be out skiing, hiking, or snowshoeing somewhere else, but I wouldn’t miss this opportunity to give back to the places that have given me so much joy. This is the work that will, along with many other days, get the trail opened again in 2019.

Newly open trail makes me feel pretty happy at Herman Creek Bridge, June 2018 (Kate Curry photo). I walked across this bridge carrying a load of tools so many times the prior six months.

I wouldn’t miss that for the world. Last year I spent weekend after weekend working with the PCTA on the closed PCT and nearby Herman Creek Trail, which reopened finally on June 15th, 2018. Kate and I took two ‘Victory Lap’ tours of the PCT/HCT loop, a lovely longish day hike at ~26-27 miles and 5700′ e.g.

Looking back at the PCT from HCT in the late afternoon

Next September, I hope we can do the same, but loop up Eagle Creek then down the PCT. Then do it again in the other direction, just for good measure. It will be glorious.

Hiking until dark, and then some (Kate Curry photo)

Helpful Links:

Eagle Creek to Wahtum Lake Hike

Pacific Crest Trail Association Volunteer Information

April 5, 2019April 5, 2019

Herman Creek

Herman Creek

Tears and ash fall into my lunch today
An Empress with her realm in flames, my creatures dying by the tens of thousands again
If not for my ribs and skin, my heart would surely fall of its own weight at my feet
I beseech, no, I beg of the Goddesses, please let this one be
Please let this jewel shine, please see it’s incomparable beauty persist
Please let the waters fall, please let the skies open and deliver salvation to our land
Please let tall cedars greet future visitors, strong and broad, unburnt
Please, if these things cannot be, please, please, please, let my creatures flee!
Please, PLEASE, do not make them pay for the actions of people who cannot see

During the Eagle Creek fire, thousands of acres burned, from Eagle Creek all the way West to Corbett. During the first several days of the fire, it was pretty clear that Herman Creek had escaped the initial conflagration. Then, it all changed as the wind shifted and the fires roared East, threatening Hood River and burning all the way to Mount Defiance and Starvation Ridge. Herman Creek trail took a big hit, burning several miles into the interior, and up Groton Creek and Nick Eaton.

I wrote this poem sitting in Portland, eating a burrito outside at lunch. Ashes were falling in the hazy sunshine, choked with smoke from the Gorge. I think the determination that carried me through all of 2018, working in the burn damage on Herman Creek Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail, it was born that day. Ten months later, the work largely completed, the trail was open and I did laps of all the PCT to HCT and in reverse, two 26 mile trips with 5700′ e.g. in two weeks. For me, this poem truly encapsulates the hopelessness I felt back in September 2017, sitting miles away as the Gorge burned.

HCT and Nick Eaton to the right here, severely burned area.

Nick Eaton Falls before the fire

March 29, 2019March 29, 2019

100 logs on the Pacific Crest Trail

“We were able to reopen these trails thanks to many volunteer hours put in by our trail partners such as the Pacific Crest Trail Association and Trailkeepers of Oregon.”