Larch Mountain with Rory the Wonder Dog !

Larch mountain is the tallest prominence that is considered part of the Columbia Gorge. It is an extinct Volcano with what I am told is a pretty lava cap up at the summit. (Foreshadowing). It was originally named Larch Mountain because some people wanted to cut down all of the trees there and some of the local trees look a lot like larch (when cut up for lumber) and Larch was worth more. So, no Larch trees there. Just saying. 

Today was supposed to be a warmish clear day in Portland, but as we drove up the 14 mile access road to Larch Mountain, it appeared that weather would be different up on the 4,000 foot "summit". We had total low hanging cloud cover, 45 degrees, and raining at the trailhead. There are a number of popular trails that start (or end) at this nice parking lot.  The Larch Mountain trail starts at Multnomah falls and comes up through that gorge along Multnomah creek. The Oneonta trail comes up from Horsetail falls, bypasses the closed Oneonta Gorge, and then comes up Oneonta creek to Larch Mountain. 

Today we are going to hike around part of the ancient caldera that was Larch Mountain Volcano once upon a time. We are going in a counter-clockwise direction so that we can do the part of the trail that is on the paved road first and not when we are tuckered out. We also had this thought that we could avoid going up the really steep parts if we went in this direction. Don't you believe it.

Accompanying Paige and I on this epic journey is our newly turned dog from puppy, Rory the Wonder Dog (And yes, I read a lot of Robert B. Parker). Rory is a very different creature from the 4 month hold pup that did this hike with Paige last October.  And let me tell you, she is was in full hunt mode. 

There is a sign at the beginning of the trail that says that animals going off trail would be considered as trespassing. Rory never went off the trail. 

The first mile of our hike was an easy downhill walk in the light rain. Lots of gorgeous vegetation and big trees. This entire area was stripped of trees in the early 1900s. You can see the huge cut off trunks all over the place. But enough time has passed such that there are new quasi giants (still only half the size of the cut off trunks, but big trees). They were not Larch, so what were they? I thought that they were the usual Doug Fir but they had very strange pinecones. Lots of these pinecones were one the ground because of a very active Douglas Squirrel population. 

Paige took a picture.

Looks to be that of the Pacific Silver Fir

Bunch Berry Berries

The undergrowth in this area was also very fine. Along with the usual huckleberry and mahonia, there was lots of Bunch Berry that had the lovely little bunches of red berries. I really like bunchberry. The leaves look like dogwood tree leaves. In fact, the plant is a member of the dogwood family and in Alaska they just call it Dogwood. I have never seen so many of the plants that had berries. They were everywhere for a significant part of our hike.  I also saw a lot of Deer Fern, which I don't think I usually see growing with bunch berry.  Paige took pictures of lots of fungi which I include below.

About a mile in we came to the intersection of the Oneonta trail and the Multnomah Creek Way.  Looking on the map, the Multnomah Creek way appears to be a cut across the center of the crater for the volcano. On the map it also makes it look like something of a shortcut. Don't fall for it. It may be slightly shorter than going all the way around but it has lots of bad parts of the trail that are steep and difficult for old knees to negotiate. Rory the Wonder Dog, on the other hand, was in absolute heaven. There were evidently THINGS just everywhere. She was bouncing all over the place, bounding in and out, but always returning to us when we called, just like a good dog should.  

Oh, so we took the Willamette Creek Way which is a 2.3 mile cut through to the other side of the loop. Very nice terrain. Lots of big trees. No big views, however. It was pretty steep up on one side and pretty steep down on the other side, and the trail was wide enough that it could easily have been a logging access road at one time. There was one part where it cut through the rim (of the caldera?) so it was a sort of man made ravine for a hundred feet or so. 

After awhile we met up with the very beginnings of the creek that eventually becomes Multnomah falls.  Rory had a nice drink. At this point the trail turns to follow the creek and goes down a half mile of steep, rock and root tortured trail. Times like this I am very glad to have my trekking poles, they make a huge difference for balance and for descending big steps. 

At the bottom of the descent there is a large open area. I believe this used to be a large meadow but now appears to be filled with young Alder. The Wiki article I read says there is a big meadow here someplace that was carved by glaciers in the last ice age and was a lake for a long time before becoming a meadow. I wonder if that is the same area. We stopped in the big trees next to the Alder growth and sat on a big log and had lunch. We were very tired at this point and happy to have a good rest before we started around the other side and so back up that mountain. 

We crossed Multnomah creek and then just went up, up, and fraking up,  I really prefer to do the UP the first part and the Down the second part, but there is no way to do that on this hike as you start at the top and have to down first no matter which way around the loop you go. But we haven't been doing much hiking lately and this was hard.  Even Rory was getting tired. Of course, Paige and I had hiked around 5 miles and Rory must have run 20. 

In the last mile or so, the terrain and vegetation change. There is no undergrowth, just the tall trees. I have seen this sort of thing in other places and not sure exactly what it indicates. Is this an area that had a recent fire or a recent clear cut? Or is it just a botany thing?

Turn right here for Multnomah Falls Parking

We just about crawled back to our car after going nearly 7 miles. But our tracker says that our moving speed was around 2 miles per hour (average) with almost 2 hours of rest.  That was a long hike. Remind me to read this post before I do this again.

On the drive home I saw a animal cross the road a few hundred years ahead of us. I thought it was a deer. When we got closer it crossed back. It was a big Cat with a short tail. Either a Bobcat or a Lynx !!

As I type this, the day after the hike, Rory is asleep on her bed and still tuckered out.

Portage Glacier, Whittier, and the Deadly Tidal Bore !!

In this area of Alaska, all of the main ocean bays are fjords making fingers into the land to hook up to the a glacier or glacier fed river. In one place the two fjords going in opposite directions from the same mountain create an area that has a very low pass and a glacier in that pass.  In historic Alaska, the miners and trappers and such would portage from one fjord to the next to access the next section of the Alaska coast. Portaging over was faster and safer that sending people and goods around the Prince Edward sound and out into the Pacific Ocean. 

We visited the lake on the Anchorage side of the portage. It is fed by Portage Glacier and is called Portage Lake.

The lake is nice and all. You used to be able to see the Glacier going into the lake from the visitor center. But the glacier has retreated around the corner and can now only be seen by hiking in or taking a ride on the lake boat. We declined these options. Instead, we decided to go see the other side of the Portage, which is the little town of Whittier. 

If you look on a map you will see that there are two Glacier carved fjords, one from the West and one from the South that come up into Alaska and almost meet right at Portage Pass. People used to come up from the South by boat and the portage over the pass to get to Anchorage. It is only like 4 miles over the pass.

Waiting for East Bound traffic.
That A-Frame sits on the Tunnel entrance

Back during WWII, the US wanted to move men and equipment into the northern parts of Alaska to protect from invasion. To facilitate this, they decided to dig a train tunnel through the mountain  that sits beside Portage Pass.  This tunnel is big enough for a train going in one direction and is 2 miles long.  The town of Whittier was built on the South side of this tunnel to support the military shipping operation. The town is still there and is mostly a tourist and fishing town now. For years and to this day the Alaska Railroad ran a train that goes through the tunnel to Whittier. There really isn’t anywhere for a train or car to go once you get to Whittier. That is the end of this sort of short side line.  The train comes in, drops off and picks up people, and then backs out the way it came, staying less than 30 minutes. It used to be that the only way that residents in Whittier could get anywhere was to board the train and head to Anchorage or Seward. Well, they could take a ferry to Valdez or some points south, but that was even more slow and expensive than the train. Really hard to go grocery shopping in a situation like that. Then a few decades ago, they opened up the tunnel to mixed car and train traffic. Today, cars go toward Anchorage on the hour and to Whittier on the half hour. Trains get inserted in there as first in line when they come in. We say one of the pretty blue Alaska State Railroad trains going through ahead of us when we were going through the tunnel for a short visit to Whittier. What we were really doing was letting Jon the engineer get a ride through the longest mixed use tunnel in North America. 

Let me say that this is an old technology tunnel. It us just big enough for the Train and the tracks run down the middle. The walls and ceiling are barren stone (granite?) with only a few places where soft ceilings have been added to divert dripping water to the side gutters. Every quarter mile or so there are safe rooms on the East side where people can shelter  in case of earthquake or fire or other incident. Ooooh, maybe if a avalanche blocked off the entrance tunnels during the winter !!

Everyone lives in that building

Whittier itself is a little fishing town. Pretty much the entire populate lives in the old army housing structures which look sort of like 70s error apartment high rises. There are 3 or 4 of them but only one is occupied. This tells you something about the size of the structures or perhaps about the size of the town. The towns industry is pretty much entirely fishing, tourism, and the train. Some shipping comes in and gets loaded on the train and goes off to Anchorage threw the tunnel. Should tourist arrive on a (possible huge) luxury liner (this is a deep water port) then they go across the street and get on the tour train and Woosh, off through the tunnel. Nothing for them in Whittier but a couple of mile walk. Oh, I guess they could hike the Portage Glacier Trail. 

We had some lunch and such. Watched a tour of 8 jet skis driven by first time tourist head out into the Fjord to go discover a glacier. That seemed like it could be fun. 

Jet Ski Expedition to a Glacier

Portage Pass from Whittier

Later we drove back through the tunnel to the Anchorage side and were driving NorthWest along the shore of Turnagain Arm when I noticed a wave coming down the bay/river that is Turnagain arm. We drove past the wave and realized we must be seeing the Tidal Bore!! Such Excitement.

We checked the Tidal Bore news and found out that the next days was supposed to be a particularly big one. Do you know Tidal Bore? This is a phenomena found in long shallow bays, essentially ones dug by glaciers, that can cause a build-up of pressure at the end of the low tide. The outgoing tidal current is rushing hard into the incoming change of tide and there comes a time when the balance changes and suddenly, the tide is coming in. It is coming in on a wave that is can be a few feet high and will travel the entire length of the finger bay. Here is a link.

We drive down the Arm from Anchorage in the morning. Looking for the Bore Tide. Things are not looking too good. The water has that turbulent look that says the wave has already past this area. So we drive down a little further and get out at a spot that is supposed to be a great place to watch the wave and the surfers go by.

We park at Bird Point and walk out a long walkway to a viewpoint where a lot of people are standing and pointing. This seems good. But when we get there they tell us we just missed it. It went past like 5 minutes ago. Bummer. But a guy with a big camera laughs and says: "You can catch it. It is only going 12 MPH and you can go 55 on the highway. You can catch it a couple of times yet today if you hurry.

And so we hurried.

We caught it and then got ahead of it and found a good place to turn off and park and watch it come. It was pretty cool. no surfers when it got to us because it was a very rocky and churned stretch. But we saw it and heard it coming from a ways out. It was perhaps 4 or 5 feet tall and very rough. It churned past us and left a lot of toiling brown water. We watched it pass us both close up and a mile away across the entire stretch of Turnagain Arm. We watched it tumble its way upstream into a turn in the shoreline and around. I hope the pictures do it justice. 

Afterwards we had lunch at TurnAgain fish house and pub in the area. Had some really excellent fish and beer sitting outside in the sunshine. A glorious Alaska Day that, of course, lasted until around midnight.

Kayaking to Yellow Island - San Juans

I haven't paddled in the San Juans for a decade and never on the American side. In Late August my paddling club (OOPS) did a 4 day trip to Orcas Island in the San Juans up North of Seattle.  Take a look on google maps if you don't know the area. It is a bunch of small and large islands cut from glacier and tide and volcano and making up a delightful matrix of waterways that are protected from much of the ocean storms but still slip and surge with the wind and (especially) the tide. 

The club is staying at a resort campground on the west side of Orcas called West Beach. Most people are camping in tents or cars or campers and we meet every night to talk about what we did during the day and what single day paddle trips are going to be offered the next day. 

Oh, but first. We have to get there. Though you can fly to Orcas, in a small plane or float plane, most people get there by riding on a Washington State Ferry from Anacortes. I have never ridden this ferry before and never ridden any ferry towing a Scamp trailer. So I was a little apprehensive about the journey. Things like: Did I get the right trailer length reservation? How early do you really have to be there to guarantee that you will arrive "At the front of the check-in line at least 30 minutes before scheduled departure". 

For this particular journey it turned out that it was easy. We arrived about 70 minutes early and there was no line. We just drove up to the ticket booth and they processed us. Part of this is the ticket person using a measurement wheel to check the combined length of my Car-Scamp. I had said it was under 30 feet. Turns out I was something like 30feet 3 inches but the lady said she wasn't going to ding me for that. Of course, now I don't know if the next time I travel if I should say the same thing and expect the same thing to happen or what. How did I arrive at "Under 30 feet". Well, Subaru says my car is 17 and Scamp says the trailer is 13. But then.... you have a couple of inches of tow hitch and that is the rub. 

In Line at the Ferry

Anyway - when you arrive at the ferry terminal they put you into different lines that sort you by loading order. Normal sized cars go into one set of lines and they load first. The ferry we were on had 2 stories of car carrying. You drive up to the bottom deck and then the cars go up a ramp inside the ferry to the second floor where they spread out a bit and park. 

Once most of the cars are loaded they start with the trucks and trailers that have reservations. Vehicles with reservations have loading priority. Doesn't mean they load first, but it does mean they have the guarantee of loading. The over-length and over-height vehicles (which often include cars with kayaks on top) load on the main deck. This deck has a very high overhead. It was easy to pull the car and Scamp into this area and park behind the huge truck in front of us. The problem was that once we were parked, and the vehicle behind us closed us in, it was difficult to get out of the car and past the other vehicles to the stairs that went up to the passenger deck. 

You really don't want to stay with your vehicle during the trip, though I think you could. It is much more fun to be up on the passenger deck where there is ample good seating and lots of windows to look out and seen the wonderful scenery of the islands passing you by. 

This class of ferry (and most all ferries in the Washington system) are dual ended. That is, they don't really have a bow and a stern. They have a End 1 and End 2. They can travel in either direction equally well, which is pretty essential to being able to easily load and unload cars at the terminal points. 

The ride was about an hour and it was very smooth. In some places the channel is narrow and you get a good view of the rocks and trees and houses and such on the islands. We also saw many seals but no whales or Orcas. 

Riding the ferry was great fun for me. Also, once on the ferry, I felt I had accomplished most of my trip obligations and so the stress was off. 

For the first paddling day,  the 3 people traveling together in our vehicle (myself, my partner, and a friend) all decided to paddle the Yellow Island paddle out of West Sound.  All of the paddlers met in the morning and then drove the 15 minutes down to West Sound where we parked and launched near the community center. It was an overcast and occasionally rainy day but there was little wind or swell on the water. 

We launched and proceeded across the sound to a small group of islands. I like paddling close to shore. There is more to see and the water is calmer and easier to enjoy.  We were seeing seals a lot swimming around but very few other boats out. Paddling south down the west short of West Sound we saw a number of very nice homes built up on the cliffs. 

We turned the corner going west and then had to pass through a narrow passage between Orcas Island and Crane Island called  Pole Pass. Pole Pass is perhaps 50 feet wide and has a medium strong current through it that runs in different directions and speed based on the tide. Due to our timing, we had the current against us during both of our passages through the pass. Not a big deal, but it did string out the group a little. You also have to be more aware of motor craft when going through the pass since there isn't much room for larger boats and kayaks at the same time. 

From there we struck out West across the channel going from Crane Island to Reef Island. We could have taken a more direct approach to Yellow Island by going south around Reef, but decided to enjoy the scenery and some protection from the wind by Reef Island.  We turned south after Reef and head down to the next island,  McConnel, where we stopped on a sand spit for lunch. 

Shortest Portage and Lunch Spot

While eating lunch we were joined by a group of tandem kayaks that were people out on a several day kayak trip with a professional touring company. I should say at this point that my club is known for going interesting places with an emphasis on safety. Everyone out in kayaks in our group today was wearning cold water immersion gear and PFDs (Personal Flotation Devices). In Addition, everyone in the group had demonstrated that they knew how to get out of their boat, should they be capsized, and be able to get back into their boat with a little assistance from another kayaker. It is something we practice a lot in the group, especially if you are a Trip Organizer (TO). We all were wearing spray skirts (so a big wave wouldn't necessarily swamp your boat) and several of the members were carrying VHF marine radios that could be used to call for help.  The people on the tour, and the tour guides themselves, had pretty much none of this. They were wearing PFDs, but I don't know how you would have rescued them if they had gone in the water. It must be pretty hard to rescue a long heavy tandem and those people would have been getting pretty cold sitting in the ocean while the rescue occured. The group leaders were wearing jeans and sweat shirts, for gosh sake! In OOPS we say "Cotton Kills" and don't allow the wearing of cotton on cold water paddles. This is because cotton becomes more cold when wet. Something like wool or new high tech fabrics can still keep you (a little) warm when wet, but cotton just makes you colder. 

After lunch, we did the worlds shortest portage and carried our boats the 10 foot over the spit to the Yellow island side. Right ahead of us was our destination, Yellow Island.

Care Taker Lodge and Original Owners dwelling

Yellow island owned by the Nature Conservancy and access is restricted to one beach on the East side. We paddled around to the beach and then hiked up into the island. The island has very few trees on it compared to other islands and is being actively kept in a meadow state. The wild flowers are supposed to be really great here.  There is a reason there are not so many trees here, but I don't know what it is. I may do more research later, so check back here every decade or so.

Paddling in the Ocean, even a protected ocean like the sound, is very different from paddling on the river. I am not sure I can quite say why but I find the long rolling swells and occasional confused waters on the sound to be more challenging that what I usually encounter on even big rivers like the Columbia.  It takes a little getting use to.

I also discovered that I really don't like being out on a trip without my own chart to keep track of where we are. Even in a small place like the sound, it is easy to get confused about what little island is what and it makes me feel better to know where I am. I had thought that I would use my phone and mapping ap Gaia to track things. This is all well and good except that it had been raining off and on the entire time and my hands were so wet that the touch screen on my phone was not operational. May be time for a more updated phone since my partners phone was working just fine. Anyway, from now on I am going to try and have a paper (plasticized) chart on my fore deck. 

The trip back to our cars was a retracing of our steps. The group paddled mostly together. It was a long paddle. We ended up going almost 12 miles and were pretty tired when we turned to make that last big crossing over West Sound back to where our cars were parked. And THEN we had to lift the boats up the 20 foot of stairs and onto the cars.  Always try and save some energy for the whole boat loading on cars thing.