Driving around the lake in the still gray light
Stifling ice cloud blankets this world with cold
Pulls wraiths of mist from a steely mirror
Ahead a faint haze of gold, a glimpse of opening
Snow white black rock ridge against blue sky
And the growing glow of dawn
There we ascend the steepest path
A steady pace slows the freezing sweat
Breathe in the clarion air, free in the flow
Perch a moment in the mountain sun
Then sink back below the valley fog
Finding myself with four days without work or social obligations (the latter rather unusual for early winter in Wallowa County!), I made plans for a backpack in an area I hadn't been before - Cook Creek and Cherry Creek drainages on either side of Dead Horse Ridge.
I brought my dog Jasper and a friend's dog Noodle along on this adventure. On our drive out, we saw lots of second-season elk hunters sitting in their rigs or at their big wall tent encampments. Once on the trail, we didn't see a single person. And there was good reason for that.
The switchbacks down to Cook Creek from Dead Horse Ridge were a fairly well maintained, obvious trail, but along the creek it was a different story. Shrubs grew in thickly along much of the rocky floodplain, and the trail appeared and faded and interwove with various game trails. The dogs did okay in their space a couple feet from the ground, but I spent a lot of time with my arms in front of my face pushing my way through branches, sometimes feeling like I was being birthed out of a copse of shrubs when I was finally able to push through. Very occasionally I'd see evidence of other human visitors - a few cut stobs, a strand of blue baling twine, a screwdriver lost along the way. But overall it felt very wild and remote.
It was cool and shady in mid-November, with the sun barely reaching over the ridgelines when the trail hopped up on the hillsides through a few sections. We passed swampy pools of cattails, an abundance of thimbleberry stems, and a beautiful stretch of mature, even old-growth alder gallery. There were also prickly roses and as I got further downstream, occasional blackberries vines and thorny young hackberry trees. Two fires had burned through parts of this drainages in the past 25 years, and burned hot enough to kill large trees through some sections.
Eventually the sunlight faded from the ridgelines above us, and we found a reasonably flat spot to camp up above the creek near the outlet of Wild Canyon. With rain on the way, I set up the tent quickly and unloaded my gear. But where was my sleeping pad? With a shock, I realized it had been ripped off the side of my pack somewhere along our ~5 miles bushwhack! I took my headlamp and water bottles to fill and we backtracked for a little bit, hoping I had lost it recently, but not finding it. I crouched by the creek in the dark filtering and collecting water for cooking my dinner, accepting that I would have a hard bed for the night. Luckily I had two dogs to keep me warm.
Camp at the mouth of Wild Canyon.
I resolved to push on to try to get to the hot spring the next morning, which according to the map was only a couple miles further down the creek. But I also felt that I should abandon my plans to continue on the loop up towards Cherry Creek, and instead pack up camp and head back the way I had came after that to try to find my sleeping pad. The morning was cool and foggy after the rain, and the sun failed to lift the clouds. We made slow and soaking progress through the wet brush downstream and I decided to turn back a little while after crossing the creek past the mouth of Dry Creek, where pieces of the old trail junction sign still hung on. I gazed longingly up at the faint traces of the high trail heading up over the ridge to Cherry Creek.
In October, Shane and I drove to Colorado for his cousin's wedding outside of Boulder, and we were able to squeeze in two flatwater float trips on the way there and back. The second trip was floating the Ruby-Horsethief section of the Colorado River. Old friends Janyne and Andrew had applied for a last minute permit so they could get their cataraft out on a river before the warm season came to a close.
We met up at a huge BLM campground north of Fruita well after sunset. Janyne and Andrew were joined by two friends from their hometown of Susanville, one of whom had a 4 lb toy poodle in tow because they were in the middle of moving to southern Colorado. So we had a "dog" along for the float. We all caught up or made introductions over a couple beers then crashed in our tents for the night.
This section of the Colorado is a very accessible float in terms of technical difficulty and remoteness, and thus very popular as far as these types of trips go. I think every other group that was launching the same day as us was already at the boat ramp when we got there, and with our rigs and gear there too, the ramp was pretty much full. We rigged our array of watercrafts - the cataraft, two inflatable kayaks, and a canoe - and shuttled the vehicle to the takeout, then we launched in the mid-afternoon sun.
The scene at the Loma Boat Launch.
This was my first trip where we had reserved, designated campsites where we would be stopping each night. Each site had limits on the number of people (including dogs) that could stay there, and every site we stayed at was nice, often including some large cottonwoods or at least large native shrubs as visual screens between each of our tents and our neighbors.
On our third day, our next campsite was less than a quarter mile downstream on the same large floodplain bar that we had stayed on the previous night, so all we had to do was lug our gear down a well-used trail and float our boats for less than five minutes. This gave us lots of time for an exploratory hike up Mee Canyon. High cirrus clouds signaled a change in weather, and that evening brought blustery winds and heavy rain, but we weathered the storm in the good spirits under Andrew's Walmart tarp shelter.
