This week's hike made last week's cliff dive seem like a cake walk. But where there is a will, there is a way. However, I will admit that this hike pushed me to my limits, mentally and physically and I came to the very edge of myself. You learn a lot when you make it to your edge I must say. I found myself begging my dog for her tear ducts so I could just cry and get it over with. I also had a finger in the air and was yelling at God. But let me start by telling you how I got into this predicament.
Some time ago I had seen a picture of a cave opening facing a mountain and thought that was completely enchanting and I had to someday find this cave and watch the sunrise from that very spot. Of course everything I read also indicated that the cave is a treacherous scramble down from a cliff off a peak where a lookout tower once stood in central Oregon. That was not my problem though. My problem was that a huge forest fire had swept through this area in 2020. It burned hot and fast, decimating the area. So I had to wait. I figured summer of 2023 would be my time. It was written in my bucket list hiking log for 2023, so I needed to find a way.
There were 2 main ways to get to this hike. One a longer drive, with a short hike and the other a shorter drive with a longer hike. I instantly knew the longer hike was the way for me! But as I did more research on this area, I learned that all forest service roads anywhere near the hike were completely closed due to the fire, so both of these hikes were no longer options. That being said, I can be stubborn.....especially when I get my heart set on an idea. It will eat away at me until I do it. So I did more research. From what I could tell there was another way.....it would just involve a LOT of hiking. Initially I thought it could be done in 24 miles, but it turned out to be a 30 mile investment, with a 4000 foot gain and then loss in elevation.
I ditched my truck down along a major highway near the area trying to make it look like I left it near someone's driveway as a visitor and not that I was a hiker or that it had broken down. The last thing I wanted was for my beloved truck to get a tow and come back after a long hike to my truck and emergency gear foot locker being gone. This was a busy highway so I got some quick weird looks from other drivers as I threw my huge pack on my back and tied my dogs to me and started to run down a side road away from my truck. I can only imagine what they were thinking this crazy woman was up to!
Hiking on dirt roads is not very enchanting, especially when it turned out the one I was on had an active logging operation going on. At first I tried to act invisible to the loggers, thinking that if I didn't make eye contact they wouldn't see me. Other times we dove off the road into blackberry bushes to hide. But the worst moment was in the heart of the logging, where a huge CAT was digging and making a roadway. Every 60 seconds or so he would pick up huge boulders in his bucket and do a quick spin to drop them behind him. In between these drops he would use his bucket to scrape the soil and fill a ditch. I had to pass right next to him, right where he would do his drops. There was no other option and he kept spinning and dropping his loads with huge BOOMS! Surprisingly the dogs didn't seem to mind this and just watched him work. I think Josie didn't see there was a human inside the CAT, otherwise she would have lost it. I waved my arms and tried to get the driver's attention. I needed him to pause for just a moment and not crush us with his boulder drops. I moved to his right and then his left. He could not seem to see us at all. I suppose he was not expecting a hiker in the midst of a logging operation on a dusty steep back road. So after waiting about 5 minutes, I decided we would time a run. He had just dumped a load and seemed to be back to scrapping when I counted down to the girls. One, two, three, RUN!!! I yelled. Feeling like I was playing a life-size game of Frogger, we darted behind him praying he wouldn't spin just then. We got to the other side and I don't think he ever even knew we were there. I shook my head and laughed as we continued.
After about 10.5 miles on the road, we found a bit of a surprise in the forest. There was a small shelter tucked into the side of the road right where it split into two different directions. As a lover of shelters in the middle of nowhere, I was ecstatic that the door with its massive rusted metal latch was unlocked and we could check it out. Someone had even left a deck of cards on one of the tables inside! How inviting it was.
The shelter even had a working stove inside and outhouse just outside, which I was obliged to use before we continued onward and upward. Up until this point, we had been steadily climbing without seeming to ever get a break. Every time I thought the road couldn't get steeper, it would. Temps were in the mid 80's today and this was a pretty dry hike. We found a couple small springs, but they were far apart. I had packed in 5 liters of water, which we were conserving as much as possible. But with the 4000 foot climb on the hot day, we were all drinking a lot. By the time we hit about 14 miles of hiking, we were all feeling pretty tired. I was already growing mentally exhausted from route finding as there were no signs to tell me the way and I had to make some pure out and out guesses, knowing that if I was wrong, we would be backtracking for miles. As always, I never have a GPS or phone or anything other than a paper map. There is no adventure or challenge with technology on the trail I say! Luckily at the shelter when I did my 50/50 toss up, I chose to go right and that was correct.
The real challenge came in that the hardest part of our climb for the whole day was going to be in the last mile to the peak when we were already very weary. Then we would still have to find the elusive cave opening once we got to the peak. It was growing late in the day as it took almost 4 hours to drive here, and then all the hiking we had already done had sucked up time. So we had to push. We had to find our second wind. We were excited when we saw our first views of Mt. Jefferson and then of the Pinnacle I knew was making us close to the summit. We just had to figure out a way to get through the burns to get there!
This was so much harder than I ever would have imagined. I had no idea of the truly complete and utter collateral damage that was caused by this fire. This thing burned so fast and hot that I have never seen such devastation and I have hiked through a lot of wild fire aftermath. This one literally burned the soil and even the rocks. Everything was turning to dust and ash. It was a complete mess and any signs of trail were long since obliterated.
It was one thing to hike in these conditions when the road was somewhat flat or only gently ascending. But the final push to the summit would gain 700 feet in about a half mile. That is steep and involved a lot of hand work as well as foot work. The ground was sliding out underneath us. Since the soils had turned to ash and dust, these steep sections caused us to slide down 2 feet for every foot we gained. It was true misery! We would grab onto burned and charred tree trunks to try to pull ourselves up, covering ourselves in black soot as we did. The blackened and charred skin off the trees had fallen everywhere causing us to walk on many layers of disintegrating bark pieces that would slide out from under us or try to trip us on the cliff walk. So many of the trees had fallen to the ground that our under-over game covered our legs and arms in blackened soot. We were a mess and felt like we were barely gaining any ground at all. I was just moving upwards with instinct trying to attain the summit. It seemed impossible. Beyond impossible. I could feel the discouragement welling up inside me. It was starting to sink in that I might be driving 8 hours round trip and hiking a total of 30 miles to get within a couple hundred feet of the cave I have dreamed of for years, only to not be able to obtain it. The thought pierced me with such force that I could hardly speak, let alone think. The harder I pushed and forced our way up, the more we slid and fell, got back up and then slid and fell some more. I was becoming more bruised and scratched by the moment. Having blood running down my legs seemed to be a common hiking theme lately. At one point, I said out-loud that if this is what hiking had become, I would never hike another trail the rest of my life! I realized that no one should be on this trail until it has had years of maintenance and repair! How I ended up here was surely due to my own stubborn nature!
I could hear and feel the voices coming at me. The one of discouragement was telling me that the sun was setting and we would be stuck on this cliff of death and charred ground overnight. It told me that there was not even one tiny patch of flat ground to set up a camp and we would be sitting up all night straddling a burned up tree trunk to keep from falling. The voice insisted we would never have time to descend now before it was dark and it was already too late. I knew he was right. The last piece of flat ground even halfway suitable to camp on was miles back now. The shelter was about 5 miles back, and I found my mind wishing we could just go there. But it was too late and that was no longer an option. We were literally growing more and more screwed by the moment and the voice kept telling me all about it. But at the same time, my grit and determination consumed me. I started to make bad decisions and could feel myself just circling and going back and forth over the same ground trying to find a way to get up and through it. I was wasting more time searching. There are no words in me to describe the misery that this was. I believe it was at this point that I asked Nova to borrow her tear ducts as I needed to cry and could not. I don't do emotion....unless it is anger or hunger.
But then I realized that hunger was probably part of my problem. I calculated back what I had eaten since I had awoken that morning. It was only 300 calories. I was not hungry in the least, but knew my body was not at its best just then because I wasn't taking care of it. I was also wildly dehydrated and that was not helping either. I looked at my girls and they appeared as miserable as I was. "That is it!!" I yelled. "I am done. We are leaving!!" I didn't even know where to go. I pointed my finger to the sky and yelled at God. "Father," I shouted, "If you want me to find this cave you better give me a real fast clear sign right now. Because I am DONE!!! Do you hear me???? DONE!!!!!"
I instantly felt His quiet answer. "Go up and to your left." He calmly spoke into my heart and mind. I paused and didn't move. "What?" I whispered. "Go up and to your left." was the quiet response once more. I did as I was told. Not 30 feet up that cliff from where I had been standing, I found a section of trail so intact as to appear as if a fire had never touched it. It was only a short section of trail, but it was enough to get me back on track and see that I was indeed on the first saddle. I could now see the way to climb to the second saddle and the summit. We moved fast as if we had been given wings. The relief of hitting the top was unbelievable! We had flat ground suitable for camping!! We were saved from a wretched night just as the sun was setting and darkness was really descending! I never thought I would be so happy to see a burned, ashy flat piece of earth in my life!
But this was not my goal. God told me to keep going just a little longer, to dig a little deeper. He knew that in my heart, I wanted to be in the cave. I had a place to come back to now if it didn't work at least. At first I dropped down and moved south toward a rocky outcropping that I was sure would hide the mouth of the cave. But a bad feeling arose in me and as I looked to the east. I knew that this could not be the way. The mountain had to be directly across from the cave opening and I was moving too far away from it going in that direction. I turned around, re-climbing up to the saddle to try again. I remembered that I had instructions from a guide book that said once you are on the saddle, you need to walk toward the mountain on a ridge and then look for the treacherous scramble trail down the rocky cliff. This author had said that only experienced climbers should attempt this. I wondered how he felt about dogs.
Since the main trail had been obliterated from the fire, any scramble trail was long since gone. We would make our own I determined as it grew darker and darker. We did that and found ourselves staring down the shear face of a cliff drop. That is not a scramble trail by any means! That is nothing but death. So we moved to skirt this shear drop and worked our way holding tight to the rocks and continuing to climb over downed blackened trees. Nova was so tired that she could no longer jump over the trees and I had to lift her over each one, carefully setting her down on the other side. My energy reserves were fried and my body was screaming at me for rest. I could no longer turn my head to the right, but had to turn my entire body due to the pain in my neck and shoulder. My pack felt like it weighed a hundred pounds as we climbed over the logs and lowered ourselves on boulders cracking and breaking from the heat of the fire and our slight weight on them. You couldn't trust any hand-hold or foot-hold at this point.
As we had found a way lower along the cliff's edge, we started to turn back in front of it on a tiny and steep outcropping. Many times I found myself sitting on my rear-end and lowering myself from rocks to rocks with my hands, scrapping the bottom of my pack along as I went. I tried to keep both dogs behind me now so I could have total control. I still could not see any sign of a cave. It was darker and darker and I was having trouble seeing clearly. I didn't have a free hand to get a flashlight out. My mouth felt as dry as if I had been swallowing cotton.....always a sign of fear for me. I could feel myself still sweating even though it was almost 9pm at night and we were out of the sun. That was fear sweat and not from heat I knew. At this point, I felt that if we didn't find the cave, we would not have enough light to climb back up to the flat saddle above and might as well throw ourselves to our death off the cliff below us. I was starting to feel a little crazy, but there was this hope welling up inside me that we were almost there. I kept hearing the gentle phrase, "Just a little farther. Just a little farther" As we struggled around a sharp corner, using our hands to keep from falling while all tied together, I caught my breath. There it was!! I could see the opening!!! How every single cell that made up my body screamed together in joy in that moment. My next photo was my first from inside that cave.
The utter blackness of the cave, suddenly made it seem bright as day outside! It was surreal. But my first thought was to make sure we were alone in the cave. I didn't especially want to startle a bear as we walked into the 100-foot deep cavern. I dug out a flashlight and scanned my surroundings. There was a loud dripping sound from water pouring down the back wall like a leaky shower. The red sand and gravel at my feet was like quicksand in places from all the water running through it. The surface was strongly slanted toward the cave opening. But we were apparently alone and my light caught sight of a slightly level section up high to the right that also seemed to be out of the worst of the water. "There is our bed girls." I said out-loud, startling us all by the loud echo this caused! This then made me giggle, which also made a loud and strange echo. Oh, that was going to take some getting use to! We quickly set up camp and I lit a small votive candle I had packed for the occasion. There is nothing like a flickering candle to make any inhospitable location suddenly feel just like home! We were not even done setting up camp when we noticed the bats were starting to swoop in and out.
I wanted to get a good look inside the cave and really explore its nooks and crannies, but knew that would have to wait until morning. Right now, all I could think about was crawling into my sleeping bag and not moving. I didn't even bother to eat a thing. I was dead tired. More mentally than physically I am pretty sure! We watched stars come out over the mountain seven miles to our east and enjoyed all the bat activity. I should say, I enjoyed the bats. Josie kept jumping up when they were making all kinds of loud noises up and behind us. Sometimes it sounded like they were fighting. They would occasionally seem to drop large things and then we would hear rustling down at our level. I wondered if they had knocked each other down and were walking toward us on the cave floor. It surprised me just how much noise they made for being such small creatures. It sounded like we were spending the night with large vampires, which I am sure is what Josie the Wolf was convinced of! The only real vampires though, were the hordes of cave mosquitos that attacked us. I really wanted the bats to come be our friends then!! But eventually we all slept like the dead. When we finally awoke come dawn, the girls seemed to be very confused as to how we ended up inside a cave!
I was a whole new woman on this new day. The misery of yesterday was behind me. I had such a deep soul quenching satisfaction that we made it. It was almost unreal that we got to spend the night in the cave and watch the sunrise from our comfy and cozy bed. The candle had stayed lit almost all night long and created the most wonderful atmosphere with the dripping water, stars over Mt. Jefferson and bat friends. I started to look around the cave as the light changed from darkness to daylight. The walls in places were deeply cracked and looked as if big chunks would give way at any moment. There were a variety of colors to the rocks here, but red was the dominant one, the same as the floor. As the sun rose, it was as if the finger of God was pointing into the cave with me. He reminded me how I had pointed up at him late last night. "You were right and thank you so much!" I told Him. "I could never have done this without you Father! I didn't even have faith the size of a mustard seed that we would make it. But you knew."
This is surely what it is like to look out God's very own window I thought. I never wanted to leave and I don't think the girls did either! I took some time to explore while the girls stayed in their beds, too tired to move yet.
Eventually we had to leave, even though I was secretly dreading the climb out for the first few miles at least. We had 15 miles to get back to our truck today, so we needed to get going. I was worried if my truck would still be there, and figured the sooner we got back the better. I knew I was switched back on mentally, when I started to wonder if my pack shadow made me look fat. No wonder people take one look at me on the trail and always comment about how big my pack is on my frame I realized with a smile! I looked like walking kit.
The climb down was not nearly as difficult as the way up. I could see where I had gone so wrong while on the way down and did not make the same mistakes. Yes, we were still slipping and sliding and fighting to climb over and under downed trees. Yes, we were struggling with all the downed bark and soot. But being fresh after a night's sleep in heaven, just made everything seem better. I was still not yet hungry and had not broken my fast, but knew I would soon. I had my thermos of noodles that was suppose to be my dinner last night to eat. Nothing like cold noodles at 8am in the morning I thought. I could feel that the trail was sorry he had hurt my feelings and started to work at wooing me. It didn't take long with his beautiful vistas and plentiful berries before I was sufficiently wooed. "Okay, okay", I said. "I will hike again."
Yes, I know my hands are disgustingly dirty. I didn't have enough water to wash and had to just wipe them on my shorts after trying to wash them in the cave shower! Don't judge. The berries still tasted divine! We hiked out hard and fast during the cooler morning hours. I will admit that miles 27-30 were excruciatingly painful. I had developed terrible blisters on both feet and was doing anything I could to take my mind off the pain. I thought about the hike and calculated our miles and timing. We were completing 30 miles in 12 hours of hike time. This is slow for us, but due to the challenges, I accepted it. I was not going to pick apart our performance this time. We made it. That was all that mattered to me. We experienced pain, perseverance, and patience. The 3 big P's of hiking and life really. We might have had a mental breakdown, but we ultimately pushed through and accomplished what we set out to do. We just need to learn to do this in all things in life I suppose. Push through when you don't even have faith the size of a tiny mustard seed. One laced up and booted foot in front of the other.
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