Let me share a good life lesson with you.....using a beaver damn to cross a raging deep river is not necessarily the wisest plan. While it did work, it was very, very difficult and the risk was just plain stupid if I am being honest with you. I suppose my only defense is that I was left unsupervised and once again I had a goal stuck in my brain that I could not let go of. Crossing the damn was the only good way to achieve my goal and failure was not an option at that moment.
For this second hike in November, I had decided to try out a new series of trails for us down near Mt. Hood. It was going to take us to over 5000 feet of elevation to a special meadow that is generally very popular to visit. However, we were attempting it from a back door series of trails that would be just over 15 miles of hiking. I had been to this meadow once before in the summer time from the standard approach on the opposite side. This time however, I knew that at some point, we would be running into snow. I was not sure if the snow would be after only a couple of miles or at the very end. I was not sure if there would be a lot or a little. That was all going to be a mystery to unfold as we climbed. I figured we would hike as long and as hard as we could and give it our best go to reach the meadow beneath the mountain, even in November.
The trail started out on the backside of a loop that is also very popular near a waterfall on the East side of Mt. Hood. This short section of trail was immaculately maintained. It was almost as if someone had swept and raked it clean. All downed trees were cut and pushed off the trail. It was a mile and a half of easy going hiking before we hit our first connector trail junction. That is when everything started to change.
The temperatures on the lower section of trail today were in the upper 30's. But at least we were not getting any precipitation and the winds were calm, so we were staying fairly warm. Nova was wearing a new snow suit today with a fur lined collar, so she was extra toasty and water proof!
Things were going fairly well as we hiked along for about 4 miles. Then we hit a river that needed to be crossed. The problem was it was running deep and cold and it was fairly wide. It was significant enough that there were white water rapids in sections. I looked up the river to our right and could see a small diameter log spanning the river. It had no bark on it and was barely above the level of the river. It was broken in the middle and I instantly knew that it would be a terrible idea to cross on it. First it would be impossibly slippery, but second I was quite sure it would not hold the weight of all of us when we hit the broken section in the center. So I crossed it off my list as a passage option across the river. I looked straight ahead and knew we could ford it.....but then we would be wet and very cold for at least another 11 miles. I looked to our left and saw a giant log jam/beaver damn. It spanned the river enough to be an option. But it was made up of what looked to be a hundred logs and branches of all different sizes. At least it was wide I thought to myself. We moved downstream toward the beaver damn.
The girls knew what to do and climbed out onto the log jam. Josie was leading the way, with myself in second place and Nova behind me. We pretty quickly discovered that all the logs were coated in a layer of ice that had all three of us slipping and battling for our footing. I was holding onto the logs as we moved. Of course we were still all tied together and the lines kept getting tangled in all the branches forcing me to backtrack or lean one way or another to get them unloosed from the many fingers reaching out to snag us. At times I had to sit down, other times I was holding on with just my upper body as my feet slipped out from underneath me. Each of us, at least once, had a leg drop down through the jumbled mess and into the damn and it made me gasp each time fearing we were going to fall through into the water. When we were about half way across, Josie decided to go onto a lower section on the right while Nova and I stayed to the left and were higher up. Suddenly Josie slipped on the ice and plunged down into the frigid water below. I realized with a shock that it was even deeper there than I expected when she fully submerged. But worse yet, was when I saw the current dragging her body under the log jam. She was fighting to keep her head above water as her body was being pulled beneath the damn. I wrapped my thighs around an ice covered log I had been straddling and grabbed her line with my arms to pull with all my might against her harness. She was fighting and clawing now to climb back up onto the beaver damn as I pulled and pulled against her 60 pounds of body weight, probably 8 pounds of her pack and harness weight and all the water fighting against us. Luckily Nova did not move and stayed by my left side during this entire battle. Once I got Josie back up on to the logs, we took a moment to catch our breath and decided to continue across. The thought did briefly dawn on me that I should probably just go back, but that would mean our hike would only be 8 miles and we wouldn't make it to the meadow. So onward we pushed.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. Psalm 139:9-10
The remaining half of the beaver damn crossing was uneventful in comparison to what just happened and I think I mentally blocked most of it out as adrenaline was coursing through me. But we made it to the other side where I bent over to put my hands on my knees and curse a few times. Josie was shaking the water out of her fur and acting happy as could be. Nova and I looked at each other and I could feel her curse words too. "Okay guys", I quietly said to them, "let's get to this meadow as fast as we can. We HAVE to be back to this river before dark. There is NO way we can do that again in the dark! No way!"
But that is when the next curse truly started. From the river forward, the trail was wildly unmaintained. There were downed logs everywhere. Big ones, little ones, branches....it was a mess. This is what the trail looked like....for the next four miles!
We played the under over game more times than ever before. There were moments when I think we spent more time walking on the backs of trees than on the ground. The girls would often try to jump from tree to tree, but since they were also coated in ice, they were slick and this would cause the girls to slip and fall. I climbed up and down, up and down between each tree. It was beyond physically draining I must say. Even the girls got to a point where they just wanted to crawl under and Nova had me lifting her over many. Knowing that I would spend four miles now to the meadow and four miles back from the meadow climbing over and under trees meant that we were going to be immensely slowed down. I eventually lost count of the number of trees we climbed....one hundred, two hundred.....a million.....it didn't matter anymore. It was terrible and I found myself cursing the trail out loud. I wanted to turn around more than anything in the world. I would have paid money to get off that trail right then. But I was not about to let us almost die on a beaver damn to then not make our goal. I am far too stubborn for that! So we pushed onward and upward very begrudgingly. Our spirits lifted at one point when the sun pierced the thick forest above us to shine some light into our darkness. It had been growing colder and we could see our breath, but when the sun hit Josie's still wet body, she was literally steaming.
Before long there was snow on the ground and we easily could feel the change in temperature around us. We were still fighting downed trees and now when we had to climb under we were crawling on snow instead of dirt. I had not yet put my gloves on, so this quickly became painful. But I knew we were close to the meadow, so I didn't want to take the time to drop my pack to retrieve them. I would just suffer through the burning in my hands that the snow and ice created. I was finding myself praying to my Father in Heaven to give me the tenacity to make it to the meadow. I needed strength on this day or I would never make it. I realized that my everything was hurting by this time from the physical exertion the downed trees required of us. I already knew I had terrible bruises on my right knee and left thigh from climbing over them and having branches scrap and poke through my thick snow pants. The human inside me wanted to quit. The human inside me was screaming to quit. "Please God, please give me the endurance I need and let the meadow come soon!" I begged. It felt like we had gone 20 miles already, but I knew this not to be true.
When we did see the first snows as we climbed higher, Josie happily started to eat her beloved snow cones and then make snow angels right on the trail. I forced myself to stop and enjoy the beauty of the trail around us like she did. There was not another human out here and we had this gorgeous serene forest under the mountain all to ourselves. If the Wolf could fall off the beaver damn into cold raging waters, almost being pulled to her death, and then could eat snow cones and make snow angels, then I could damn well stop feeling angry and sorry for myself about the terrible obstacles on the trail and just live in the moment. So I closed my eyes and reopened them anew to a trail coated in snow and beauty.
I knew we were close to the meadow when suddenly the trail was clear of the downed trees and seemed to be maintained again. My misery and frustration almost immediately left me with the elation that we were surely going to be at the meadow very soon. We had made it! "Thank you God!!" I said out loud. Then I saw him. Mt. Hood was peaking at me through the trees. The meadow was just across one more small creek, and then across some thick ice and deeper snow drifts. But we had really lucked out that the snow was not much deeper! So I was thankful for that.
All around the meadow, ours were the only footprints in the snow except for animals. I smiled knowing how hard this was and that no one else was making it up here from any of the many trail approaches to the meadow. We should be proud of ourselves I thought.....or appalled at our stupidity....either way, we were the only ones here. But I could feel myself shivering as we slowed down to savor the views around the mountain and meadow. We were going to need to eat our supper quickly and keep moving very soon. I wished I had more time to spend, but that second beaver damn crossing weighed heavy on my mind. We found the small wooden shelter at the end of the meadow to set up for our meal. It instantly felt warmer inside the 3-sided shelter.
After eating and watching the sun grow lower in the sky kissing the side of the mountain, I threw on my extra puffer vest from my pack and donned my hat and gloves. I will admit, I was freezing despite the hot soup I had just inhaled. It was getting late, but I figured we had another hour before it got dark so we should easily make it to the beaver damn in time. We said our goodbye's to the mountain before starting our fast descent.
What I had somehow missed in all my calculations was daylight savings time. This was my first hike since then and I had forgotten that this would mean it would be dark by 5pm instead of 6pm this time of year. We were running when we could between the downed trees, but there was just no way we could do it. It was dark within 30 minutes of leaving the mountain. We would have no choice but to cross that beaver damn in pitch blackness. I cursed at myself again. Doing it the first time was almost impossible, doing it while holding a flashlight and trying to make sure all three of us could see our footings was going to be an adventure like no other. My thoughts started to twist and tangle themselves around all the terrible things that might happen to us at the beaver damn. If we fell through or got sucked under by the current we could easily drown or freeze to death. No one would ever think to find us under a log jam in the river either! Our bodies would probably only be discovered when pieces of us started to slough off come spring and be washed down river to pour over the famous waterfall a few miles from here. That would surely be disturbing for someone to see I thought to myself with an ironic chuckle. "Hey Sally, is that a human head that just came over the waterfall??"
The closer we came to the river, the more I could feel my body having a strong and growing fear response. I was feeling a strong urge to urinate, my mouth was becoming as dry as if I was swallowing cotton balls and I could feel my blood pumping harder. My adrenaline was ramping up for sure. My mind was strangely staying fairly calm. I had faith that God had a hold of us. I was calmly processing all my thoughts and worries and was following my mantra to put on my big girl panties and suck it up. I was reasoning out a game plan to cross the damn. We got through the last of the downed trees and could hear the river getting closer as we dropped in elevation. We were out of the snow now, but the ground was somehow icier than it was earlier. The beam of my flashlight was catching all the ice crystals and it looked like we were surrounded by diamonds. I was wishing I had packed my micro-spikes instead of my full crampons to give me better traction on the icy ground.
I had a new flashlight with us today. After last week's disconcerting moment with the growling creature and the inability of my wimpy flashlight to show me what that was, I decided to up my flashlight game. I had just purchased a light that would be 300,000 lumens instead of the 300 lumens all my other lights were. I was excited to use it, but I had unfortunately put it in Josie's backpack at the start of the hike. While the light was waterproof, I doubted it was fully submergeable. It luckily turned on just fine after Josie's dip in the river, but it kept randomly shorting out and leaving us in utter darkness as we hiked. I would have to shake it and hit it against the palm of my hand to get it to come back on.
When we hit the beaver damn, the logs were also covered in thicker ice than our first time across. But we slide out onto the first couple of logs and were just maneuvering to get higher up onto the pile when I slipped and had to grasp onto a log with my arms to keep from going into the icy cold waters below. Just as I did that, the flashlight went out cold. Total blackness ensued. I shook the light....nothing. I hit it....nothing.
My language became very colorful in this moment as I also told the girls to not move a muscle. We were all precariously perched on icy logs over the deepest and fastest section of the river in total darkness while tied together. I could not see my hand in front of my face. I used my mouth to pull one of my gloves off as I still clung to the log with my arms. Once I had my fingers free, I could feel for the switch and thankfully got the light to come back on. "Oh thank God." I said out loud around the glove still in my mouth. "Okay Guys, let's get across this thing before that happens again." We slowly shuffled and fought our way across, untangling the leashes and slipping on ice the whole way. Once again our legs would pierce down into the beaver damn and I found myself apologizing to any beavers that might be inside for our rude interruption. I could only imagine what they must be thinking. I knew my mind was staying sharp despite the fear, when I caught myself telling the girls not to worry. If we fell into the beaver damn, I told them, perhaps they would be like Mr. and Mrs Beaver from CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia who would offer us warm tea and call us dear.
Just as we were almost to the other side, Josie does what Josie always does and made a giant flying leap, forgetting she was attached to us. This made her end up slipping and falling backwards into the water and about ripped me in half as I clung to a log to keep from being pulled into the water myself. But the water was thankfully much more shallow here and Josie did not need any rescuing. Nova and I slowly climbed down and almost kissed the sand when we landed on the other side. I immediately ate some candy as I knew I would need the sugar to counteract the crashing adrenaline I was about to experience. Experience has taught me well that I would not want an adrenaline crash when I still had 4 miles to hike out in the dark. I could feel the adrenaline spike still in my body though as my internal temperature seemed on fire. I was feeling quite warm, but knew that had nothing to do with temperature, so did not peel off any layers. Those final four miles went fairly quickly and before we knew it, we were back to our truck changing into clean dry gear for the drive home.
Before I started to drink from my thermos of hot cocoa though, I decided to check my temperature despite still feeling quite warm. Turns out I was 94 degrees. "Oh, ho ho" I chuckled. "Let the 'see how low we can go' winter temperature games begin!" Last season I had reached what is considered Critical Hypothermia levels at being at or under 92 degrees. I can't wait to see what this season brings as that challenge is surely more fun than crossing beaver damns at night!
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