EAGLE CREEK TRAIL: Last Day of the Year

Overnight, supposedly, the temperature bottomed out at 15 degrees Fahrenheit.

With only a 20% chance of precipitation, the odds seemed good for a survivable trip up the Eagle Creek Trail.

The only places that were icy were the places where water perpetually drips down and oozes out of the basalt layer cake that makes up the cliffs to Eagle Creek's canyon.

Perversely, the only places that were icy were also the places that have the greatest exposure to heights.

The water was running much higher than I've become accustomed to, no doubt because of all the recent rain, and the new broad banks made a view of the falls from the lower viewpoint problematical. The water runs ice cold, even in the summer, and the last time I tried to wade out for a shot of the now hidden iconic-waterfall-scene, the nerve connection between foot and brain was numbed so quickly that I endangered the well being of my photo gear as I teetered crazily on senseless pegs, unable to tell if my feet found purchase on the slippery rocks...indeed, unable to tell if I even had feet. Even after leaving the water, my feet continued to experience a pain that resembled the most terrible moments of brain freeze - the pain caused by drinking a slushy ice drink too quickly.

However, Monkey-cam hadn't seen the punchbowl since the ill fated kayak expedition of October 2007. I suppose I could have explained the physiological consequences of wading in freezing cold ice water when the air temperature is somewhere between 15 and 32 degrees, but Monkey-cam continues to be stubborn and contrary and sometimes it's just easier to let him learn by experience.

In this photo, you can see Monkey-cam has managed to wade out far enough to get a suitable viewpoint. Thankfully, this is the year that Monkey-cam has finally learned to wear pants.

The view as seen by Monkey-cam.

Monkey-cam was busy sniffing for truffles or mushrooms or something as we progressed along the trail. He noticed that delicate ice filaments were seemingly extruding out of the soil, sometimes even pushing the top layer of soil inches into the air, sometimes just curling into pretty good impressions of hair curlers. He tried to pantomime several theories explaining the mechanism behind this phenomenon, but none were conclusive.

It is hard, and probably will remain hard to get unobstructed pictures of punchbowl falls from the fenced off viewing area as long as trees and bushes continue to grow. It is obvious that many people disregard the fences and scramble down to alternate viewing points. To be honest, I probably would have disregarded the fence myself, except that the seemingly intentionally ironical placement of ice caused me to imagine how foolish my death by slipping headlong into a waterfall plunge-bowl would appear in the next day's headlines. "Portland Man Slips to His Death at Eagle Creek: Ice is Slippery Notes ranger."

So, making do with the view from behind the fence, I also convinced Monkey-cam to climb out on a tree and tape a single red leaf to a strategically positioned branch, "Let's do that red and green color contrast trick we learned from National Geographic." I said.

It works every time.

In this picture, Monkey-cam takes my picture to prove that I am also an accomplished pants wearer.

This is the view I saw (from the same vantage point) which was supposed to show you how the rays of the sun sparkled so dramatically through crystal ice prisms. I guess sparkling is a function of change over time and not so well suited for still photography.

The path at High Bridge was another slippery area that made the normally psychologically affirming presence of the cable-handrail more of a pragmatic lifeline on which one could practice a death-grip.

FATHER'S DAY

My dad died a long time ago when I was away at college.

Ever since, Father’s Day hasn’t been one of the more outstanding celebratory days. It isn’t because I can’t remember a lot of positive things about my dad, it’s more about a hole that I can’t seem to measure and which never really fills up.

Cancer introduced itself to my dad back in the mid sixties and then proceeded to stalk him for almost two decades before cutting him down at the age of 48.

So anyway, being in a melancholy mood, I thought I’d take a stab at writing a piece that might fit into the inspirational genre.

Knuckle-prints in the Sand

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with Monkey-Cam. Many scenes from our hiking adventures flashed across my memory.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was only one.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I really could have used a friend, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to Monkey-Cam,

“Monkey-Cam, you promised you’d always be my friend and that we’d be an inseparable team of narrative image photographers. But I have noticed that during our most challenging adventures there has only been one set of footprints. What’s up with that?”

Monkey-Cam replied in his inimitable pantomime gestural language, “Scott, those times when you only see one set of footprints, well, those are the times we rented a camel. Remember?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, “I forgot.”

Oblivion

Gulf

Support

Approaching the river

Hidden moon

Crossing the river

Wonderful night for a moondance

Party balloon

PARANOIA on the TRIPLE FALLS TRAIL

Ever since I trespassed into a mysterious hidden clearing on the Wilson River Trail, I’ve experienced the eerie feeling of being watched, or perhaps even of being followed. It’s the same kind of feeling I had when I crossed the renegade cows on the Bird Creek Meadow Trail near Mt. Adams.

I shared my uneasiness with Monkey-cam and hinted that I could really use some company on the Triple Falls Trail in the Columbia River gorge, but he was still miffed about being treated like an imaginary friend.

“Why don’t you hang out with your corporeal friends?” he pantomimed, knowing full well that I don’t really have any.

I guess he must have seen some transient expression of pain flicker across my inexpert poker face and he relented a little bit. He indicated that he wouldn’t be hiking with me this week, but he reassured me that he would begin negotiations with the cows to see if he could work out some kind of truce for the upcoming spring hiking season. I interpreted his goodwill gesture as a sign that, while tested, our friendship had not yet been damaged beyond repair.

Fortunately, a colleague at work expressed an interest in learning how better to use her camera and it worked out that she and her husband met me at the Triple Falls Trailhead early Saturday morning.

Upper Horsetail Falls

f/3.5 1/100th ISO 1600 -------- f/3.5 1/13th ISO 200 -------f/22 2.5 sec. ISO 200

It was kind of an awkward situation for me since Monkey-cam takes most of the pictures for the Blog, but I tried to remember all the things he had taught me and pass them on as if I were the photography expert.

“See this end with the round circular tube on it?” I asked, pointing toward what I supposed was my camera’s lens, “That’s the side you want to point at the thing you want to take a picture of.”

My colleague and her husband had never seen Triple Falls before, and didn’t know quite what to expect. They were fixated on the ‘Triple’ part of Triple Falls’ name. Since we had passed Horsetail Falls at the Trailhead, and Upper Horsetail Falls shortly afterwards, they assumed that we would soon come across a third waterfall to consummate their expectations for a triple.

“Is this the third falls?” They would speculate.

View from the bridge overlooking Oneonta Creek

Eventually, we reached this viewpoint where it became evident that Triple Falls was a single waterfall split (or segmented) into three. The graphic depiction of a single entity splitting into three immediately reminded me of the puzzle of the threefold nature of God which some faith traditions address in doctrines of ‘The Trinity’.






In my Lutheran tradition, The Trinity (The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit) is often symbolically represented by a triangle, its three points all equal in importance yet all part of one object.






Variations of the symbolic triangle attempt to emphasize the distinctness of each component of the trinity while at the same time showing their unity.






Long before the First Council of Nicaea (long before the status of the divinity of Christ was hammered out by early Christians) other more arcane symbols predominated in the religious landscape…but I digress.





We split up and explored the area above Triple Falls. I stood alone high atop the falls trying to unlock the key to capturing a sense of vertigo in a two dimensional image (a goal that continues to elude me). Peering through my viewfinder on that precarious perch, my legs involuntarily trembling, I suddenly felt an icy chill in the air and the hairs on the back of my neck snapped to attention. I whirled around to see if perhaps my colleague or her husband were sneaking up on me…but nobody was there. I would have chalked it up to my paranoid imagination except for one fact. The birds had stopped chirping and all was quiet save for the dull roar of the falling water.
Not frightened exactly, I determined to rejoin my hiking party.



I rejoined my colleague and her husband further up the trail. They stood perplexed before a curious sign. “What’s an endotherm?” I asked after reading the sign.

“Essentially,” my colleague began, “we are.” She had considerable biological expertise.

I stood with my blank expression and waited for more.

“Endotherms are warm-blooded animals able to maintain a constant body temperature regardless of the temperature of the environment.” She added.

The sign didn’t make any sense, so we ignored it and continued walking along the trail





Here and there in the shade were still considerable accumulations of snow.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon that occurred where-ever snow-clods (or perhaps pine-cones) fell out of trees onto snow slopes of a particular steepness. In snow of just the right consistency, the clods would roll down-slope gathering more mass and speed, becoming ever larger, ultimately spontaneously generating into large snow-wheels.






I wondered what other forms might be capable of spontaneous generation.






And then suddenly in a garden of rocks, I experienced another confrontation with mystery.

“It’s a non-indigenous carrot.” My colleague noted.

Like I said, she had considerable biological expertise.




Of course none of us were scared by a misplaced carrot. Even so, the touch of the shade of the surrounding, towering trees began to feel like a brush with claustrophobia. Maybe we should not have disregarded the cautionary sign. While not retreating exactly, I have to admit we felt much relieved to break out into the open again on our way out of the wilderness.



As we passed the mouth of Oneonta gorge, I noticed this graphic warning sign adapted from a photo of me that Monkey-cam took that time last year when I tried to wade up Oneonta Creek in the neoprene bib overalls that I borrowed from Bob.




I wondered what lost world lay hidden behind the formidable log jam at the mouth of the gorge.







The old Oneonta tunnel makes a convenient place to deposit excess snow form snow plow operations. Evidently, state workers with a sense of humor decorated this pile of melting snow to resemble a snowman in prison.

“That’s curious,” said my colleague, “This gate locks from the inside.”