Scrambling Around the Labyrinth

A warm, fair day in February usually means crowds at Catherine Creek. I figured I could get away in the Labyrinth, a rugged area of imposing rock outcrops and hidden dells traversed by a maze of hiker, biker, and game trails.

I started out hiking near a young couple with two young children. I passed them, and then they passed me while I fiddled with my new camera. It seemed they were always nearby, and the point was to get away.


Pretty soon, though, I approached a massive outcrop of 50ft tall columnar basalt, sheer on every side but one, where a curtain of steep boulders reached to the very rim. I scrambled up to the base of the talus. A trail to the top suggested itself – at the very least, it was the beginning of a route – and my eye followed a line up the rocks and along the columns to the top. But I was alone, and at that moment I recalled a story I’d read of a climber’s death in a similar, albeit larger, boulder-field, and I thought about Aron Ralston, the guy who’d been pinned in a Utah slot-canyon and amputated his own hand to free himself. I thought about spraining or breaking a bone and having to negotiate my way down the boulders while injured. I visualized the loose boulders shifting without warning, crushing or trapping my leg or arm, or avalanching downhill with my body cushioning the fall of half-ton rocks. Hell, it would hurt just to fall on that surface.

Finally, I thought about the brilliance of placing my hands out of sight on top of boulders where rattlesnakes might be sunning themselves. One last look and I turned around, picking my way back to the trail.

Then that same family, kids and all, appeared below and started to hike a small game trail towards me. I spun around, walked back to the talus, and began to climb.

At first the going was easy and I felt that if it got harder, I could just turn around. But I was quick and balanced, sure-footed, the boulders were more firmly entrenched than I’d feared, and I never had to put my hands where I couldn’t see them. I reached the basalt columns. The route continued up a little until it ended at a five or six foot wall that was easy to pull myself over. I was on top.

I was on top, and I’d been here before. An ancient pine, silver and shattered, lay across the rock. A young ponderosa, squat and bushy, shaded a field of hand-sized stones covered with dusty orange and chartreuse lichen. Grass waved in the wind and I had a 360 degree view overlooking the Labyrinth and Catherine Creek, with the Columbia stretching east towards The Dalles, and the gorge stretching away west. All of this was familiar: I’d eaten lunch or taken a rest on many an outcrop such as this, and I knew that at the opposite side of this particular outcrop, the ground sloped gently down to meet the rising hill, and a game trail led back to the main trail. Breathing hard and pleased with myself for not giving up on the climb, I turned and looked down the talus. It was clear I’d misjudged the height by a factor of two – the family sat in the grass far below, perhaps a hundred feet or more, and the steepness of the boulders in the full sun was dizzying.

For a while I wandered slowly along the edge of the outcrop, over the jointed tops of smooth six-sided basalt columns, some peeling away from the rest, leaning outwards in denial of gravity. Away from the edge, the columns disappeared under a skein of angular stones decorated with hieroglyphic lichen. Climber’s bolts at the very edge of the columns reinforced my belief that I’d followed an actual route up the boulders, and that it hadn’t been unsafe. Unfortunately I didn’t pause to question why climbers would climb the talus to reach the bolts, rather than just walk up the other side.

I backed away from the edge and found a place to sit for an hour. I poured a cup of tea and soaked up the expansive view, then ate lunch in the steady breeze. Afterwards I wrote in my hiking journal:

Climbed to the top of a great stone
outcrop, wind gusting ecstatically,
clouds old friends scattered in the sky –
rare blue, pale egg color fragile and new.
Across the river small fires burn.
One spark leads to spring.

Not even good for a first draft, but promising on a still-winter day when it was almost too windy to write. I stowed my gear and got ready to head down.

As I followed the edge I peered over into the small valley below. The trail was a sharp brown line swaying along the hillside. Tiny hikers walked along it, and beyond them, a small creek ran among leafless oak trees. The outcrop was a hundred yards long and higher in the middle, and I couldn’t see the far end until I reached it.

A fifty foot drop. Vertical basalt columns. Air and space, filled with wind. No gently sloping hillside, no game trail, not even a pile of rock to down-climb. I was wrong. There was no way off the top of this outcrop except by the way I’d come up.

Hurrying back to the talus, I thought of all the things that could go wrong on the descent. And I quickly discovered I hadn’t paid enough attention during the ascent: I didn’t know where I’d climbed over the top.

When I came up, a series of natural hand and footholds had aided me. I’d intended to use them on the way down, but things looked really different from above. Dropping a few feet from a hanging position isn’t dangerous, unless it’s a drop onto rocky, uneven ledge six inches wide at the top of a 100 foot fan of boulders sitting at the angle of repose.


At this point I wasn’t scared. Obviously climbers came up and down this route, and I’d come up it with no problems. But going down was far harder than coming up. I studied the cliff until I was sure I’d found the line, and that led to where I needed to drop over the edge. I carefully lowered myself over, finding footholds and descending until I stood at the top of the boulders, and I cautiously moved to the columns, scouting the least steep route down the boulders. The problem was, it all looked far steeper than on the way up, and once I committed, I discovered that the boulders were not, in fact, wed in place, but were all loose and shifted under my weight.

If I faced the slope, I put too much weight on my hands while testing my footing. If I faced out, I put even more weight on my hands. Nothing felt right, or sure. Even though I moved slowly, always with three points of contact, every time a boulder shifted I froze, willing my body to balance. I thought about what would happen if I knocked a boulder loose, or what I would do if I felt the burning sting of a rattlesnake’s bite. I pirouetted down the slope, sometimes facing out, sometimes in, never comfortable, always nervous, in a heightened slow-motion dance with gravity and growing fear.

It took forever but I made it to the bottom. My quads burned with lactic acid, my knees felt weak, and I was cold in the sun. I covered the last few yards to the game trail, sipped some water, and took a deep breath. It was still early in the day and I was on solid ground. Before heading off deeper into the Labyrinth, I looked back at the solitary ponderosa on the rim, high above the boulder field.

It didn’t look that steep. Not really.

Distance: 5.8 miles roundtrip

Elevation Gain: 1200 ft

Region: Columbia River Gorge (OR)

Information: Curious Gorge, 3rd ed., by Scott Cook; www.Portlandhikers.org

Directions: From Portland, drive I84 to Hood River, cross the river, and drive east on SR14 for 5.7 miles. Turn left on Old Highway 8 and park immediately at the corner. Follow the abandoned highway west, and just past a road-cut, locate the obvious trail leading uphill to the north.

Take Nothing But Photographs, Leave Nothing But Footprints

"We talk far too much… By contrast, how the gravity of Nature and her silence startle you, when you stand face to face with her, undistracted, before a barren ridge or in the desolation of the ancient hills.”

Goethe

There was no sound but the sound of my boots in fresh snow, and the wind gusting through the forest. The snow fell with a hush that was softer than silence. It covered the trail, the vine maples and ferns, and coated the trunks and limbs of trees. Through breaks in the forest, I saw the dark ridges rise from the hidden river, slowly into snow-covered cliffs and conifers weighed down with winter. As I hiked towards Wahkeena Springs, patchy snow glazed the trail, and snow began to fall hard and harder as I climbed the final 800’ towards the tree-enclosed summit of boulders at Devil’s Rest.

Snow purifies not by hiding, but by revealing. Four miles of hiking and a half-mile climb had worked off the distractions of home. There were no tracks ahead of me, and on the way back, fresh snow and drift rounded the edges of my boot-prints. The forest was calm and serene, with snow coating the young trees and scars from the last century’s logging. Clouds drifting in and out obscured the river’s trade, the highways and barges, the railroad tracks and the clear-cuts on distant hills.

The logging and the roads and rails were hidden, but I saw them through their absence: I did not see them visually, yet when I looked at the forest so different with snow, they suggested themselves in my mind. I felt that these things, these supposed imperfections on the purity of nature, signs of the world hikers strive to leave behind, weren’t even hidden, or in the process of being revealed – they were merely a part of the whole.

A brief moment in the snow at Devil’s Rest was a brief moment in front of a mirror.

When I moved on from my reverie the snow still fell through second-growth forest, a stand of former timber left to mature at its own natural pace. The clouds sweeping up the ridge continued to screen the traffic and muffle its noise. And because I was not hiking wilderness, snow piling on old stumps and chainsaw-cut rounds of downed trees was allowed to be beautiful.

Hikers know the art of packing the critical, and also the weight and utility of it. Whatever is too heavy or isn’t useful gets left at home. At the summit of Devil’s Rest I set down my pack and poured a cup of hot green tea.

I stood for a long while in the silent young forest, watching the snow fall, breathing in the cold sharp air. Soft light filled the spaces between trees and the mossy boulders capped and crusted with snow. I was warm under synthetic layers and the warmth from the hot tea spread from my center to my limbs. I rested. I took photographs of my pack and gear in the snow. My pack was filled not just with the ten essentials and an extra sweater, but also with food and water, a journal, and a well-worn copy of the Dhammapada.

I had everything I needed.

The clouds began to lift and I left the summit with a lighter pack than when I arrived. The snow stopped falling, and yet as I descended Devil’s Rest there was no sound but the sound of my boots in fresh snow, and the wind gusting through the forest.

Distance: 8.6 miles roundtrip
Elevation Gain: 2550ft (est)
Region: Columbia River Gorge (OR)
Information: Most guide books; PortlandHikers.org.
Directions: From Portland, drive I84 to exit 31, Multnomah Falls. Alternately, take exit 28 (Bridal Veil) and follow the old highway east to either the Wahkeena or Multnomah trailheads.
More Photos Here!

One Shot Wilderness: Without Weight

Sometimes, the only thing I can be sure of is that it is always and forever right now.

The first photograph was taken from under the shade of forest, mid-morning, about a mile up the trail on Eagle Creek. The second photograph was taken a step or two later, just as the sun escaped from behind the moss-laden limbs of a winter maple. How swiftly mood changes, rising like the temperature when the sun strikes you. The view up the canyon washed out in the light, refocusing on the path and the shortened shadows. Distance shrunk and focus expanded; I became aware of steam evaporating from sunlit moss, of the subtle greens tips of pine needles, on the weight of winter exhaled in a bright moment of easy breath.

It was like this all day at Eagle Creek – a thousand changes happening without weight, or, when noticed, noticed in sum, every detail magnified and whole, like nature getting off work and slipping into something more comfortable. Sun into shadow and back again. The creek singing from its bed, suddenly silent, suddenly always there. Ice on the trail followed by soft earth. Cathedrals of trees opening into long vistas and closing again in meditation. Breeze, then stillness.

Later when I turned around – for there’s only one way in and one way out of Eagle Creek – the sunny grove I meant to take my lunch in was thick with shadow. Below me, the creek cut through the basalt as it has for centuries, and the sun sank into the trees at the edge of the ridge-top.

A thousand changes happening without weight, always and forever right now.

British Soldiers

Winter in Tryon Creek State Park is bleak. The trails are muddy, the light crummy, and the foliage thin. Leafless vine maples bend their limbs under dark young firs, the fallen cottonwood and big-leaf maple leaves turn to mush under ragged bracken, and along the creek brown grass tangles with mud and the winter-washed banks. Winter is a time of waiting, and only the moss, lichen, and licorice fern seem to hold any promise of spring. And even then, only on rare days when the sun is shining and light fills the canyon.

Tryon Creek is not, by any stretch of the term, wilderness. It’s less than 700 acres of second-growth forest, entirely surrounded by urban areas, and used by just about everyone: walkers, joggers, hikers, equestrians, bicyclists, students, and artists. The trail system is extensive, but at less than a seventh the size of Forest Park, it can be a crowded place. Nevertheless, Tryon Creek has its charms.

One of those charms is the multitude of cedar stumps throughout the park. Relics from logging operations that began in the 1860’s, and development that lasted into the 1960’s, the stumps – many with springboard notches still evident – contain miniature ecosystems rarely noticed by the suburban joggers and dog-walkers. This photo is from a recent trip I took to Tryon Creek in order to play with a new camera and to get out of the house – and to check on British Soldiers.

British Soldiers are lichen that produce red fruit at the end of a short stalk. Because lichen grow slowly and live long, they’re excellent indicators of environmental change, including that caused by pollution. Last year, I found a ton of British Soldiers in the stumps, along with a lot of small mushrooms. The hollow cores in the stumps provide protection against wind, rain, sun, and other environmental factors, and each is unique as an individual ecosystem. Because of the confined space, each of these ecosystems is subject to radical change – a large branch falling from a tree is but one branch in a forest, and hardly noticeable relative to the effect that same branch might have if it destroys a single stump.

There’s one particular stump – I’m keeping its location secret – that has a high number of British Soldiers. And this year, almost exactly a year after I last visited, the number of British Soldiers in fruit was much lower. I didn’t do a count, so I have no hard data. Call it a subjective guess. From photos, and from memory, the amount of this lichen was radically reduced.

That subjective comparison, in itself, is meaningless. There’s no way to draw a conclusion without real data based on long-term observation. Because these ecosystems are so sensitive, a huge number of factors come into play. Weather is just one; the difference in precipitation and temperature swings widely from year to year with equivalent impact on lichen growth.

Because of this uncertainty, I’m not worried about the apparent reduction in British Soldiers this year. I’m well aware that people might consider the very idea of being concerned about lichens a sign of mental instability. But next winter, I’ll probably find myself leaning into the rotten core of an ancient hemlock, taking close-up photographs of tiny lichen and wondering what it all means.

One Shot Wilderness: The Frozen Gorge

After a month and a half of rain and holiday madness, I was ready to get out. The weather cooperated on the first Tuesday of the year, and I found myself driving down I84 into the Columbia River Gorge, staring at the steely river flecked with whitecaps, and thinking about where I wanted to go. I decided to hike up Multnomah Falls, and from there, continue up to Devil’s Rest for some hiking in light snow, or on to Angel’s Rest for some wintery views. Neither was destined to happen.

At Multnomah, a ranger had just closed the trail beyond the Benson Bridge because of ice. My return route – which doubled as an alternate entry-point – was closed because of a washout. It felt too late to continue east, so for my first hike of 2011, I elected to tour the waterfalls and stretch my legs between Horsetail Falls and Oneonta Gorge. I only hiked a few miles, but the frozen falls were spectacular, and I must have been an odd sight when I returned to my truck whistling a Phish song and tapping out the beat on my trekking poles. Not a bad start…

Multnomah Falls: Lower Splash Pool

It wasn’t the iciest day I’ve seen in the gorge, but even a little ice adds incredible accents to familiar sights. Multnomah’s upper pool was much icier than the lower, more elemental and less alive, with ice forming patterns on black basalt and an overwhelming sense of stasis, as if winter’s grasp was complete and enduring. I much prefer how the ice in the lower pool contrasts with the green moss and fern on the cliffs, and the glacial blues of the water. Despite the cold, there’s a fragility to the ice and the still-verdant walls that speaks of spring and movement. I often use Multnomah Falls as a trailhead and I take it for granted, hiking past the crowds as fast as I can. But it retains the capacity to stun with beauty, and I was amazed that one single waterfall could create such a range of physical form and emotional response. I guess I’ll have to pay more attention in the future.

Ponytail Falls: Icicles

I admit I get nervous under Ponytail Falls. While navigating the boulders behind the falls, it doesn’t take much imagination to think about how swift your death would be if the ceiling collapsed. Or how agonizing, if you somehow survived, injured, trapped.

It’s almost worse in winter, when icicles form underneath the overhang. Ice forms where there’s water, and where else does the water come from but cracks leading up to the creek? If the ceiling has cracks in it, what am I doing underneath it?

Taking pictures of beautiful six-foot icicles, that’s what. Unfortunately, there weren’t many when I hiked here; according to a photographer I met, they’d all been broken by thoughtless tourists two days earlier. If that hadn’t happened, there would’ve been a good chance that some of the icicles would have reached the ground, and the entire ceiling would have been a glittering winter hall of pillars and spears.

And I’d have spent much more time taking photographs under the falls, ignoring the steady, erosive roar of falling water and taking my chances with the slow inexorable march of geologic time.

Oneonta Gorge: Logjams ands Licorice

Entering Oneonta Gorge is like stepping back into time. The place is Jurassic – it reminds me of the Olympics, or the redwoods. The creek cuts a high, narrow canyon back through a thousand feet of basalt to a hundred-foot waterfall. To get to it, you have to climb over boulders and a tremendous logjam, and swim through pools of cold water clear to the colorful pebbles and gravel at the bottom. Moss and fern drape the canyon walls, home to endemic species of plants found no where else. Overhead, fallen trees carpeted with moss crisscross the canyon rim, and dark holes in the rock mark where lava flowed through an ancient forest and solidified.

Needless to say, I didn’t go swimming, and I didn’t get far into the canyon. I remember you used to be able to reach the logjam without getting wet, but I haven’t been to Oneonta in a few years, and creeks have a way of changing things quite rapidly. So I spent a lot of time studying the patterns of ice on the rock and moss, and photographing licorice fern encased in ice. Ferns have vascular systems like all other plants, yet reproduce with spores, which makes them halfway between the most primitive plants and more recently evolved flowering plants. Licorice fern is an epiphyte that grows in winter, with a rhizome (essentially a root) that tastes like you-know-what. Native tribes used it medicinally to fight colds, which might explain how the fern can survive being encased in ice – an ability that would certainly have come in handy over the millions of years ferns have been around. Unless it can’t survive in ice – and then never mind.

This is far from the best photo I’ve ever taken but it gives some idea of the wonder Edward Abbey wished for “behind the next turning of the canyon walls.”

Latourell Falls: Lichen

Chrysothrix chlorina gets a somewhat negative review in Daniel Mathews’ Cascade-Olympic Natural History: “This degenerate form of lichen growth is just a granular layer of fungi and algae bundled together in little clumps.” Maybe so, but it forms a beautiful chartreuse contrast to Latourell Fall’s icy white and stone black amphitheater.

Latourell is a gift I seldom open, because it’s a very short walk from the road-side trailhead and only a short hiking trail loops above it. It’s a shame I don’t stop more often, because Latourell is one of the Gorge’s most breathtaking falls. And it wears winter like a crown.

A graceful ribbon of water plunging 224 feet; basalt cooled into columns like a foundation of recessed pillars; trees sheathed in ice, a bridge hung with icicles, dark evergreens sentinel above. It’s the kind of place that feels remote because it begs of the remoteness in your heart, and draws it out with a quiet comfort. It’s lush in summer, but wispier, more transient; in winter, Latourell is a chandelier among lesser lights.

Among those lesser lights are the pioneering concrete bridge built over Latourell Creek in 1914 by Samuel Lancaster and KP Billner. Lancaster himself said, “The falls at Latourell can be seen from the bridge pouring their shining waters over the wall of basalt cliff where the rock is formed into pentagonal shapes which hang down like icicles. The Giant's Causeway of the Irish Coast is well known, but it offers no better example of rock crystallization. The roadway forms a suitable frame to the beautiful picture and adds a charm to the landscape.

And then there’s C. chlorine, the degenerate lichen, centuries old, far older than the bridge and Samuel Lancaster’s ambition, offering a much more exquisite frame to the natural ambition of water and stone.