Month: December 2008

Tamanawas Falls

/ Tom Kloster / 2 Comments
Autumn colors on a foggy day in the huge amphitheater that surrounds Tamanawas Falls

Autumn in the huge amphitheater that holds Tamanawas Falls

For many years, the rustic path along Cold Spring Creek to Tamanawas Falls was a well-kept secret, but today the short trail to this 150-foot falls has become a popular hiking destination. Floods and a massive rock slide rearranged the trail at times in recent years, but the route has since been repaired, and is no less scenic for ravages of Mother Nature. The easy hike to the falls is described in the Portland Hikers Field Guide.

Cold Spring Creek is unique in that it drains a rather large portion of Mount Hood’s eastern slope, yet runs clear year-round because it carries no glacial outflow. The headwaters are formed by the sprawling Elk Meadows and the high, tundra-like slopes of Cooper Spur. A classic overnight backpacking trip (or long day hike) is the 15-mile loop along the Cold Spring Creek trail to Elk Meadows and return via Bluegrass Ridge.

Brilliant cottonwoods light up the trail to Tamanawas Falls in late October

Brilliant cottonwoods light up the trail to Tamanawas Falls in late October

One of the subtle attractions of the trail is the mix of eastside and westside flora — you’ll find eastside species like Western larch, Ponderosa pine, Douglas maple and quaking aspen flanked by more western species like Western redcedar, white pine and Douglas fir. There are also a surprising number of wildflowers in display in early summer, and in autumn the trail is lined with brilliant cottonwoods and vine maple.

A close-up view reveals the huge cavern behind Tamanawas Falls

A close-up view reveals the huge cavern behind Tamanawas Falls

But the main attraction on this hike is Tamanawas Falls, a thundering spectacle during early summer snow melt, and more graceful curtain later in the season. “Tamanawas” is the Chinook jargon word for “friendly or guardian spirit”, and the current spelling was corrected by the Oregon Board of Geographic Names in 1971. With its broad, symmetrical shape, the falls is more in the form of a Gorge waterfall, since it flows in a perfect curtain over what appears to a layer of basalt. But the rock here is andesite, a more recent material that has erupted from the vents that formed Mount Hood and many of the smaller peaks in the area.

The massive rock fall just downstream from the falls provides a unique glimpse into the formation of the canyon, and how actively the creek continues to change the landscape. In this section, the re-routed trail climbs through truck-sized boulders that dropped from the cliffs rimming the canyon just a few years ago. A destroyed footbridge from the old trail can be seen in the creek, far below.

Adventurous hikers will not want to stop where the spur trail to the falls abruptly ends at a viewpoint. With a bit of careful scrambling, even better views of the falls can be had from the stream, just beyond the trail, and with a bit more scrambling, hikers can even make their way into the huge cavern behind the falls. The view from behind the water is especially awesome, though too rough to reach for younger children and less experienced hikers.

Boundary Clear Cut – Part Two

/ Tom Kloster
The Boundary clear cut consumed this tiny lake. The trees behind mark the wilderness boundary as it rides over the ridges

The Boundary clear cut consumed this tiny lake. The trees behind mark the wilderness boundary as it rides over the ridges

The first part of this article focused on the Forest Service failures that allowed the massive Boundary clear cut to happen on Mount Hood’s northwest shoulder. Now, a look at more of the fallout from the massive clear cut, and opportunities for restoring the area in the future.

First, some numbers. Using a conservative estimate of 100 trees per acre, the 800 acre Boundary complex contained at least 80,000 mature trees, mostly noble fir. Using the Forest Service’s Center for Urban Forest Research models (2002), a conservative estimate for storm water interception of each tree is at least 1,100 gallons per year, or some 88 million gallons of runoff from the Boundary clear cut area, alone. How much additional runoff is that? Enough to nearly fill the 33-story KOIN tower in downtown Portland.

The twin to the logged-over lake, pictured above, this peaceful tarn is located just two hundred yards away, safely inside the wilderness boundary

The twin to the logged-over lake, pictured above, this peaceful tarn is located just two hundred yards away, safely inside the wilderness boundary

Without the forest canopy, the bulk of the rain that falls upon these mountain slopes now runs off, eroding the thin soils, carrying mud and sediments to nearby streams and resulting spikes in stream flows that damage riparian areas and fish habitat. This effect is repeated, of course, across the thousands of clear cuts in the Mount Hood National Forest.

For the Boundary clear cut, the runoff impact is on the heavily logged West Fork Hood River drainage, which is already struggling to recover from the first wave of logging at the turn of the 20th Century (see “Just 75 years” article).

Like other clear cuts, the Boundary cut also triggered edge effects on the uncut forests bordering the timber sale. Because the Boundary clear cut is high elevation, and nearly crests Vista Ridge, these were impacts that timber planners surely could have expected. Yet the timber sale spread close enough to the historic Vista Ridge trail that blowdown triggered by the cut still fall across the trail with regulatory, and unnecessarily. Sadly, this was preventable.

These trees along the Vista Ridge Trail are victims of the Boundary clear cut, having been exposed to high winds by the removal of adjacent forests.

These trees along the Vista Ridge Trail are victims of the Boundary clear cut, having been exposed to high winds by the removal of adjacent forests.

What to do next? For the cut forests of the Boundary complex, the main treatments are road decommissioning and thinning operations in 15-20 years, when the plantations of young trees are likely to become a crowded monoculture.

Just beyond the edge of the Boundary cut, this lofty outcrop provides a stunning view

Just beyond the edge of the Boundary cut, this lofty outcrop provides a stunning view

But from a broader perspective, what about restoring recreation to the area? The Mount Hood National Park campaign calls for converting several roads in the area to single-track bike and horse trails, and adding a campground in proximity to these new trails, and the Vista Ridge trailhead.

There are also opportunities to connect the Vista Ridge trail to the Mazama Trailhead, across Ladd Creek. This new route would provide much-needed loop options that would disperse the heavy hiking traffic that Mount Hood experiences in summer, plus access to the little-known lakes and rocky viewpoints that lie just beyond the destruction zone of the Boundary clear cut.

The key in making this transition is restoration through recreation — bringing visitors back to the area with the express purpose of fostering a public sense of stewardship needed to ensure that a Boundary clear cut never happens again.

Boundary Clear Cut – Part One

/ Tom Kloster / 2 Comments
Looking west across the devastation zone of the Boundary clear cut, where the forest was cut to the wilderness boundary, and across lakes and canyons that stood in the way

Looking west across the devastation zone of the Boundary clear cut, where the forest was cut to the wilderness boundary, and across lakes and canyons that stood in the way

Among the more grotesque of the thousands of clear cuts that sprawl across the Mount Hood National Forest is a nearly 800-acre complex along the west shoulder of Vista Ridge called the Boundary clear cut.

The Boundary cut is remarkable in that it quite literally defines the boundary of the Mount Hood Wilderness for nearly two miles, following an painfully straight line right over the lakes, streams and canyons that stood in its way.

The surgical precision of following such an arbitrary slice across the terrain betrays an astonishing degree of defiance and disregard for the management directive that comes with wilderness designations. The Forest Service planners who sold this timber in the late 1980s and early 90s were clearly carving off whatever could be rationalized under the narrowest interpretation of environmental law — if this was a lawful timber sale, at all. After all, how could cutting a pristine forest to the edge of wilderness have anything but a harmful effect on the adjacent wilderness value?

This GoogleEarth rendering shows the appalling proximity of the Boundary clear cut to Mount Hood's most pristine backcountry

This GoogleEarth rendering shows the appalling proximity of the Boundary clear cut to Mount Hood's most pristine backcountry

The price of this recklessness is substantial. The impact to the forest and watershed are the subject of this two-part article. This part focuses on the broken mindset that led to the devastation, and how it illustrates a fundamental flaw in the U.S. Forest Service mission: that this agency is simultaneously tasked with both protecting and exploiting the resources under its management.

The first flaw in agency mindset that led to this environmental tragedy is the notion that high-elevations forest can be farmed like so many rows of corn. At an elevation of 4,800 feet, the forest here consists almost entirely of slow-growing noble fir. In this zone, “sustainable” logging becomes tree mining, as it will be decades before these forests recover, and centuries before they regain their former stature as a mature ecosystem.

Noble fir are slow growing giants of our high-elevation forests; this fallen noble measures just over a foot in diameter, yet is more than 170 years old

Noble fir are slow growing giants of our high-elevation forests; this fallen noble measures just over a foot in diameter, yet is more than 170 years old

Consider the fallen noble fir pictured at left, found on a nearby hiking trail. Though measuring just over a foot in diameter, this tree is 170 years old. This should come as no surprise, given that nobles live in a zone that sees a winter snowpack of 6-12 feet in winter, and as few as four or five months when snow doesn’t cover the ground.

The second flaw in the Forest Service mindset is the notion that clear cuts and the associated network of logging roads are sustainable by any measure. Neither are, and only now has the agency begun to acknowledge this fundamental reality — more than three decades after the scientific community had debunked both practices as part of sound forest management.

Today, the tangle of deteriorating roads in the Boundary clearcut are gradually being decommissioned at taxpayer expense, to prevent further degradation of water supplies and fish habitat, and to discourage lawless behavior from off-highway thrill-riders.

The third flaw in Forest Service thinking that allowed the Boundary clear cut to happen is the assumption that timber harvest trumps all, and that steering the public away from logging operations somehow mitigates the lost recreational and scenic resources. Indeed, most trails that once threaded through the surrounding Vista Ridge area were dropped from Mount Hood National Forest maps in the 1950s and 60s, in preparation for the coming storm of industrial logging.

We now know that the logging heyday on our Forest Service lands was heavily subsidized by taxpayers, so the sight of piles of rotting logs left scattered across the Boundary clear cut only underscores the reckless, wasteful manner in which our forests were plundered

We now know that the logging heyday on our Forest Service lands was heavily subsidized by taxpayers, so the sight of piles of rotting logs left scattered across the Boundary clear cut only underscores the reckless, wasteful manner in which our forests were plundered

Sadly, this area held some of the most scenic spots found on the mountain, but the value of saw timber here trumped recreation in the Forest Service math, as was the case in much of the Mount Hood National Forest. The good news is that volunteers have recently re-opened one such trail on Vista Ridge (see the Portland Hikers Field Guide trip to Owl Point) There are also opportunities to reconnect some of the old, lost routes destroyed by logging by simply ducking inside the wilderness boundary, where the forests are still pristine and scenic.

It’s tempting to believe that the U.S. Forest Service can be reformed, and actually carry forward the restoration work needed to undo the damage that we see in places like the Boundary Clear Cut. This has been the agency message in recent years, and many well-meaning employees within the agency are working to change its course.

But the reality is that the Forest Service mission forever exposes the agency to the same political and economic winds that left us with the current logging aftermath. Only by moving Mount Hood’s battered lands into National Park Service stewardship can true restoration — and future protection from similar abuses — be truly guaranteed.

Vision Quest Sites

/ Tom Kloster / 1 Comment
The Lookout Mountain vision quest site is perched high on rocky cliff

The Lookout Mountain vision quest site is perched high on rocky cliff

One of the great thrills of exploring remote mountain tops and rocky outcrops in the Mount Hood backcountry is stumbling upon a long-forgotten vision quest site. These are typically rock pits, large enough for a person — though modern visitors should never enter them, out of respect for both their spiritual and scientific significance.

Archaeologists are still debating the purpose of these pits. The most accepted theory is that these pits were built by Native Americans seeking a vision of their guardian spirit through a combination of physical exertion, deprivation and isolation. Under this theory, Native Americans would have spent several days building these pits, then meditating in them without food or human interaction in order to achieve a spiritual experience.

Other researchers argue that the pits were used as hunting blinds or to store food. But these alternative theories are hard to accept for locations like those around Mount Hood and in the Gorge. Most of this sites are on huge talus slopes or mountain tops, which would have been inconvenient as a food cache or for retrieving killed game.

The Lookout Mountain vision quest pit pictured here has still more mystery surrounding it. While the location of the pit is typical – high on a rocky knoll, overlooking the East Fork valley and Mount Hood – the walls of the pit are stacked higher and narrower than most, possibly due to the steepness of the site.

Looking down the steep slopes of Lookout Mountain from the vision quest pit

Looking down the steep slopes of Lookout Mountain from the vision quest pit

But even more perplexing are the worn traces of mortar between some of the stones (seen in the wall of the pit, toward the bottom of the second image). One possibility is that the mortar was an early attempt to preserve the site, given it’s fragile and exposed state. But who would have hauled both mortar and water to this site?

Perhaps early forest rangers who once manned a Forest Service guard station at High Prairie, a short distance away. The guard station was abandoned half a century ago, so this timing would be consistent with other, early 20th Century effort to “restore” Native American structures. This was famously done at several spots in Pueblo country, but might have happened here, too.

Whatever the answer, the Lookout Mountain vision quest site is among the most inspiring in the area, and it’s easy to imagine Native Americans seeking out spots like this for a spiritual journey. But it’s also easy to imagine sites like this being lost forever, for lack of a management imperative by the U.S. Forest Service to actively protect these places.

This kind of fragile resource is also among the best arguments for the Mount Hood National Park Campaign, since the Park Service has a long and proven track record of this sort of resource protection. In contrast, the Forest Service has aggressively logged much of the terrain around this site, oblivious to special places like this. So for now, obscurity is the best friend of these resources, until better stewardship finally comes to Mount Hood.