Month: February 2025

Secrets of the Fire at Catherine Creek

/ Tom Kloster / 9 Comments

Green regrowth has already returned to the upper meadows at Catherine Creek, just three months after the October 2024 wildfire

Preface: our federal workforce is under unprecedented, highly personal attack by the new administration. The attacks are reckless, cruel and purposely vindictive to the perceived “enemies” of the regime. Many of the newly appointed cabinet officials in the Departments of Interior and Agriculture were specifically selected for their radical, fringe views on the environment and are openly hostile to the very concept of public lands that belong to everyone. We’ll be on defense on this front for the next four years, unfortunately.

Like many articles posted on the blog, I’ve shared my views in this piece on how our public lands at Catherine Creek might be managed in the future. At this moment in our history, however, I also want to open with my unequivocal support for the federal workers who have devoted their careers to caring for our public lands. Over the past three weeks, I’ve seen them proudly and professionally continue to do their work, despite the hostility and mockery of their commitment to public service from the new administration.

U.S. Forest Service workers conduct a controlled burn in Ponderosa country (photo: Deschutes Collaborative)

We’re at a low point as a country, for sure, but I know that we will outlast this regime. Once they have been removed from power, I also believe we will not only restore what damage has been done, but also thrive in a renewed commitment to our public lands. It does (unfortunately) seem that as a nation, sometimes we don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone. In the meantime, we’ll need to support our federal workers while they are under siege. We can all do that with kind words when we see them out in the field, helping them care for the land, and by sending our support for public lands to our congressional representative and senators. It really does work.

Thanks for indulging me – and now, on to the secrets of the recent wildfire at Catherine Creek…

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The opening photo for this article is from a mid-January ramble through the sprawling western meadows of the Catherine Creek savannah, located in the eastern Columbia Gorge near the small town of Lyle. Just three months after a fire swept through the area, only the singed lower limbs on the Ponderosa Pine grove in the distance provide a hint to what unfolded here. 

Last October, a wildfire at Catherine Creek was sparked by a prescribed burn that spun out of control, adding to the continuing struggle for public acceptance of controlled burning. The science is definitive, however: controlled fires are the most important tool in restoring forest health and preventing large wildfires in the Western U.S., where our forests are suffering the effects of more than a century of aggressive fire suppression. 

While there is plenty to talk about (and learn) on living with fire in the West, this article will focus very locally on some surprising effects on the ground of the fire at Catherine Creek. The meadows are already rapidly rebounding from the event, and there are fascinating traces from the fire that help explain why steep meadows and open savannah exist in the eastern Gorge. Toward the end of the article, I’ll also include some tips on how to see this transformation for yourself, close-up.

The fire…

Early stages of the October 2024 fire at Catherine Creek, just after 4 PM, before it swept across the upper meadows (U.S. Forest Service)

The fire at Catherine Creek was officially named the “Top of the World Fire”. For simplicity, I will simply refer to it as the Catherine Creek fire in this article. The wildfire began at about 4 PM on Monday, October 14, 2024, when unexpected winds lifted embers beyond the boundaries of a controlled burn the Forest Service had been lit that morning. 

Once the wildfire was ignited, it quickly spread east and downhill, across the open grassland savannah of Catherine Creek and toward Highway 14. As it grew, more than a hundred firefighters used air tankers, fire trucks and bulldozers to contain the wildfire over the next few days, finally achieving containment by the end of the week.

Late afternoon view of the fire from across the river as it moved into the savannah (Facebook/Susan Garrett Crowley)

Residents of the town of Mosier, located across the Columbia River, had a front row seat to the event. Their images of the fire soon showed up on social media, along with frustration and anger toward the Forest Service for conducting a controlled burn in windy conditions. While these burns are carefully planned with local conditions in mind (including soil moisture, air temperature, humidity and wind speeds), fire can still escape the controlled area, even when all of these variables for a safe burn are met. After all, fire cannot always be controlled in any setting, even with the best of our modern-day technology at hand.

The Forest Service estimates that about 4,500 prescribed burns are conducted across the country each year, covering some 1.3 million acres across the National Forest System. For comparison, that’s roughly equivalent to the entirety of Mount Hood National Forest being treated each year. This might be a surprise to some, given the continued controversy surrounding the practice, but the Forest Service argues that nearly all prescribed fires – 99.8 percent, according to the agency — are carried out as planned. 

By early evening the fire had progressed nearly to Highway 14 (Facebook/Mark Paine)

The future of our Western forests looks very challenging for the Forest Service and other land managers. More than a century of accumulated forest debris, an overgrown understory of brush and thickets of unhealthy trees in overplanted clearcuts have created a tinderbox for public land agencies to contend with.

The accelerating effects of climate change will make their job ever more complex as our public land agencies race to reduce the risks of large-scale wildfires with controlled burns, meanwhile continually evolving the practice to somehow achieve the near-perfect success rate needed to maintain public support. Add an ever-growing number of homes being built in the forest margins (often called the wildland-urban interface), and it is hard to imagine that we won’t see future controlled burns escape their planned boundaries.

A closer look…

The effects of fire suppression since the early 1900s are especially pronounced on the east slopes of the Cascades. Here, the forests are dominated by fire-dependent conifers like Ponderosa Pine and Western Larch, but these species have been choked out across much of their habitat by unchecked growth of true firs and other fire-vulnerable species that are crowding east side forests today.

Scorched lower limbs on these Ponderosa Pine are the mark of a beneficial, mostly low-intensity savannah fire

The comparatively dry climate of east-side forests also means more accumulation of dead forest debris that would quickly be covered in moss and succumb to decay on the wet, western slopes of the mountains. This is why fire is so important as part of the east side ecosystem, and why species like Ponderosa Pine have evolved to thrive with fire, not despite it.

The burn scars at Catherine Creek provide a perfect living laboratory to see the beneficial effects of wildfire, firsthand and in real-time. While I’ve tracked the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire on Mount Hood and the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire in this blog to learn from the recovery in those respective ecosystems, the fire at Catherine Creek provides some new insights into the role of fire in the eastern Gorge savannah.

The first thing I noticed on my recent visit were the singed lower limbs on all of the Ponderosa Pine trees that survived the fire. These trees are known for their thick, fire-resistant bark, and in this case, the fire was cool enough to burn just the lower limbs on many of the trees. Most of the large trees here survived because the fire didn’t reach up into their crowns. This is known as “crowning” and something that is usually fatal to a big conifer. The recent fires on Mount Hood and in the Eagle Creek Fire experienced hundreds of acres of crown fires, where the entire forest was killed.

Scorched lower limbs are a good thing for this Ponderosa Pine, as losing these branches will protect it from crown fires in future events

The fact that many of the large Ponderosa Pine even had green limbs all the way to the ground is evidence that a significant fire hasn’t swept through here for some time. Most of the singed limbs on these trees have likely been killed and will eventually fall from the trees. In the near term, they have lost some of the green canopy needed to help the trees survive, but recovering over the long term, they will also become more fire resilient, with their lowest limbs much higher on the tree, and thus out of reach for moderate fires like this one.

The suddenly bright green surface of the burned savannah meadows also has a story to tell. This isn’t simply grass, but also an infinite number of seedlings exploding from the cleared soil, even during the cold winter months. It’s hard to know what species these will mature into this spring, but it’s a fair bet that the wildflowers this area is known for will be even more spectacular in coming years. 

Some grass is sprouting in the burned meadows, but also a lot of tiny wildflower seedlings just three months after the fire

Another surprising story from the fire is how rocks and rocky areas intensified the effects of the flames on vegetation. Throughout the burn, you can find rocks that were superheated by the fire, then stayed hot relative to the surrounding soil after the flames had passed, completely killing vegetation in a ring around the rock (below). It’s hard to know how this will affect the recovering plant community, but in an ecosystem where fire was once common, it surely must have some role in determining which plants thrive most in rocky areas.

Rocks within the burn intensified the impact of the fire, leaving scorched rings like this where vegetation was completely killed

The dripline beneath Ponderosa Pine trees also proved to be a surprising hot spot, with vegetation and sometimes even the duff layer completely burned away. This seems to have resulted mostly from an over-accumulation of wood debris and a blanket of dried pine needles that simply burned hotter and longer during the event. These burn rings underscore the importance of restoring fire to this ecosystem, and not allowing wood debris to build up under these trees to a level where they cannot survive when fire returns.

The charred burn ring under this Ponderosa Pine was less extensive due to the tree’s relative youth, with less dry fuel accumulation to intensify the burn

The charred ring under this part of large Ponderosa Pine is more extensive, burning down to bare rock and mineral soil, due to the larger supply of dry fuel that had accumulated here over many years

One of the most fascinating stories the burn scars can tell us is how downed trees across the savannah landscape affected the intensity of the burn and put nearby, living trees at risk. The blackened swath adjacent to the pair of large Ponderosas shown below marks where a fallen tree burned hotter and much longer than the overall fire, scorching the standing trees halfway up their canopy. These trees will likely survive, but the recovery of the tree on the right will be slower as it struggles to rebuild its living canopy.

A downed tree that left the charred scar shown in this view burned long and hot enough to scorch branches halfway up these nearby Ponderosa Pine

This view (below) of a downed tree scar is typical of dozens across the burned savannah of the Catherine Creek fire. This view is looking from the base of what was once a fallen tree, with a prominent hole in the ground and upturned soil and rocks in the foreground. These mark where tree roots had pulled this material from the ground when the tree originally fell, but are now burned away, leaving only the pile of soil and rock.

Burn scars from downed trees like this are found across much of the savannah area of the Catherine Creek fire, with the trees almost completely reduced to ashes that have since washed away during winter rainstorms. This view from the base of the tree shows the characteristic hole and upturned soil left by the root ball that has since been burned away

This next image (below) is the reverse view of the same fallen tree, now looking from the top. The very tip of this downed tree in the foreground somehow managed to survive the fire, unburned. Even the shape of the fallen tree is apparent in the pyramid-shaped burn scar.

This view of the previous burn scar shows the perspective from the top of the former tree, with only the unburned tip left to tell the story

The bare soil created by these intensively burned patches surely serves a niche in a grassland savannah ecosystem that relies on fire to rejuvenate. I’ll be tracking the recovery of these areas over the next few years to see if certain plants are especially adapted to regenerate in these spots – and conversely, whether these badly burned areas open the door to invasive plants, one of the liabilities of intense fires.

The downed trees and their distinctive burn patterns within the Catherine Creek burn are not an anomaly. While they likely went unnoticed to most who visited this area before the fire, there were hundreds of downed trees spread across the open savannah. This aerial view (below) is just a small area, and yet there were more than 30 downed trees here before the fire (marked by the arrows). All were burned. Their sheer number underscores how the absence of fire has allowed dry debris to accumulate here in recent decades.

There were hundreds of downed trees across the savannah section of the Catherine Creek burn before the fire, mostly unnoticed by hikers traveling through. The arrows mark each blowdown

[click here for a larger view]

Another takeaway from the aerial sample is the uniformity in how these trees fell. Nearly all of them point eastward, revealing the predominant winds from the west in this part of the Gorge – especially in the winter, when soils are saturated and storms are frequent and often powerful.

Surprisingly, some of the big Ponderosa Pine that fared most poorly were growing in stands (below). Here, the combination of their accumulated fuel of dried limbs and needle beds around their trunks combined with fallen trees within the stand for a fire too hot for these trees to survive. Their low canopy – a product of not having fire present until now – also made them vulnerable to the hotter burning that happened here.

These trees help tell the story of why Ponderosa Pine are more often solitary trees within the savannah ecosystem. Not only do they have less competition from other trees for water and nutrients, they are also less vulnerable to spot fires from accumulated debris and fallen trees.

Growing in groves usually helps trees survive by protecting them from wind, but here their close proximity meant a combined debris accumulation — including downed trees — that burned hot and long, killing the largest Ponderosa Pine trees in this group

Another look at the same grove shows how several downed trees combined to create a fiery oven that few trees survived

Young Ponderosa Pine in the burned savannah have their own story to tell about the Catherine Creek fire. This tree (below) lost roughly half its green canopy, but the top survived the fire – so far, at least. This suggests that the flames rolled through fairly quickly. The lack of a burn ring also shows that this tree was too young to have accumulated much dried debris beneath its small canopy. With repeated, low-intensity fires, this tree can continue this pattern until its canopy is high enough from the ground to survive fire events fully intact. This is the classic cycle of a mature Ponderosa Pine forest under the natural conditions in which the species evolved.

Even very young trees can benefit from fire by shedding their lower canopy — if they can survive the loss of so many limbs

This grove of young Ponderosa Pine (below) fared worse, but it wasn’t due to their close proximity to one another, or even a combined accumulation of debris that made them vulnerable. Instead, it was their proximity to a very large, downed tree – perhaps their parent – that burned long and hot enough to badly scorch them. Of the group, only the tree on the left seems to have enough living canopy to survive.

This group of young Ponderosa Pine trees might have fared better had they not been growing around a large, downed tree that burned long and hot just to the right

This view of the same grove of small trees shows the burn scar of a large downed tree that sealed their fate was. The wide shape of the burn scar clearly shows that the tree still had many limbs intact that only added to the heat it produced

Though the recovering meadows in the Catherine Creek burn are rapidly concealing the extent of the burn, the edge of the burn zone can be found by surviving blowdowns, like this one (below), just a few feet beyond the burn scars. This ancient downfall also underscores just how long it has been since fire was a force in this ecosystem – this tree has been lying here for decades.

The hundreds of downed trees that burned across the Catherine Creek savannah looked something like this before the fire. The age of this very old tree skeleton shows that beneficial wildfires have been suppressed here for decades

The fire at Catherine Creek didn’t expand far into Oregon White Oak habitat, the other iconic tree species in the eastern Columbia River Gorge. Like Ponderosa Pine, these trees have evolved with fire, and require regular, low-intensity burns for their health. They have deep taproots that help them retain moisture, even during the dry summer season, and corky, protective bark that helps insulate them from low-intensity fire, much like Ponderosa Pine with its thick, orange bark. Oregon White Oak also has less resin in its wood and leaves, making these trees less flammable and prone to crowning than other tree species.

The burn pattern under this Oregon White Oak (below) is much like that of the nearby Ponderosa Pine, and suggest that it, too, had an accumulation of debris that burned hotter and longer, thanks to fire suppression. These oaks also have fire resistant buds, so I’ll be watching to see how well this fire-impacted tree rebounds in spring. 

Oregon White Oaks have their own built-in fire resistance, and are adapted to low-intensity brushfires. This tree will likely survive the Catherine Creek burn

Like Ponderosa Pine, our Oregon White Oaks also benefit from having competing brush and understory plants cleared with regular, low intensity fires. In the Willamette Valley, where Oregon White Oak trees grows to be very large, scientists estimate that low-intensity wildfires burned every three to five years prior to white settlement of the Pacific Northwest. Most of these fires were set by indigenous people to maintain the Oak savannah landscape in the valley. I suspect the same was true for the oak groves on the east slopes of the Cascades, as well – especially in the Gorge, where a large indigenous population thrived.

One survivor of the Catherine Creek fire that caught might eye is the humble Ponderosa Pine shown below. It had clearly seen some rough times it its life, losing its top at some point, perhaps to an ice storm, wind or even a lightning strike. The result is an unusually short tree for its age, making it more vulnerable to fire. Still, it appears to have survived the October fire.

This stunted Ponderosa Pine has already suffered adversity in its life on the Catherine Creek savannah. Despite this tree’s humble height and low canopy, it did retain some of its healthy crown after the fire

From the uphill side, this old tree seems to have lost minimal canopy, but viewed from the downhill side (below), the fire had a much greater impact, singeing close to half the canopy. Like most of the Pondersosa Pine, there seems to have been enough accumulation of old limbs and dried pine needles beneath this tree to allow the fire to burn much hotter and longer, and the tree’s low canopy made it still more vulnerable to the heat. 

This view of the same stunted Pondera Pine shows a greater impact of the fire on the downhill side of the tree, where accumulated debris likely burned longer and hotter

A close look at the trunk on this old, diminutive pine shows just how important Ponderosa bark is to the survival of this species. In a few spots (below) where some of the heavily charred bark has flaked away, the layers of bark underneath are still completely unburned. Therefore, if this tree has enough remaining green canopy to survive the fire, it should have the intact trunk and root system needed to growth and recover. I will be rooting for this survivor!

Ponderosa Pine bark on living trees is remarkably fire-resistant. Just beneath the badly blackened surface, the bark is intact and healthy

It will take years for the full effects of the fire to be known at Catherine Creek, but just three months after the burn, the area is looking both resilient and rejuvenated as open grassland savannah. One hopeful outcome from this event is that it might open the door to future controlled burns on other savannah landscapes in the Gorge in the years to come as we watch and learn from the recovery here.

How to tour the Catherine Creek burn area?

Scorched trail sign in the upper meadows at Catherine Creek

The Catherine Creek trail network can be confusing to explore, as there is both an abundance of trails and a dearth of trail signage! This loop takes you through some of the finest scenery and provides a close look at the 2024 burn recovery, though none of the trail junctions are signed. The loop shown in red works best when hiked clockwise, climbing about 800 feet in elevation in the first mile through mostly open savannah, then dropping the same distance in the remaining 1.3 miles, along the rugged Rowland Wall. 

[click here for a large, printable version of this map]

While the mileage is relatively modest, the return loop along the rim is rocky, so an option for the less sure-footed is to simply go as far as you feel like on the first leg to the upper meadows, then return the way you came. One important wayfinding tip in the absence of signs is to look for the critical junction at the 0.2 mile mark when you reach a group of seasonal ponds. Watch for a path that heads right, along the ponds, then climbs a slope to begin following a rocky rim on the way to the savannah section. 

Ponds at Catherine Creek mark the start of the loop trail route

The junction at the upper end of the loop can also be hard to find when the meadow grass gets tall, but watch for it on the left when you pass under the obvious transmission lines, roughly halfway between two large transmission towers. Be sure to print a copy of the above map to keep in your pocket, too!

The west leg of the loop, along the Rowland Rim escarpment, also provides fascinating views into dozens of pits in the talus slope below that likely served ceremonial or burial purposes for indigenous people who once lived here in very large numbers. On a clear day, Mount Hood is on the horizon, across the Columbia River. In spring, the entire loop is decorated with wildflowers.

The view from the Rowland Wall section of the hiking loop features Mount Hood (among clouds in this photo) and a maze of ceremonial pits in the talus fields, below, left over the centuries by indigenous peoples

You’ll also be sharing the trail with bikes and possibly horses if you’re on foot. Like all of the eastern Columbia River Gorge, this tick, poison oak and rattlesnake country, with the usual considerations.

Enjoy… and please be kind to your federal lands workers!

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Tom Kloster • February 2025

Incident at Starvation Creek

/ Tom Kloster / 10 Comments

Foggy day at Starvation Creek…

What’s wrong with this photo? Okay, plenty from a photographer’s perspective – starting with the water spot on the lens and a picnic table sticking into the photo. But it turns out the REAL problem that foggy day last December at Starvation Creek Falls was happening BEHIND me. This is the story of how my backpack was stolen by a bold theft ring… and how I got it back! 

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I was standing out in the middle of Starvation Creek on Christmas Eve last month with my camera on a tripod for long exposures. The Gorge streams were running high after weeks of steady rainfall, and I was mostly trying to keep spray off the lens that day. My embarrassingly large, overly stuffed winter backpack was sitting maybe 20 feet above me on the short user trail that follows the east side of the creek in this popular rest stop – just out of earshot. That’s where things went very wrong.

At some point, a woman across the creek on the paved “official” trail was waving to me. The falls and creek were very noisy with all the extra runoff, so I couldn’t hear her at all. I thought she was asking if she was stepping into my photo, so I yelled “no” and gave her a thumbs up. Well, it turns out she was asking if the two “kids” behind me were with me – I didn’t even know they were there! I learned this unfortunate reality a few minutes later when I turned around to discover that my pack had disappeared.

The scene of the pack heist at Starvation Creek…

[click here for a large version]

It was so brazen that at first I was stunned, thinking it must have rolled into the creek, instead. But when it was clear it had been stolen, I realized I might catch up the thieves at the Starvation Creek parking area. 

So, I sprinted back to the trailhead and, once again, met the woman who had called to me from across the creek. This is when I learned what she had been shouting to me about. She was very helpful and able to describe “two teenagers, one with bushy dark hair”. Critically, she also said they had gone east on the paved trail Historic Highway State Trail – away from the Starvation Creek trailhead that was just a few hundred feet away, and toward the next trailhead to the east, at Viento State Park, about one mile away.

Determined to head them off at the pass, I thanked her and jumped in the car, roaring east to Viento State Park. Along the way, I did a mental inventory of all that was in my pack: pretty much EVERYTHING but my camera, tripod and a car key that I always keep in a zipped pants pocket. My phone, wallet, house keys, camera lenses and a bunch of other gear — along with a fairly new winter pack that I loved were all gone. PRIMAL SCREAM MOMENT! (…and boy, did it feel good!)

Sign at the Viento trailhead. Safeguard your valuables, indeed..!

Within a couple minutes, I pulled into the Viento trailhead, and — no cars! Weird. But knowing there was no way they could have made it this far on foot so quickly, I then circled under the highway to the north Viento Campground, located on the opposite side, to see if their getaway car was parked there.

As I approached the north campground entrance, an older, black sedan was heading toward me along the main access road. I waved my arm out the window to flag them down to see if they’d seen a couple teenagers with my large grey pack in tow. I could tell the driver wasn’t going to stop for me – frustrating — so I crowded over the center line, partly blocking the road, and held my hand up for him to stop. After all, who doesn’t stop when someone is waving for help?

North Viento campground… where I encountered a sketchy dude…

The driver finally stopped, rolled down his window and responded with deadpan “no, I didn’t see any kids.” He was a sketchy guy and his car was trashed inside, so, a few alarms went off in my head. He also clearly just wanted to leave. However, there was no way he could have gotten this far on foot in the amount of time that had elapsed since my pack was snatched, and he was more like 30-something — not remotely a teenager. So, I said “thanks” and circled back to Starvation Creek to see if I could trap the teen thieves on the other end! 

This entailed backtracking five miles west on the freeway to the Wyeth exit, then doubling back four miles east to return to Starvation Creek State Park, which is only accessible eastbound. This turned out to be a VERY roundabout route when attempting to break up a backpack-stealing ring. I thus “may” have exceeded the speed limit slightly en route — and also let of a few more Chewbacca-esque PRIMAL SCREAMS! (…they did seem to help!)

Whew… finally back to Starvation Creek!

Then came the serendipitous part of this saga: when I finally reached the Starvation Creek exit and was pulling in, the SAME SKETCHY DUDE in the black BMW from Viento was leaving! He was pulling out at exactly the moment I pulled in! My window was down, and we locked eyes as we passed each other. He then floored it onto the freeway ramp and I did a Dukes-of-Hazard-esque U-turn in the middle of the entrance road (okay, that’s how it was in my imagination, at least) and sped after him (that part is very true)!

The scene of the chance re-encounter at Starvation Creek

The guy had barely merged onto the freeway when I saw something roll out of his passenger door and onto the shoulder… MY PACK!! I skidded off to grab it, threw it on the passenger seat, and jumped back in the car to resume the chase. I really had no idea what had been taken from it at that point in the saga and I was determined to at least get the license plate number on the getaway car.

Heading east in pursuit, I will admit to autobahn-like speeds, yet I never did catch up with the guy. However, to my great relief, my pack had held together despite being dumped from speeding vehicle, and I had already found my house key and iPhone in the top of my pack. Before dumping it with the pack, the thieves had clearly tried to disable my phone by smashing it against something (the dash of their car?), but didn’t even make dent (…thank you, Apple and polycarbonate screen protectors!). 

Forensic map of the great pack heist and subsequent perp chase…

[click here for a large version]

When I finally gave up the chase and pulled off the freeway at the west end of Hood River, I was able to do a better inventory. ALL of my camera great was still in there and intact, despite the pack being tossed out of a moving car at freeway speeds, unzipped! Only my wallet was gone, along with a few hundred bucks in cash, my driver ID, a couple blank checks and some credit cards. I can handle that! 

I then spent some quality time on my newly recovered phone with my wife, who was a complete ROCK STAR in getting credit cards frozen while I was still driving home. She was still on the phone trudging through that thankless task when I pulled in later that afternoon. Even better? She had homemade clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls waiting for me! That definitely took the sting out of an otherwise crappy Christmas Eve..!

A reasonable facsimile of my calming, much-appreciated Christmas Eve dinner… (photo: QVC)

On my trip back to Portland I also called the Hood River County Sheriff to report the theft, and this is where it got really interesting. After my initial call, a deputy called me back within 20 minutes to get a more detailed account. I described the sketchy guy in what I remembered to be a black, older BMW with Washington plates. This is also when I described the contents of my wallet and remembered the two blank checks (side note: if you’ve read this far, don’t carry blank checks with you, as that mistake meant racing back to Portland to reach the bank before early closing – it was Christmas Eve, after all – to completely close our checking account and open a new one). 

My new heroes! I took this photo of a Hood River County deputy near Bennett Pass several years ago, patrolling the old Bennett Pass Road.

Not long after the phone call, the deputy texted me two suspect photos! One guy was a clear match, with long, greasy black hair, where the other had sort of a buzz cut. I texted the deputy that, to my eye, they were the same guy, but slightly different angles and with radically different hair. Bingo! The deputy replied “I thought you might notice that. Yes, this is the same man. Do you think you could identify the vehicle you saw in a photo?” I replied “HELLLL YESSSSS, DEP-YOO-TEEEEE!!!” (Okay, so really, I just texted “Yes, happy to!”).

That’s where it stands. I’ve since sent documentation from a couple attempts to use the now-useless credit cards to the Hood River County Sherriff, but no word on a car to identify. That said, the mere fact that I talked to an actual police officer and that the ringleader in this theft was already on their radar was all I really needed to hear.

Lessons learned?

Takeaways from this saga? I don’t think this episode changes my practice of keeping my valuables in my pack when I’m on a trail vs. carrying them on me when I traveling to and from a trailhead. The exception on the trail is my car key, which I keep in a zipped pants pocket. Always. I shudder to think how things would have played out had I not had my car key! I also learned the hard way not to carry any checks with me. Nobody uses them much anymore, and they completely expose you if they are stolen along with ID. Lesson learned!

Reunited gear! This camera kit has traveled a lot of miles on my back, great that I was able to recover it!

It was also a pretty weird set of circumstances that day, so I’ve been careful not to overthink any takeaways going forward. I usually keep my pack a few feet away when it’s not on my back – and it’s almost always on my back when I’m hiking. That said, it is kind of creepy that the BMW dude’s accomplices seems to have followed me up that side trail with the intent of stealing my pack. This unfolded within a couple hundred yards of a freeway rest stop at Starvation Creek, so that’s a driving factor compared to being off on some trail, far from thieves and their getaway drivers.

The other twist is that the BMW guy and his accomplices seem to have been using the paved trail linking Starvation Creek State Park to Viento State Park as a getaway route. Now that I know it was the same sketchy dude I had originally questioned at Viento all along, my guess is that after encountering me, he called his accomplices while they were still on their escape route and told them to turn back to Starvation Creek, where he would pick them up. If so, he likely saw ME following him onto the freeway, backtracking the same route he was taking to pick them up! That might explain why they were able to toss the pack so quickly, including the bashed-up phone.

My main lasting souvenir from the episode is this water bottle that took a hard hit when my pack hit pavement on the shoulder of I-84. It survived with a few deep scratches to join me on many more adventures.

If this is all true, another theory I have is that they might have been using that side path along Starvation Creek as simply as a place to dump stolen items looted from cars parked at the rest stop to retrieve later. The side path is rarely used this time of year, and there are some truck-sized boulders with dry “caves” underneath them that could be used for precisely this purpose. 

If this theory proves true, it could explain how they stumbled upon me and my pack, and then realized that I had my back to them and couldn’t hear anything – sort of a chance opportunity compared to the much more common smash-and-grab theft from cars that continues to be a real problem in the Columbia River Gorge.

My original winter pack didn’t fare so well from being tossed from the getaway car, so it has since been honorably retired and replaced with this identical edition. Looking forward to many more adventures with this new friend!

I’ve shared this strange story with friends and family since the event, and chided by a few for taking chase in the way I did – that I was taking great risk in doing so. That’s a personal choice we all make, of course, but I have a good sense of situational safety and my mission wasn’t to confront the thieves, it was to identify them via the plates on their getaway car. The only face-to-face exchange I had was with the ringleader, and at that point I had no idea he was part of the theft, nor did he have reason to suspect that I did. Instead, he simply seemed very nervous and eager to get away both times that I made eye contact, not to engage me. I have no regrets, all things considered.

So, is a pain in the ass to lose your wallet on a supposed Christmas Eve escape to nature? Absolutely. But it could have been much worse, AND I’m also ridiculously, infinitely and disproportionately fortunate in this often very unfair world. Episodes like this only serve drive that point home more profoundly. In the larger picture of what really matters, I will take this bit of Christmas Eve coal and relish it with all that is good in my life. 

Making our Trailheads More Secure?

The lovely gateway to the Historic Columbia River Trail at Starvation Creek Falls. Should anyone have to fear being a theft victim by simply stopping here to enjoy this public space?

I’ll end this article with some broader takeaways on the theft problem that continues to plague visitors to the Columbia River Gorge. Yes, there are break-ins on some of the more popular trailheads on Mount Hood and elsewhere, but the Gorge has become notorious for the number of smash-and-grab thefts that occur every year.

Why the Gorge? Part of the answer lies in the sheer number of visitors and proximity to Portland and booming Gorge towns like Hood River. Quick access to I-84 makes it especially easy for smash-and-grab thieves to exit the crime scene and disappear into nearby towns within a few minutes. Over the years, Multnomah County, Hood River County and the Oregon State Police have periodically stepped-up their patrols, but all three law enforcement agencies face budget realities that make it hard to maintain steady patrols at Gorge recreation sites. Break-ins happen in a matter of a minute or two, and there’s really no way that current law enforcement can provide enough presence to deter that.

The beautiful new trailhead at Wyeth had barely opened when broken car window glass began to appear in 2020

While it’s true that property crimes are petty and mostly a nuisance, they do have an impact on the tourism economy of the Gorge communities that is concerning. This is especially true for high-dollar visitors from out of state or abroad who come here only to have their travel belongings stolen by local thieves. That’s the kind of experience that makes a return visit less likely, and is also likely to be shared in our modern world of social media and online travel reviews.

One option for expanding traditional law enforcement is a special patrol dedicated to the Gorge and independently funded through a lodging tax within the Gorge cities. Nobody likes raising taxes and policy makers fear even asking the voters the question, but many tourism-based communities have long enacted lodging taxes as a way to provide services that are especially connected to tourism. Perhaps this could fund special units based within the two county Sheriff departments dedicated to the theft problem?

Another approach that hikers have talked about for many years are trailhead cameras. Simply the existence of cameras could have an effect, just as photo radar cameras on our urban roads slow travel speeds and red light-running, whether they’re on or not. Cameras are gradually starting to show up in recreation areas around the country, too, so the idea does seem to be catching on – if only through necessity.

The blue sign on the right appeared at the Wahclella Falls trailhead in 2016,

The surveillance (or at least the sign) at Wahclella Falls has since disappeared. It wasn’t there when my own car was broken into at this trailhead in April 2021.

The Forest Service placed the above camera notice at the Wahclella Falls trailhead in 2016, though I don’t know if the signs (or cameras?) have since been maintained. My own car was broken into at this trailhead on a beautiful Sunday morning in April 2021, and the signs (and cameras?) had been pulled at that time. I mostly suffered a smashed window in that incident, as I think the thieves were likely spooked by arriving hikers before they could do much looting. The story might have been quite different on a quiet weekday morning.

The 2016 sign at Wahclella Falls (and any other site) could also have been more effective in deterring thieves had it been posted prominently along the entrance road, and not lost in this blizzard of trail notices that even law-abiding visitors rarely stop to read. I suspect land managers are wary about making these too prominent, as placing surveillance cameras in public spaces of any kind remains controversial, whether for privacy or other concerns. 

I do share the concern that stepped-up policing and surveillance might prevent law-abiding visitors from going to the Gorge, given our current state of fear of law enforcement in this country and an openly racist, vindictive regime in power in Washington. As with all law enforcement, it’s a trade-off, but one that I think ought to be considered in the Gorge, and soon.

Despite the current political environment, I remain optimistic that we’ll figure this out, eventually. The Gorge means too much to us and we have a long tradition in Oregon of finding our own creative path to solutions. In the meantime, carry what you can’t afford to lose with you when you’re in the Gorge… and you might also consider investing in a Trunk Monkey until better solutions to the theft problem are found. 😊

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Tom Kloster • February 2025