WyEast Blog News!

December 6, 2025 / Tom Kloster / 6 Comments

What AI thinks of the WyEast Blog of late…. uncanny accuracy!

The crickets are chirping and (AI-generated) tumbleweeds are rolling around the WyEast Blog this fall, so I thought I’d post an overdue update: the blog lives! Just a bit behind on posts.

First off, some personal news: I’ll be retiring after 40 years in public service at the end of this month! I surely never planned to work this long, but I’ve been gifted with a job I love, an amazing agency to be part of for 33 of those years and with a team of co-workers who have become like family, many whom I have worked with for decades. Most every day is rewarding and fun, and for that I feel stupid fortunate!

Young punk in the 90s in luxury window cube…. This was weekend attire, by the way. The internet hadn’t been invented just yet, so working overtime mean a trip into the office, typically on Saturday mornings. Lots of museum pieces on my desk – notably, Kodak slide trays and a preview carrousel projector on the far right that we called R2D2. Fancy cassette/CD boombox on the shelf (probably playing Everclear or Green Day… it was the 90!) and a Macintosh Centris computer on the desk.

However, sometime early this year I knew the time was right. I’ll be 64 in January, after all! Mainly, it was the fact that I’ve been able to bring a new tier of diverse, talented young professionals onboard since COVID amid the “great resignation”, making it much easier to hand off the baton and step aside. The luxury of an orderly succession in these times has been profoundly rewarding, knowing that the future of the organization I care so much about is in great hands!

Old fart reprising the previous 90s pose in my old cube for a photo-op a few weeks ago. CRT monitors have long since given way to flat screens and I don’t think the younger workers could identify a slide tray if I were to put one in their hands. The building was completely remodeled after COVID to a “hoteling” format with no formal offices. Today, most workers (myself included) working a hybrid schedule of telework/in-person days. It’s a brave new work office world!

The race toward retirement over the past few months has been a hectic transition for my team at work, but to spice things up, my wife and I kicked off the second phase of a major home renovation we started during COVID, and that has been in the works since we bought house more than 33 years ago. The timing wasn’t the intended plan, as we started working on the design way back in January, but it has combined with my retirement sprint to create a perfect storm of (muddy) chaos on the home front.

Foundation forms for a kitchen addition to our old 1944 house in North Portland. Project completion is scheduled for February!

A saving grace is that much of the work that I’m contributing to the project (interior painting, casing and trimming windows and doors, installing pantry cabinets and building a new back porch… it’s a long list!) begins in January, in tandem with my retirement. I can’t say that was well-planned, but it turned out to be fortuitous timing.

Looking ahead to retirement, my plans include MUCH more time on endeavors like this blog. plus time up on the Mountain and in the Gorge, of course. I continue to serve on the board for Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) and have various projects I’m involved in on that front that I’m looking forward to leaning into, as well.

On that note, I’ll close with my annual calendars, as all proceeds go straight to TKO. This year I’ve branched out a bit, with dual calendars. First up, the 23^rd edition of the Mount Hood National Campaign calendar, featuring the view from Gnarl Ridge on the cover for 2026:

2026 Mount Hood Calendar cover

And for something a bit different, I’ve also created an Oregon High Desert calendar:

2025 Oregon High Desert Calendar cover

The desert calendar is a bit of a preview of my retirement, as I began making what I call my “old man in the desert” trips in spring and fall each year since COVID in what was initially an effort to simply isolate and avoid crowds. These trips ignited an old passion for Oregon’s Outback that remains strong for me, and thus the collection of photos for this calendar. I’m already planning my spring “old man in the desert” escape!

Both calendars measure 11×14″ and are printed on glossy, high quality stock. They are available on my Zazzle store at the link below — including full previews of the monthly images:

Tom’s Mount Hood and Oregon Desert Calendars

Zazzle ships relatively quickly, so if you’re looking for stocking stuffers, these should arrive by the holidays if ordered in the next week or two. You can also ship them direct as gifts from the Zazzle store!

Squaring the circle after 18 years! The USFS gave TKO the green light to add our field guide trail map and info about upcoming volunteer stewardship opportunities on the Vista Ridge and Old Vista Ridge trail at their shared trailhead this summer. This comes after (ahem!) an unauthorized rescue of the Old Vista Ridge Trail that began way back in 2007, an effort that eventually allowed this beautiful old trail to be officially recognized by the USFS, once again. Today, TKO has an ongoing agreement to maintain both trails annually.

So there’s my mea culpa for the tumbling tumbleweeds around here. Happily, I have many articles in the queue for 2026 (and beyond) and can’t wait to begin working on them full-time as a retired person! In the meantime, my very best to those who follow this blog and, as always…

…I hope to see you on the trail sometime!

_____________________

Tom Kloster | December 2025

Secrets of the Fire at Catherine Creek

February 14, 2025March 30, 2025 / 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…

____________

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!

________________

Tom Kloster • February 2025

2025 Campaign Calendar..!

December 20, 2024 / Tom Kloster / 5 Comments

2025 Campaign Calendar Cover

December brings my annual year in review as told through the images I’ve chosen for the new Mount Hood National Park Campaign calendar. It’s a collection of images from around WyEast country that captures my explorations over the past year and its published in a high-quality, oversized format by the good folks at Zazzle. You can order one here:

2025 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar

As always, all proceeds go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) and you can have these calendars delivered anywhere. You may notice a Red Rock Country calendar of desert southwest images from a recent trip through the Colorado Plateau — proceeds from the is calendar to to TKO, as well! Meanwhile, here’s a deeper dive into the thirteen images I selected for this year’s calendar.

Stories behind the photos…

The cover image is also the most recent in the calendar. It’s an alpenglow view of Mount Hood’s west face taken from Lolo Pass road in early November. This is a classic spot for photography after the first few fall snowstorms, so I’m rarely alone there – a notably, I ran into Peter Marbach, one of our amazing WyEast Country professional photographers on this visit! This view came a few minutes before sunset on a crystal-clear fall evening:

Last light after an early snowfall on the mountain is the cover image of the 2025 campaign calendar

The backstory to this photo is that I had planned to shoot from a favorite spot on the east shoulder of Lolo Pass that evening. I even had my camera set up, ready to go, when a huge fog bank rolled up the West Fork Hood River valley and parked over me at Lolo Pass. It happened in less than a minute, as the photo sequence below shows:

Lolo Pass fog rolling in… setting up my tripod seems to have this effect on the weather!

It turns that topographic conditions are prime at Lolo Pass for fog events like this (sometimes becoming freezing fog). Most of these are triggered when colder, drier continental air from east of the Cascades collides with moist, marine air from west of the mountains to form very localized fog banks parked on top of the pass, with otherwise clear weather to the east and west.

Sure enough, when I packed up and headed to a viewpoint just west of the pass, the mountain was in full view – along with the fog bank draped over Lolo Pass (below). This is where I captured the cover photo for the new calendar that day and had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Marbach! I’m still kicking myself for not getting a selfie – I’m a big fan of his amazing work.

Looking back at the Lolo Pass fog bank from the west side of the mountain

In fall and early spring, strong temperature inversions can also fill the mountain valleys on both sides of Lolo Pass with dense fog. As the sun drops down toward sunset, the valley inversion fog often surges over the pass due to its remarkably low elevation of just 3,415 feet – at least a thousand feet lower than most of the Cascade passes in Oregon.

Continuing with the fog theme, inversion valley fog is just how this photo (below) I chose for January image in the new calendar came about. This scene was captured on the east side of Mount Hood, along the lower slopes of Lookout Mountain, with the East Fork Hood River canyon filled nearly to the brim with a dense, thousand-foot thick layer of fog. The view is framed with long-needled Ponderosa Pine boughs, the signature conifer species on the east slope of the Cascades.

More fog for the January calendar image – this time in the East Fork Hood River valley

Here’s a wider view from the same area (below) showing how the fog filled the valley like a bathtub that day, thanks to a layer of cold, moist air trapped by a stable high-pressure system that was bringing all that sunshine and relatively mild temperatures directly above. On winter days like this, it’s common for temperatures in the fog zone to be hovering near freezing while temperatures above the inversion rise well into the upper 40s or even low 50s.

East Fork Hood River inversion fog and Mount Hood

Inversion fog is common on the east end of the Columbia River Gorge and is tributary valleys in winter, often with freezing temperatures that make for spectacular frost displays (and slick roads) when the inversions persist. The forests here are completely adapted to this effect, including the annual pruning that a heavy ice accumulation from persistent fog can bring.

In this view (below), the winter advantage of Western Larch also stands out. While a few of the Larch still have their golden needles, most (like the one in the center) have already dropped their foliage for the winter, making them less susceptible to heavy winter winds and accumulations of snow and ice. Like Ponderosa Pine, Larch are also fire-resistant – making them perfectly adapted to this “fire forest” mountain ecosystem.

Fog swirling through an east side forest of Larch, true firs, Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine

The fog was sloshing around the East Fork valley that day as I watched and captured the changing scenes. While the overall inversion layer is generally flat, there are waves in the upper surface of the fog what wash “ashore” along the valley walls as the inversion air pressure gradient rolls across the surface of the fog layer. It’s mesmerizing to watch this effect from just above “shore level” as the waves surge below.

This final view was taken from the same spot as the above calendar image, and it shows an approaching wave of fog that would soon overtop the spot where I had set up my camera for these images. Once it engulfed me, the air temperature nearly 20 degrees in just a few minutes!

The mountain a few minutes before the ocean of fog inundated this spot!

Winter can be long and grey on the west side of the mountains, but if you know Oregon’s weather patterns you can often spot conditions when the east side of the mountains will be bright and sunny, even as rain falls on the west side. A favorite retreat for me on these days is the lower Deschutes River Canyon, less than two hours from Portland.

Despite the still-cool temperatures, I prefer to visit the Deschutes River in late winter, when few people are there, and the canyon slopes are green with emerging spring growth and the Alders turn yellow, then rusty-red with catkins. For the February image in the new campaign calendar, I chose this scene (below) near Rattlesnake Canyon that features a picturesque White Alder just coming into its late winter bloom.

White Alder providing winter color along the Deschutes River for the February calendar image

Here’s another winter scene along the Deschutes with a mature grove of White Alder (below) growing along the riverbank. White Alder are not widespread in Oregon, and mostly limited to the Willamette Valley, eastern Columbia River Gorge (including the lower Deschutes Canyon) and the Siskiyous in Southern Oregon, Their range overlaps the Red Alder, its close cousin, that grows along the Pacific coast and extends as far inland as the Willamette Valley, where the two species meet.

White Alder (left) in winter along the Deschutes

Seen up close, both the male and female catkins of White Alder come into view. In this February photo (below), the male catkins are the long, pendulous blossoms and the green female catkins are still in bud form, just beginning to emerge. The “cones” of last year’s female catkins can still be seen, too. They are the dark ovals that resemble tiny pine cones when they open and dry to a dark brown color in fall. Because White Alder contains both male and female flowers on the same tree, they rely only on wind to pollinate, and the desert country east of Mount Hood provides plenty fo that!

White Alder catkins emerging in February

This view of a typical section of the Lower Deschutes canyon (below) shows just how important the White Alder groves that line the shore are to the ecosystem. They are the only sizable trees in this desert landscape, and they provide essential wildlife habitat along the river. Both Red and White Alder are also nitrogen-fixing trees, enriching the soil for other plants wherever they grow.

White Alder groves line the lower Deschutes River Canyon in winter

Another surprise on this winter trip to the Lower Deschutes were the many flowing tributary waterfalls that are dry for much of the year. This unnamed, two-tier waterfall near Trestle Bend is dropping into a grove of White Alder (below).

Season waterfall dropping into the Deschutes canyon in winter

While I’ve known for some time that Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep live in the Lower Deschutes canyon, I had not seen them until this trip last February, when I spotted two herds high above the river, just upstream from Rattlesnake Canyon. Both were bachelor herds working their way downstream, along the upper slopes of the canyon (below).

Bighorn Sheep in the lower Deschutes River canyon

Bighorn Sheep are a welcome sight in the Deschutes River canyon, not just because they’re beautiful to see and watch, but because they’re also an indicator of ecosystem health. Bighorns are highly sensitive to human activity, so their presence here reflects the continuing efforts by the Bureau of Land Management and Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to expand habitat protection for these animals in Oregon’s desert country.

Bighorn Sheep in the lower Deschutes River canyon

This trip was my second to the Lower Deschutes last winter, and I did have a practical mission for returning. On the first trip I had come frighteningly close to dropping a wheel over the edge of a paved section of the river access road, where a landslide has taken a big bite out of it. When I pulled over to take a look, I was spooked by the realization that going off the road here would have sent me 200 feet down the landslide scar, and directly into the river!

So, one week later I came armed with a can of white paint to (at least temporarily) mark off a shy distance for drivers passing north along the road. Hopefully, the land managers didn’t mind…

Scary landslide damage to the Deschutes River Road!

This aerial view of the landslide scar from Google Earth (the image below is from 2022) shows just how sketchy the situation is, and that there are really two slides at work, here. The larger slide on the right is the one picture above, where the roadway has been seriously compromised.

Aerial view of the Deschutes River Road landslides in 2022 (Google Earth)

For the March calendar image, I moved to the Columbia River Gorge and Tanner Creek. It’s a place that I describe as the “Gorge on the half-shell”, as this spectacular 2-mile loop trail along to Wahclella Falls has all of the elements of a classic Gorge hike: towering basalt cliffs, a rushing stream with thundering waterfalls, wispy, impossibly tall tributary waterfalls, old-growth Douglas Fir and Western Redcedar, fern-covered talus slopes and lush green moss on seemingly every surface. Throw in four unique footbridges (one where you can reach out and touch a waterfall) and it’s a perfect introduction to the Gorge.

In past years, I have included a favorite scene captured from a viewpoint high above the falls, showing a couple of the tributary waterfalls dropping into the deep gorge that Tanner Creek has carved. I captured the scene once again this year (below), but wanted to try something different for 2025.

Wahclella Falls in the Columbia River Gorge

This year I opted for the view from in front of the falls (below), taken from the long footbridge that can spotted in the previous photo. From this streamside perspective, a young Western Redcedar growing directly in front of the falls, and will soon block the view. So, for this year I embraced the photo-bombing tree and framed it to be directly silhouetted by the falls while it’s still short enough not to completely block the view.

Wahclella Falls and the upstart Western Redcedar tree are featured as the March calendar image

How long before the tree eclipses the view from the footbridge? Here’s a comparative view of this young upstart, and you can see that it will clearly block the falls from this vantage point in the next decade or so… if it survives! That’s an open question, as this little tree is growing quite close to Tanner Creek, and there’s a reason the largest trees near the falls are on higher ground. Tanner Creek is big and rowdy in winter, and regularly scours the streambanks along its course in high water, easily carrying away whole trees in its wake. The giant logjam in the earlier, wide view of the falls is testament to the stream’s power.

The upstart cedar at Wahclella Falls

[click here for a much larger version]

For geoscience types (that would be me), the still-fresh scar from the 1973 landslide at Tanner Creek is hard to take your eyes off when hiking this trail, but in recent years there have been a series of much smaller basalt wall collapses right next to Wahclella Falls that are fascinating to track. Sometime in the past year, another 15×20 foot slab immediately west of the falls collapsed into the splash pool after being undercut by erosion from the pounding water. The photo pair below shows the new scar.

Recent wall collapse along the Wahclella Falls splash pool

This latest evidence of the ongoing erosion along Tanner Creek is a more typical example of the incremental, nearly constant deepening of the canyon that occurs through the combination of gravity and annual freeze-thaw cycles that push cracks in the basalt walls open and gradually the rock apart.

This weaking of the rock is accelerated by the erosive action of Tanner Creek in undercutting the canyon walls, especially where the heavy basalt layers rests on the must softer Eagle Creek Formation, made up of ancient volcanic debris flows that are easily eroded by the stream. The trailside cave just below Wahclella Falls (where the new the new logjam has accumulated) is a great example of stream erosion cutting away this softer layer beneath several hundred feet of vertical basalt cliff, above. This was mostly likely what triggered the massive 1973 collapse, as well.

For the April image in the new calendar, I chose a scene that put April-blooming Balsamroot front and center. This view from the Columbia Hills State Historical Park (below) is looking west toward Mount Hood on a cool, blustery spring day.

Mount Hood and the flood-scoured lower slopes of the Columbia Gorge are featured in the April calendar image

Staying with a geology theme, this viewpoint is notable for how rocky this scene below is. It was taken at a point just below the high-water mark of the series of ice age floods that shaped much of what we know as the Gorge today. The floodwaters scoured away all but the most resistant basalt, leaving this rugged terrain we know today behind.

You can easily spot the high-water mark of the ice age floods in this part of the Gorge. Just a hundred feet uphill from the viewpoint where the previous photo was taken, the terrain suddenly softens into the rolling slopes that make up the Columbia Hills (below). There’s plenty of jagged basalt here, too, but it’s mostly buried under millennia of soil accumulation that survived the floods thanks to being mainly above the flood levels.

Gentle terrain above the ice age flood high-water level in the Columbia Hills

The surviving soil in these upper slopes of the Gorge translate into enormous wildflower meadows that draw people from around the world. Yellow Balsamroot steals the flower show in the east Gorge in spring, but in places with the Columbia Hills, they are just part of a wildflower spectacle, with Phlox (below), lupine and dozens of other wildflowers filling the gaps between the showy Balsamroot.

Spring wildflower gardens in the Columbia Hills

Each time I visit places the east Gorge in spring, I make it a goal to spot a few of these co-stars in the flower show that I might not have noticed before. To my surprise, my visit last spring included Ballhead Waterleaf, a lush plant that grows throughout the west, but is typically found in moist spots. Yet, this colony (below) had found a shady slope beneath a pair of Bigleaf Maple trees with just enough groundwater to help them thrive in this desert environment.

This Ballhead Waterleaf found a shaded niche in the Columbia Hills

Another striking wildflower was new to me on that trip, a lovely plant called Whitestem Frasera (below). It was just coming into bloom and still in bud when I was there, but in a couple weeks would have clusters of blue flowers rising above the beautiful foliage. This is one of many species that is typically found well east of the Cascades, but makes its way well into the Columbia River Gorge where conditions are right.

Whitestem Fraseria still in bud in the Columbia Hills

Still more surprising on that trip were several Cushion Fleabane (below) colonizing the old access road that forms the first mile or so of the Crawford Oaks trail in the Columbia Hills. These little plants thrive in fine gravels, and the old roadbed provides that for them, now that traffic is mostly limited to hiking boots.

Tiny Cushion Fleabane in the Columbia HIlls

I stayed on the east side of the mountains for the May calendar image, with a view of White River Falls (below), where one of Mount Hood’s many glacial streams carves a deep canyon through sagebrush country and make a spectacular leap over a wide basalt cliff on the way to its confluence with the Deschutes River, just downstream. The falls and its lower canyon are protected as part of White River Falls State Park.

White River Falls during spring runoff in the May calendar image

This spectacular view of the main falls is best in spring, when runoff is high. The upper viewpoint is easily accessible, too – just a few hundred feet from the trailhead, with some of the path paved. But the deep gorge below the main falls hides still more waterfalls that make it well worth the steep hike into the canyon, despite the choppy descent along a long set of deteriorating stairs!

The stairway to White River heaven…

The lower tier of the main falls is unofficially called Celestial Falls (below) and forms a perfect punchbowl between walls of basalt. When winter temperatures drop below freezing, this natural bowl can become a mass of ice built up from the waterfall spray.

Celestial Falls on the White River, just below the main White River falls

Continue a bit further downstream on an increasingly unofficial trail, past the ruins of the early 1900s hydroelectric plant that once operated here, and the White River makes a third, smaller plunge into another, larger punchbowl at the lower falls (below). This might be my favorite spot in the canyon, as the lower falls and its deep pool are framed with wildflowers in spring, sprinkled among the boulders on the slopes that surround the river.

Lower White River Falls

There is a lot to see at White River Falls, and because it’s a regular stop for me, my eye goes to new details on each visit. When I stopped last spring and captured the calendar image shown previously, I was surprised to notice that beavers had taken up residence in the long, slow pool near the old powerhouse, between Celestial Falls and the lower falls. They had also recently made quick work of several trunks of a White Alder clump growing along the beach (below). If you look closely at the image from last April, you can see four fresh cuts, along with at least five previously cut trunks. Just one trunk remained, then, and even this sole survivor had a fresh scar where the beavers were working to finish the job on this grove!

Busy beavers at White River Falls State Park

In the more recent image from last month – just seven months later — you can see the Alder tree is fighting back with a vengeance. Not only did that lonely last trunk survive, dozens of new shoots exploded from the stumps over the summer to replace what the beavers had hauled away. It’s a great example of the continuous cycle between beavers and streamside trees.

When I visited last month, I was also reminded of man’s impact on the falls. In low water, which extends from mid-summer into mid-winter, much of the face of White River Falls goes dry. Why? The answer is in the distance, just beyond the falls, where a long-derelict diversion dam (shown below) was built more than a century ago to direct water to the old hydroelectric penstock pipes.

Dried-up White River Falls in the low water season when the main river flow is diverted

You can get a close-up look at the ruins of the old waterworks by following a path that heads upstream from the main falls overlook. Here, the diversion dam and abandoned canals that were once the headworks (below) to an elaborate pipe system are still diverting the river, but only to a side channel that spills around the main falls, as the pipe system was largely removed decades ago.

Derelict White River Falls diversion works depriving White River Falls its full spectacle

My hope is that Oregon State Parks officials will someday breach the old dam and restore the falls to its original channel year-round, instead of waiting for the White River to do the job (and it will, eventually).

For June, I chose another east-side image for the calendar. This view of Eightmile Falls (below) is where the main stream flowing from Columbia Hills State Historic Park drops over a basalt cliff as it enters the ice age flood-scoured lower reaches of the Columbia Gorge. In spring, this overlook is especially beautiful, lined with blooming Balsamroot and the creek is running strong with early season runoff.

June in the new calendar features Eightmile Falls in the Columbia Hills

Eightmile Falls is located along the Crawford Oaks trail, a relatively new access point to the park that follows a portion of the historic military road that once passed through this area. Along the way, there are views of Mount Hood and the Columbia River framed by old stone walls (below) from the early days of white settlement here in the late 1800s.

Stone walls in the Columbia Hills mark early white settlements in the area

One surprise along this section of the old military road is a grove of heritage apple trees that have somehow survived here for a century of more, in the middle of this harsh desert environment. In spring, they are covered with blossoms (below) that reveal them to be part of the human story here.

Heritage apple trees from white settlements still survive at Crawford Oaks

Another surprise along the old road are several groups of Bigleaf Maple, a species that thrives in Cascade rainforests. These unlikely trees manage to carve out a niche in this desert environment where they typically grows along basalt walls that provide both weather protection and provide groundwater seeps to help them survive hot summers.

Bigleaf Maple blossoms in the Columbia Hills

In spring, these out-of-place maples also put on an impressive flower display (above) that is easier to appreciate here, where the trees often grow just 15-20 feet high. Their foliage is at eye level, where you can see the blossoms close-up, compared to rainforest cousins where the blooms are often 70 or 80 feet above the forest floor.

For the July calendar image, I moved up into the mountains with this view (below) of the historic Cooper Spur Shelter, located along the Timberline Trail on the northeast shoulder of Mount Hood. This is among of the most iconic spots on the mountain, and it didn’t disappoint this year, with drifts of blooming yellow Buckwheat and purple Lupine framing the 1930s, Civilian Conservation Corps structure.

Cooper Spur Shelter with alpine wildflowers are featured in the July calendar image

As tough as it has been to witness the accelerating effects of global warming on Mount Hood’s glaciers in past years, the early summer view of the Eliot Glacier remains one of the most impressive sights in WyEast Country. In this view from farther up the Cooper Spur trail (below) a few weeks later, a group of hikers is silhouetted against the mountain, giving scale to the enormity of the glacier as it tumbles down the mountain.

Hikers framed against the Eliot Glacier in Summer

Many of the trails in the Cooper Spur area are as unofficial as they are historic, dating back to the earliest recreation visits to the mountain in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the Cloud Cap Inn was in its heyday. Today, the continue to be as heavily traveled as the formal trail system. This is made possible by a largely unseen corps of unofficial trail tenders that have helped tend to these routes for decades, as well as the official Timberline and Cooper Spur routes. I know, because I’ve adopted a few of these trails, and I always see the handiwork of others when I’m working there.

Last July, my unofficial trail work focused on retiring a persistent shortcut just below the crest of the South Eliot Moraine. It’s caveman work, as you can see in the schematic below – simply covering the shortcut with rocks large enough to discourage people from taking the shortcut. It’s a never-ending task, as new routes are formed instantly in this open, loose alpine terrain when just one group hikers decides to leave the established trail and make their own way.

Trail tending along the South Eliot moraine

In the era of cell phones and GPS, these shortcuts are becoming more numerous and persistent. Why? Because the errant digital tracks from lost hikers following dead-ends or short cuts are blindly added to the big data commercial websites that cater to hikers. It’s among the many reasons to avoid commercial apps and social media for hiking guidance, especially when we have TKO’s free Oregon Hikers Field Guide for trails in Oregon and Southwest Washington, a non-profit resource written by hikers, for hikers.

The Cooper Spur Shelter, itself, was also in need of some volunteer tending this year, as the stovepipe in the south corner of the structure has rusted through and that seems to have led to a collapse of the stone wall surrounding it (below).

Recent collapse of the south shoulder of the Cooper Spur shelter

While it’s possible the U.S. Forest Service will repair this, I’m going to guess that it will fall to volunteers that I’ve seen working on the structure in the past. I’ve come across them many times over the years, as early as this view (below) taken 22 years ago, when a group of volunteers was repairing that same south corner of the building. Like most of the trails around Cooper Spur, the shelter also represents an ongoing volunteer effort to ensure it survives.

Volunteers repairing the south wall of the shelter more than 20 years ago

For the August image in the new calendar, I chose the view from Inspiration Point (below), a rocky spot along the Cloud Cap Road that provides a sweeping view of the Eliot Branch canyon and Mount Hood’s steep northeast side. This has been a popular tourist stop since visitors begin arriving at the Cooper Spur Inn by horse and buggy in the 1890s.

The August calendar image features this classic view of Mount Hood from Inspiration Point

Inspiration Point still offers one of the finest views of both the Coe and Eliot glaciers, the two largest on the mountain. The Coe is the lesser known of the two due to its remote location on the rugged north face of the mountain, and this viewpoint is one of the few places with a close-up look accessible by road.

Coe Glacier from Inspiration Point

The steep, unofficial trail to Inspiration Point has been on my list of adopted trails for nearly 20 years, and despite its short length, keeping this little path intact has been a challenge – especially in the years since the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire swept through and left many standing snags that are still periodically falling across the trail.

If you’re not an avid hiker and looking for a short side trip on your way to Cloud Cap, watch for the following signpost at an obvious switchback in the road at about the 3 mile mark (below). From the sign, the trail drops roughly 300 feet to the rocky overlook of Inspiration Point.

Inspiration Point trail marker

What does the “1” stand for in this unofficial trail marker? It dates back to a brochure and map once published by the Forest Service that described the history of the Cloud Cap area by numbered waypoints along the road. This signpost and an old, mounted wagon wheel further up the road are all that remains from that effort to share the local history. I do plan to feature the brochure in a future blog article, along with mileage waypoints to guide visitors, in lieu of the old markers that were once here.

Inspiration Point trail marker… a reminder of an interpretive story that was once told here

For the best view from Inspiration Point, the short trail is a must, but there was a time when you could take in the view from road as you motored your Model T up to Cloud Cap Inn. In fact, an old guardrail that I think might be the original shown in a 1920s postcard view (below) is still there – albeit with a few trees now partly blocking the view.

The view from Inspiration Point – then and now

For the September calendar image, I stayed on the mountain and chose an early fall scene at WyEast Basin (below). This photo was taken on a hike in October of this year along the Timberline Trail, from WyEast Basin to Elk Cove, when the huckleberry foliage had turned a brilliant crimson and the alpine meadows to shades of yellow and gold.

WyEast Basin on Mount Hood’s north side is the September image

This photo (below) from the descent into Elk Cove is also from that day, showing the light dusting of early snow that had fallen on the summit the day before.

The Timberline Trail approach to Elk Cove lights up with color in autumn

I considered using this view of the upper meadows at Elk Cove (below) from that October trip for the calendar, before realizing just how many times I’ve featured Elk Cove over the years! Lovely as it is, this year I went for a change of scenery with the WyEast Basin scene.

Elk Cove in autumn with an early dusting of snow on the mountain

One pleasant surprise at Elk Meadows this year was a new trail sign located at the Timberline Trail junction with the Elk Cove Trail. The old sign had pretty much disintegrated in recent years, causing a fair amount of confusion for hikers, based on the number of times I helped people find their way at that junction.

One benefit of coming to Elk Cove every year is the opportunity to track changes there over time. This includes trail signs, and in a place where the winter snowpack regularly reaches 10 feet or more in winter, it’s no wonder that these signs take a beating. As you can see from the photo sequence below, the two small signs pointing to “campsites” get the award for most durable. They were already quite weathered in 2010 when the previous “new” trail sign was installed. By 2023, the “new” main sign from 2010 was falling apart. This year, both the main trail sign and the “no camping in meadows” sign were completely replaced, while the two “campsites” signs are still doing their job.

Elk Cove trail signs over the years

On the hike back from Elk Cove, I stopped to collect some trail condition photos at WyEast Basin, where the growing stream of hikers has begun to take its toll on the meadow. Some of this is the result of hikers simply stepping off the trail when passing one-another on a busy section of the Timberline Trail, but the widening tread is mostly the result of the original trail becoming trenched from heavy use, then becoming a muddy ditch when snowmelt fills it early in the hiking season. Hikers then opt to walk on either side to keep their boots dry, gradually destroying the meadow vegetation in the process.

This schematic (below) shows the original trail at the center (now a trench) as a white dashed line and shoulder paths in red dashed lines, where hikers have already destroyed an alarming amount of meadow vegetation.

Growing damage from trail overuse at WyEast Basin

Over time, this parallel use paths on both sides of the trenched trail will turn into a muddy slog, too, resulting in an ever-widening trail across a beautiful meadow. I’m hoping to find a way for TKO volunteers to restore this trail with a different design that anticipates the muddy season, perhaps even something as bold as a turnpike, or raised section of trail between parallel logs that is designed to keep the trail tread dry by elevating it above the surrounding ground. Below is a recent example from McIver State Park.

Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) volunteers building a turnpike on soggy ground at McIver State Park (photo: TKO)

[click here for a larger version]

The second photo in the above example shows a drainage features, one of the potential benefits of a turnpike at WyEast Basin, as the Timberline Trail crosses at least three small streams that meander through the meadow. However, turnpikes are typically built from found materials near the trail (logs, rocks and soil), which could prove to be challenging in an alpine, wilderness environment.

For the October image in the new calendar, I went back to Wahcella Falls. It’s not the first time a waterfall has appeared twice in a single calendar, but it was the combination of fall colors and a person in the photo – a rarity for me – that made the case. Look closely (below) and you’ll see a hiker in front of the falls, taking in the magnificent view.

Wahclella Falls (and a hiker) with fall colors is featured as the October image in the calendar

Earlier in this article, I included a photo of Wahclella Falls from an off-trail viewpoint taken in early spring. By late October each year, the same view lights up with gold and yellow fall colors (below) that are becoming even more prevalent in the aftermath of the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire that swept through this canyon. That’s thanks to the rapid recovery of broadleaf trees like Bigleaf and Vine maple that are taking advantage of the open forest conditions created by the fire, and bouncing back from roots and stumps that survived the burn.

Fall colors at Wahclella Falls have become more dramatic since the 2017 fire

Bigleaf Maple are the real stars in this comeback story, with most growing from the surviving stump of a parent tree killed by the fire. The new access to sunlight and explosive growth also makes for super-sized foliage, with individual leaves measuring nearly a foot across (below) underscoring the common name for these essential trees.

Biglieaf maple leaves are growing to gigantic proportions in the post-fire recovery

When I hike this trail, I see the handiwork of Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) crews everywhere, as TKOs volunteers have done much to rescue the trail in the aftermath of the 2017 fire. This includes a streamside section where a huge, post-fire logjam of killed trees accumulated just below Wahclella Falls, and piled so high they spilled onto the trail, itself. TKO and Pacific Crest Trail Association volunteers used a combination of saws and ropes to clear the way back in 2021, and today the logjam is still there to remind us of the power of this stream.

TKO crews clearing the logjam from the Wahclalla Falls trail in 2021

TKO volunteers also worked with the Forest Service to build a rustic set of stairs where the trail had collapsed near the falls, leaving a sketchy scramble through this gap in the rocks for hikers to navigate. The rock steps not only make the trail more accessible to everyday hikers, the add another interesting element and a bit of whimsey for young hikers (below) visiting this family-friendly trail for the first time.

Rustic steps built by TKO volunteers at Wahclella Falls area favorite with young hikers

For the November calendar image, I returned to the east side of the mountain and chose a scene captured along the Lookout Mountain Road in late fall. This is the least-visited, less familiar side of the mountain to Portlanders, with a broad, sweeping profile that looks more like other Cascade volcanoes, and contrasts with the familiar, pyramid-shaped summit the mountain presents to the millions who live west of the mountain.

Yellow and gold Larch framing Mount Hood are featured as the November image in the calendar

When the conditions are right, the Western Larch here have turned to their yellow and gold autumn colors and the first temperature inversions have arrived, filling the East Fork Hood River valley with fog. The effect can be quite dramatic. On this day the fog layer was growing especially fast, and surged over me in just the view minutes (below) I had to set up my camera!

Fast moving fog at Lookout Mountain!

Having been fogged out on that chilly day, I followed another November ritual in the mountains and collected some greens for holiday decorating. Normally, I look for Noble Fir boughs, but on this day, I gathered some beautiful, blue-tinted Engelmann Spruce greens. You can easily distinguish spruce from other conifers by their sharp needles, making them a bit prickly to work with as holiday greens. Nonetheless, they made for some lovely Christmas arrangements at home!

Engelmann Spruce holiday greens..? Prickly!

Is it legal to collect holiday greens within Mount Hood National Forest? Absolutely, but check their website to see if a permit is required. For 2024, permits are waived, and you may collect up to 25 pounds (that’s a lot of boughs!) in a season. The main restriction is Whitebark Pine, which are now a protected species and may not be collected or cut in any way. These trees only grow at and above timberline, but if you’re unsure of how to identify them, just avoid cutting any pine boughs and stick with fir trees. Leave no trace also applies, so collect boughs as if you were pruning trees in your garden, with cuts made as discreetly as possible.

For December, I chose a fairly unconventional image for the new calendar. Continuing with the fog theme, I selected this photo from the Bennett Pass area, where dueling valley fog banks in both the White River and East Fork Hood River valleys were colliding at the pass. The effect in the ancient Noble Fir forests just above Bennett Pass was mesmerizing, with patching of blue sky opening and closing overhead as waves of fog rolled through the big trees.

Ancient Noble Fir forest rising into the fog near Bennett Pass are featured as the December image in the new calendar

Fog bank filling the East Fork Hood River Valley as viewed from above Bennett Pass

How old are these trees? Some are at least 400 years old. We know this because the area saw heavy logging in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of the giant stumps left from that unfortunate era still remain to tell the story through their tree rings. Fortunately, not all of the big trees were cut, and some truly magnificent old-growth Noble Fir stands remain today.

Noble Fir giants in the fog near Bennett Pass

Noble Fir giants and Mountain Hemlock seedlings in the fog near Bennett Pass

On a more practical note, I was encouraged on that trip to see the Forest Service continuing to gradually improve visitor facilities on the mountain, including a new toilet at the popular winter trailhead at Bennett Pass. While pit toilets might not be a joy for anyone to use, they are essential at busy trailheads, especially for families with young kids. Modern toilets like the new facility at Bennett Pass are also accessible for visitors with mobility devices, removing a very real barrier to our public lands.

New toilets at Bennett Pass – with a view!

Finally, the back cover of the new campaign calendar features some of the wildflower highlights captured in WyEast Country over the past year (below). Some might be familiar, but I do have one confession to make: the Prickley Pear cactus in the center square wasn’t photographed anywhere near Mount Hood. Instead, it’s over in the John Day country, where I photographed this particular colony near the Painted Hills last spring.

Wildflower mashup on the back of the 2025 calendar

Here’s a closer look at one of the cactus blossoms from that trip (below), showing the unlikely contrast of impossibly delicate flowers emerging from a maze of thorns that make these tough plants so fascinating:

Brittle Prickley Pear near the Painted Hills

Why include this, then? Because I am admittedly obsessed with our native cacti, and determined to finally photograph them where they grow here in WyEast Country. I have two promising leads on that front that I’ll be following up on this spring. Both are near The Dalles and apparently hidden in plain sight, but I suspect I will have some searching to do!

Where the Prickley Pear grows..?

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years hunting for cactus in Oregon. As spectacular and flamboyant as these flowers are when in bloom, the plants are surprisingly well-camouflaged and hard to find when they’re not… unless you step on one! So, more to come in this story.

…and to spare you from scrolling back to the top, here’s the link if you’d like to order the 2025 campaign calendar featuring these new photos:

2025 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar

… and all proceeds from calendar sales go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO), and they can be delivered anywhere

Looking ahead to 2025

Thanks for reading this far! Mea culpa: I began 2024 with high hopes of a lot of WyEast Blog articles, but my day job and real-life demands got the better of me this year, once again! Therefore, I’m recycling that goal for 2025, and I’ve got some fun topics that I’m eager to dive into.

These include some new digging I’ve done on a massive landslide that completely rerouted one of Mount Hood’s major rivers, plus some new research on what many call “Indian pits” or “vision quest pits” – those mysterious pits found in talus slopes all through the Gorge and in spots around Mount Hood. I’ve also got a history piece on a surprising road race with a WyEast connection, and much more beyond these…time permitting!

The old man and the mountain..

As always, thanks for patiently checking back when my posts become infrequent, putting up with the typos and grammatical errors, and — more importantly — thank you for being a friend of our Mountain and Gorge. I hope to see you on the trail sometime in 2025!

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Tom Kloster | December 2024

Return of the Mountain Goat… on Mount Hood?

September 28, 2024 / Tom Kloster / 9 Comments

Author’s note: I wrote a version of this article for the Mazama newsletter a few weeks ago, so I’m sharing an expanded version here, as this is a sequel to a WyEast Blog post from 2011.

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Since posting an article more than a decade ago (“Return of the Mountain Goat”) proposing reintroduction of Rocky Mountain Goats on Mount Hood, I’ve received a steady stream of updates from area hikers with recent goat sightings on Mount Hood and in the Columbia River Gorge. Are they making a spontaneous comeback?

Possibly. But I couldn’t have predicted the many related events that have unfolded since I wrote that first piece back in 2011, and they don’t necessarily help the case for bringing mountain goats back to Mount Hood – nor do they rule the idea out. It’s just much less clear, now.

The first big event was the Dollar Lake Fire on Mount Hood that roared through just a few months after I posted the article. While there had been fairly recent fires on the east slopes of the mountain (the Bluegrass Fire and Gnarl Fire), they had mostly burned below timberline and were also partly within the ecological zone known as “fire forests”. These are forests with fire-dependent species like Ponderosa Pine and Western Larch have evolved with fire as a regular occurrence on the dry east slopes of the mountain.

Dollar Lake Fire burning across Mount Hood’s north side in September 2011

The Dollar Lake Fire on the north side was different, largely burning subalpine Noble Fir and Mountain Hemlock forests, species that have not evolved to withstand fire. The result was a complete canopy loss along most of the north slope of the mountain. I’ve since been documenting the forest recovery in a series of WyEast blog articles, and it’s a story of remarkable resilience in an ecosystem where fires are both rare and devastating.

However, if you were a mountain goat living on Mount Hood when that fire roared through in the late summer of 2011, you would likely have survived. Though the Dollar Lake Fire touched timberline in places like Elk Cove and Cairn Basin, most of the timberline and alpine habitat was untouched. This would have allowed goats living in the rocky areas at and above the tree line to escape the smoke and flames during the event.

The Dollar Lake Fire transformed more than 6,000 acres of subalpine terrain from dense forests to open huckleberry and beargrass fields. This scene is from 99 Ridge, above Elk Cove

The vast huckleberry and beargrass fields that now grow among bleached tree skeletons within the burn zone are prime habitat for wildlife, including elk, deer and bear. What is unknown is whether the new habitat would support mountain goats where it exposed rocky terrain that had been engulfed in forest cover over the past century – places like The Pinnacle or 99 Ridge (the rocky ridge that forms the west wall of Elk Cove, shown above).

We do know that when white migrants began streaming into the Oregon country in the mid-1800s, the Cascade forests looked much different than they do today, after a century of wildfire suppression. A series of survey photos captured from dozens of Forest Service lookouts in the early 1930s provide a remarkable record of just how open much of the high country surrounding Mount Hood was in places like Zigzag Mountain, Mirror Lake and today’s Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness.

The northern slopes of Devils Peaks had been cleared by repeated fires over centuries in this 1933 lookout panorama. In the distance, the entirety of Zigzag Mountain was also an open expanse of huckleberry and beargrass fields. Mount Hood and the burned slopes near Mirror Lake are on the right

[Click here for a larger version]

These openings were created by repeated fires, some set by indigenous people who had used fire for centuries to maintain ridgetop fields of beargrass and huckleberries for food and medicinal purposes. Thin mountaintop soils and summer lightning strikes during our summer droughts combined to make these forests vulnerable to wildfire, as well – and still do.

The view across the Salmon Huckleberry Wilderness in 1933 shows most of the peaks and ridgetops now covered by timber to still open from centuries of repeated fires

[Click here for a larger version]

This 1932 view from Hickman Butte, in the Bull Run watershed, shows signs of recent fires in the foreground and on Sugarloaf Mountain (in front of Mount Hood), as well as the open northern slopes of Zigzag Mountain in the distance (and to the right of Mount Hood) created by fires

[Click here for a larger version]

In September 2017 we watched the Eagle Creek Fire burn through the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. This was the first major fire in the Gorge in more than a century, burning much of the high country in the Hatfield Wilderness, as well as the steep, drought-prone cliffs of the Gorge walls. Thanks to the east winds that define the Gorge, we know that especially devastating fires were once common here, as shown in both the 1930s lookout surveys and in vintage late-1800s photographs by Carleton Watkins, the Kiser Brothers (below) and Benjamin A. Gifford.

The cliffs above today’s Warrendale community and McCord Creek canyon in the Columbia Gorge were mostly open when this photo was taken by the Kiser Brothers in 1903. The Eagle Creek fire of 2017 has returned this area to a similar post-fire habitat

Their early images show the rugged cliff walls and high ridges of the Gorge as we see them today, covered with lush, recovering understory that we know has been a boon to deer and elk populations. By comparison to the Mount Hood fires, the 2017 burn area in the Gorge opened much more steep, rocky terrain that could be favorable to goats.

When the 2020 wildfires swept through Oregon, one of the impacted areas was Mount Jefferson, where mountain goats had been transplanted in 2010 in a collaborative effort by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (described here in the original 2011 post). State wildlife managers expressed concern over the fate of the goats at the time, given the scale of the fires.

Regrowth already beginning a few weeks after the Lionhead Fire in 2020 (USFS)

Like the Mount Hood fires, the 2020 fires around Mount Jefferson opened rocky terrain that had become heavily forested over the past century through human-fire suppression, though at Mount Jefferson the amount of burned alpine terrain is much more extensive in places like Park Ridge. We may eventually discover that these fires allow reintroduced mountain goats in this area to expand their range to burned places like the upper Breitenbush basin and even the Bull of the Woods wilderness.

Another unexpected development since the 2011 blog article was a National Park Service (NPS) decision to relocate hundreds of mountain goats from Olympic National Park to the North Cascades, in Washington State. This came as a shock to many, given the perceived iconic connection of goats to the Olympics, but the controversial plan was well conceived and deeply grounded in science when it swung into motion in 2018.

Park Service staff transporting goats at Olympic National Park in 2018 (NPS)

Less known to the public at the time was that Rocky Mountain Goats were not native to the Olympics, and instead had been introduced by hunters in the 1920s. The combination of their environmental impact and (sometimes fatal) interactions with park visitors finally led to the NPS plan to eliminate the herds from the park.

By the summer of 2020, the Park Service had removed 381 goats from the park, with 325 of these relocated to the North Cascades. Most of the rest did not survive the capture or transport process, and 16 kids were transferred to area zoos. Some goats were left behind because of the difficulty of capture, and the Park Service scientists believe the number too small to regenerate a population.

The more jarring news is that most of the 324 relocated goats have not survived. The Park Service reported earlier this year that of the 151 goats among the transplanted population that were equipped with tracking collars, only four are now known to be alive. According to the scientists, the die-off is not simply a result of the relocation, but likely due to lack of suitable habitat – and especially climate change, which has resulted in summer drought and lack of forage for goats in the North Cascades.

Park Service staff transporting goats in 2018 (NPS)

We are in a period of rapid change for so many species, and our mountain goats can be added to that list. The Park Service estimates that 10,000 goats were living in the Washington Cascades as recently at 60 years ago, a number that has dropped to just 3,000 today.

What does this mean for bringing goats back to the northern Oregon Cascades? I remain optimistic that the return of wildfire to our high-country landscapes will create enough alpine and subalpine habitat for these animals to once again thrive here – that we will once again see Rocky Mountain goats where they had always been, on the snowy slopes of Mount Hood and along the rocky cliffs and ridgelines of the Columbia Gorge.

Indeed, in recent years, there have been periodic sightings of lone goats on Mount Hood on the east slopes of the mountain, near the Newton Clark glacier, and on the west side, high on Yocum Ridge. One recent sighting made local news this summer when a hiker on Yocum Ridge captured a video clip that has since circulated widely (below).

Lone mountain goat spotted on Yocum Ridge earlier this year (KOIN-TV)

These recently spotted goats on Mount Hood almost certainly migrated from the herd that was transplanted to Mount Jefferson in 2010. The long trip north to Mount Hood would have required at least 40 miles of travel along a relatively low, mostly forested section of the Cascade Crest, crossing Highway 26 and perhaps Highway 35 along the way. These obstacles underscore just how adaptative these animals can be when searching for new habitat.

Hikers have also spotted mountain goats on the north side of the Columbia River Gorge in recent years, mostly near Dog Mountain. While there are several goat herds to the north of the Gorge in Washington State, in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, these are the first recent sightings within the Gorge, suggesting the Washington herds are expanding their range southward.

Lone mountain goat near Carson in the Columbia Gorge (Oregon Hikers)

Herd of four mountain goats on Dog Mountain (Oregon Hikers)

Hikers have also spotted the ghost-like appearance of a mountain goat grazing in a heavily forested area near Dog Mountain (below). This sighting confirms their ability to travel between their preferred higher-elevation terrain in search of new habitat, as would be the case for Washington herds migrating south through forests to the reach open cliffs of the Gorge.

Ghost in the forest spotted near Dog Mountain in 2020 (Oregon Hikers)

Recent goat sightings like these in the Gorge and on Mount Hood are a thrill, and they have made for a lot of excitement in the hiking community. Do they represent a trend and perhaps the return of this species to its historic range in WyEast Country?

Only time will tell, but it’s a hopeful glimpse of what may come!

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Tom Kloster | WyEast Blog

The Campaign Calendar at 20 Years!

December 11, 2023December 11, 2023 / Tom Kloster / 2 Comments

The 2024 Campaign Calendar is the twentieth edition!

With the December holiday season comes my annual Mount Hood National Park Campaign calendar, but this year is a bit of a milestone: the 2024 calendar is the 20th edition since I began putting these together back in 2003! Much has changed over those years, so this article includes both a retrospective from the early calendars and highlights from the 2024 edition, so I hope you’ll indulge me!

The new calendars for 2024 are print-on-demand and available now from Zazzle. You can find them here:

See the 2024 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar on Zazzle

Zazzle does excellent work and these can be shipped direct to anywhere. As always, all proceeds go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) for their crucial work in volunteer trail stewardship and advocacy.

Looking back to the very beginning…

It was back in 2003 when I kicked off the “idea campaign” for a Mount Hood National Park that encompasses Mount Hood and the Gorge. It’s an idea that has made it as far as legislation in Congress on several occasions as early as the 1890s, but never made it as far as the president’s desk to become law – usually due to moneyed interests in exploiting the mountain. Thus, the purpose of the “idea campaign” is to simply keep the national park idea alive.

Shooting the Salmon River with my first digital camera in 2003 (Greg Lief)

I’ve been asked many times “do you really think Mount Hood will become a national park?” I do, of course. Eventually. Most of our national parks had a long and bumpy road to finally being established, often starting as a national monument or recreation area – but always because they had exceptional natural and cultural features unmatched elsewhere. That’s why I believe that Mount Hood will eventually join the ranks of Crater Lake, Mount Rainier and the Olympics and receive the level of commitment to both conservation and recreation that only the National Park Service can offer. In the meantime, this blog serves as place to celebrate those natural and cultural features that make Mount Hood and the Gorge unparalleled places worth protecting, while spotlighting threats to the mountain.

With this goal, the first calendar (below) was an outgrowth of the idea campaign as a visual way to celebrate the many places and landscapes that combine to make WyEast Country so exceptional. Back in 2004, there were also new technologies that helped make a custom calendar possible: I had recently purchased my first digital camera and CafePress had emerged as a quality on-demand printing service as part of the dotcom revolution.

The first cover… back in 2004

The first calendar was modest – printed at 8.5×11 inches with color reproduction that was decidedly “approximate”, though still a big leap forward from color photocopies of the 1990s. The first edition featured a recurring, favorite spot of mine on the cover – Elk Cove on Mount Hood’s north side.

From this start, the calendar evolved over the next 20 years in technology, print quality and the landscapes I featured. This collage (below) of the 20 annual covers shows some of that evolution.

[click here for a large version]

Looking back, the two constants among cover subjects were waterfalls and the mountain, though the places and vantage points varied greatly. One of the best rewards in putting the calendars together has been the opportunity to explore different corners of the mountain and gorge, as I set a goal early on to feature new images taken during the previous year in each calendar. While there are a few spots I go back to nearly every year, I’ve also been able to feature new places and perspectives not seen elsewhere.

Looking across those old cover images, I’m also able to see how the cover design evolved. The first two calendars used a script font that looks ridiculous to me now, and by 2006 I had moved on to the “national park” fonts I use today – notably, Copperplate — along with the color scheme I had used on the (then) brand new Mount Hood National Park Campaign website. The graphic below the main image was from bumper stickers I also had printed at CafePress at the time.

Getting there… improved fonts in 2006

The cover of the 2006 calendar is the first in a series of reminder among the covers that there are no constants in WyEast Country. Everything changes, and lately, change seems to be accelerating, as the cover image of Mount Hood from the Elk Cove trail underscores. Just two years after I took this photo, the Gnarl Fire had roared across the east flank of the mountain, nearly engulfing Cloud Cap Inn. Then, three years after the Gnarl Fire, the Dollar Lake Fire had burned much of the forest on the north slope of the mountain shown in this image.

The 2011 Dollar Lake Fire started just below the rocky viewpoint where this cover photo was taken. Today, the sea of green Noble Fir and Mountain Hemlock that once covered the slopes has been replaced by a ghost forest of silver tree skeletons, with a new forest just getting underway in their. The following photo comparison from this viewpoint (below) shows the dramatic changes to the north side in stark contrast.

The Dollar Lake Fire burned thousands of acres of subalpine forest on Mount Hood’s north slope in 2011

The Dollar Lake Fire brought an unexpected opportunity to witness and document the forest recovery, and without the assistance of man, as most of the fire was within the Mount Hood Wilderness. As such, the Forest Service has adopted a hands-off policy and is deferring to the natural forest recovery process. I’ve since posted several articles tracking the recovery:

“After the Dollar Lake Fire” (June 2012)

“Dollar Lake Fire: Five Years After” (October 2016)

“10 Years After the Dollar Lake Fire” (November 2022)

The 2007 calendar marked a technology change when CafePress began offering a much larger format, measuring 11×17”. This required a different photo aspect, but also gave sweeping vistas the space they need to be truly appreciated. Such was the case with the first calendar cover in this larger format in 2007, when the sprawling view of Mount Hood’s east face (below) from Gnarl Ridge was the cover image. This edition also featured what has become the basic design for the cover, along with a blue color scheme that I’ve alternated with the original green theme over the years.

Going ultra-wide with a new format in 2007

In 2008, I started this blog as an alternative to making constant updates to the campaign website. This opened still more opportunities to explore and capture WyEast country in words and imagery, with deeper dives and more details in the long form that I prefer. As the blog shifted my focus toward emerging risks to Mount Hood and the Gorge, so my photography shifted, and the calendar began to include more remote and obscure places on the mountain.

There’s a story behind the nearly identical cover scenes of Upper McCord Falls (below) that appeared on both the 2011 and 2013 calendars. In 2012 I lost all of my original digital files from the 2011 calendar in a computer upgrade, and by 2013 I’d clearly forgotten what the earlier cover images was. Apparently, I liked that view of Upper McCord Falls enough to put it back on the cover — though I had also upgraded my camera between these covers, so at least the 2013 version was an improvement on the earlier take – to my eye, at least! (for this article, I recreated the 2011 cover from a printed copy of the calendar I saved).

Seeing double-double!

As with so many places in the Gorge that I had taken for granted in my life, it never occurred to me that the forests surrounding Elowah Falls and Upper McCord Falls would soon be completely burned, leaving a landscape will take generations to return to the lush, mature forests that I grew up with. As it turned out, Upper McCord Falls was the first trail I visited within the “restricted area” following the September 2017 Eagle Creek Fire. It was just five months after the fire when I headed up there in February 2018 with a Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) crew to survey the trail damage.

The devastation was much more extensive than I expected on what would be the first of many trips into the restricted area after the fire. I had hiked through the recent burns on Mount Hood in previous years, and was braced for seeing ancient trees reduced to burned snags, but what makes the aftermath of fire in the Gorge so unique is the terrain. The forest was playing a greater role in holding the steep slopes of the Gorge together than I think anyone realized, and just five months after the fire the scale of erosion and ground movement was alarming.

Locating surviving trail tread after the fire at McCord Creek in early 2018

The scene at Upper McCord Falls was startling, as well. The burn was severe around the falls, killing the entire forest. The layers of green moss that survived the burn on the cliffs and boulders nearest the falls seemed like they had been hand-tinted onto the brown landscape, like an old postcard.

Upper McCord Falls in February 2018 (Randi Mendoza, Oregon Parks & Recreation)

The trail seemed a total loss in several areas on that trip where sliding mud and rock had completely covered the tight series of switchbacks originally carved into the slope by the Civilian Conservation Corps back in the 1930s. In the years that followed the fire, TKO volunteers have removed tons of debris from the trail and reconstructed damaged stone walls built by the CCC, restoring the tread to nearly its original design today.

Upper McCord Falls a few months after the fire

On the way out from that first visit after the fire, the clouds broke at the west end of the Gorge just as darkness was falling, creating the weird illusion that the charred forest silhouetted against dark the clouds and flaming sunset was still burning. As with all who love the Gorge, it was the beginning of a journey for me in accepting the reality of the fire – including the senseless act that started the blaze, as well as the inevitability of this fire being long overdue – and finally, a deeper appreciation for the resilience of our forests in which fire an essential destructive force.

Burned forests at McCord Creek on my first trip after the fire appeared to be on fire, once again, as a brilliant sunset lit up at the west end of he Gorge

Revisiting the slopes leading to Upper McCord Falls last spring, the resurgence of the understory and beginnings of a new forest was inspiring after five summers of forest recovery. While I won’t live long enough to see big trees replace those that were killed in the fire, the surviving trees are bouncing back strongly, and watching the renewal of the Gorge forests is as inspiring in its own way as the big trees we lost.

A stand of Douglas fir that survived the fire is surrounded by a thriving understory along the McCord Creek trail in Spring 2023

Meanwhile, Upper McCord Falls looks quite different five years later, as well (below). The understory has made a vigorous comeback, but more surprising is the east (left) segment of this twin falls, which appears to be plugged with debris released into McCord Creek from the fire – at least for now. Prior to the burn, the twin tier would have been flowing when I took this photo last spring, just as it was in the calendar covers in 2011 and 2013.

Upper McCord Falls six years after the fire in Spring 2023

Upper McCord Falls has historically had as many as three segments cascading from the basalt ledge that forms the cascade (a third tier once flowed to the left of east tier as recently as the 1970s, as shown below), so in time, there’s no reason to assume the second (or even third) tiers will re-emerge. The defining factor is simply the amount of rock and log debris piled up on top of the basalt ledge.

Since the 1970s, the debris had been further stabilized by a colony of Red Alder that was the main force holding the pile of boulders and debris together, eventually blocking the third tier of the falls completely. Today, those trees have been killed, and with the volatile flooding on Gorge streams since the fire, there’s good reason to expect McCord Creek to re-arrange the shape of Upper McCord Falls by removing some or all of the debris plugging parts of the waterfall.

Upper McCord was a triple falls in the 1970s! (Don Lowe)

Where the tree canopy along the McCord Creek trail system were completely burned (below), the forest recovery is now in full swing, choking the route in many spots with Thimbleberry, Vine Maple, Douglas Maple and many other understory plants whose roots survived the burn, allowing them to bounce back quickly.

Forest understory surging back after six years at McCord Creek

Bigleaf Maple are bouncing back in this way, too, pointing to a future deciduous forest canopy as the first phase of recovery in many of the burned areas. Along the lower sections of the McCord Creek trail, ten-foot shoots have exploded from the roots of Bigleaf maple trees whose killed tops still stand as bleached snags (below). Many of these recovering maples will become multi-stemmed trees, a familiar sight in Oregon’s forest and one answer as to why mature Bigleaf Maple so often have multiple trunks.

Bigleaf Maples regrowing from the base of burned trees whose roots survived the fire

The drama at McCord Creek continued a few short years after the fire when the west cliff wall of the Elowah Falls amphitheater collapsed in the winter of 2021. There’s no science (yet) to make the connection, but the Gorge has seen a series of cliff failures since the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire. Could these events be linked to the loss of vegetation or corresponding runoff on Gorge slopes? Perhaps, but as I described in the previous article on the 1973 Tanner Creek landslide, there are unique forces at work in the Gorge that date back to the last ice age, so events like these are the norm, not the exception.

Elowah Falls cliff collapse in the spring of 2021 (Drew Stock, Trailkeepers of Oregon)

TKO volunteers discovered the Elowah Falls cliff collapse in 2021 and captured the dramatic photos shown here. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse, McCord Creek disappeared into the loose basalt cobbles that had filled the creek channel and buried the Trail 400 footbridge to its railings. That condition was temporary, however, as by last spring McCord Creek had already carried away much of the small debris and excavated the footbridge. The images below show the erosive power of the stream over a period of just two years.

Debris burying McCord Creek and its footbridge immediately after the collapse (Drew Stock, Trailkeepers of Oregon)

Elowah Falls footbridge excavated (and railings removed!) by McCord Creek after just two years

Like most cliff collapses in the Gorge, the jumbled debris fan at Elowah Falls is a mix of truck-sized boulders that managed to hold together amid a sea of smaller boulders and fractured basalt cobbles where parts of the once-solid rock face had simply crumbled during the event.

Large blocks of basalt mixed with smaller cobbles in the debris pile at the base of the collapsed cliff

Today, a massive scar is still obvious on the cliff wall where the basalt gave way (below). In time, however, the evidence from event will be hidden under a fresh carpet of moss and Licorice Fern, once again giving that deceptive illusion of stability that has never really existed in the Gorge.

Looking up the debris fan at the massive scar left behind by the cliff collapse at Elowah Falls in Spring 2023

While the cliff collapse at Elowah Falls was massive in scale, it spared the spectacular trail to Upper McCord Falls where it is carved into the basalt walls 400 feet above the creek. In fact, hikers passing along this vertigo-inducing stretch of trail might not even notice that a large section of the wall directly below them had collapsed into the creek, as the impact is mostly hidden from this airy view (below).

Elowah Falls seems unchanged from above along the Upper McCord Trail

If the cliff collapse Elowah Falls was impressive to see, the earlier collapse at Punch Bowl Falls on Eagle Creek was downright shocking. After Multnomah Falls, and Crown Point, the view into the mossy cavern that holds Punch Bowl Falls might be the most iconic in the Gorge. The idyllic scene drew photographers from around the world before the fire, and even gave its name to the category of “punchbowl” waterfalls.

Punch Bowl Falls as it once appeared in 2012

I posted an extensive piece on this event when it showed up unexpectedly on a series of aerial surveys the State of Oregon had conducted to track landslides after the Eagle Creek Fire. The Punch Bowl collapse occurred just months after the fire, sometime in early 2018. The “restricted area” was still in effect at the time, so the first few people to see the aftermath in person were trail volunteers working to put the Eagle Creek trail back together. Today, you can see the re-arranged landscape by taking the Lower Punch Bowl spur trail down to the falls.

Aftermath of the 2018 cliff collapse at Punch Bowl Falls

Getting that classic shot of Punch Bowl Falls during spring runoff usually entailed wading knee-deep into Eagle Creek to get a look into the hidden cavern that holds the falls. The cliff collapse has since changed things a bit. For now, there are a pair of good-sized boulders that landed in the entrance to the cavern, blocking the traditional view.

In time, Eagle Creek will dismantle much of the debris from the collapse, and even these boulders will eventually break apart or be pushed downstream by the enormous force of the stream during winter floods. This will be aided by the many fallen logs that have dropped into the stream since the fire, and now act as erosive battering rams and levers as they move downstream.

The ”modern” calendar design emerges in 2016

The final design and format emerged in 2016 with a switch in vendors

Year twelve in the calendar series brought a major shift and format and improved quality when I moved printing from CafePress to Zazzle. The image reproduction at Zazzle is excellent and the overall printing process much better, resolving some quality concerns that drove me to make the move. Zazzle also brought the added opportunity to have a printed back cover on the calendar, kicking off the grid of nine botanical photos that I continue to include each year. Like the scenic views in each calendar, the botanical images are captured over the course of the prior year on my forays into WyEast Country.

New with the 2016 calendar? A printed back cover!

One last profile of note from past calendars is the 2019 edition, where lovely Whale Creek in the Clackamas River watershed is featured. This idyllic scene is – or was – typical of the beautiful rainforests there. Despite a long and frustrating history of aggressive logging over more than a past century, some of the finest ancient forests in the region survived here. Sadly, the Riverside Fire – yet another human-caused event – started just upstream from this spot along the Clackamas, and eventually burned 120,000 acres of forest, as well as numerous structures.

This scene from Whale Creek taken before the 2020 Riverside Fire was featured on the 2019 calendar

I’ve posted many articles on the necessity and benefits of wildfire in our forests, but the Riverside Fire underscores a few caveats to the science. As I described in this 2021 article, we are burning our forests faster than is sustainable. This stems from multiple factors adding up to a perfect storm: a century of fire suppression coupled with heavy logging has left us with thousands of old clearcuts packed with thickets of overplanted, fire-prone young trees and decades of fuel buildup. Add climate change, with our summers getting drier and hotter, and our forests have become a tinder box in most years, not just the occasional hot summer.

The same section of Whale Creek after the fire in 2020 (USFS)

Given this confluence of stresses on our forests, we’re doing an especially poor job preventing human-caused fires – they account for 70 percent of wildfires in Oregon! As I point out in the linked article, we’ll need to set some unwelcome limits on human behavior if we hope to slow down the burning to sustainable levels. So far, the Forest Service is moving very slowly in limited access during extreme fire danger, though successful liability lawsuits against power companies whose live lines triggered some of the 2020 fires may change that thinking.

TKO crews clearing big logs on the Clackamas River Trail after the Riverside Fire

Some good news from the Clackamas? TKO crews have already been working on reopening trails damaged in the fire. Like the Gorge, the Clackamas River canyon is steep country, so keeping trails open as the forest recovers will be a long-term endeavor.

That’s a look back at 20 years of campaign calendars, and now…

…looking ahead to 2024!

The view from Inspiration Point is the cover image for 2024

For the 2024 calendar cover, I selected an image of Mount Hood’s fearsome north face (above), as viewed from a tiny, unofficial trail that I maintain at Inspiration Point (located at the 3-mile mark on bumpy Cloud Cap Road). How long have I been stopping here? I looked back at my photo archive, and the earliest I could find was a slide from the summer of 1984 – which means I’ll celebrate my 40^th summer visiting this lovely spot when I stop at Inspiration Point next year!

Clouds capping the mountain on the road to Cloud Cap in this 1980s view from Inspiration Point

On the back cover of the new calendar, yet another collection of nine wildflowers that I photographed over the past year is featured – including a couple that were new to me.

Back cover of the 2024 calendar

Putting it all together, here’s a jumbo collage of the 12 monthly images in the 2024 calendar, plus the covers and a snapshot of the page layout:

[click here for a large version]

For the January image in the new calendar (below), I selected a view of Mount Hood’s northwest side, with Cathedral Ridge and the Sandy Glacier Headwall covered in an early dusting of autumn snow. On this day last October, the mountain was emerging from the clouds after being socked in most of the day.

Northwest face of Mount Hood with early autumn snow

For the February image I thought I’d mix things up a bit with this view of the lower Deschutes River canyon at Oak Springs (below), a corner of WyEast Country that not many find their way to. On this day last winter, a dusting of snow had fallen on Tygh Ridge, the long fault scarp that rises in the distance – another lesser visited spot on this lonely, dry side of the mountain.

Lower Deschutes River and Tygh Ridge from above Oak Springs

For March, a more familiar scene (below) along a quiet section of the lower Salmon River features a group of Lady Ferns. The Old Salmon River Trail follows this stretch of river through some of the best rainforest and oldest trees within easy reach of Portland.

Lower Salmon River in Spring

I chose another stream scene for April, though this one is less familiar to most. This is Viento Creek (below), in the east Gorge, just a few miles west of Hood River at Viento State Park.

Viento Creek in the East Gorge

There’s a backstory associated with this photo, as I’ve been working with TKO for the past few years to create a new family-friendly trail from the Viento Campground to a magnificent viewpoint on the Viento Bluffs. The new trail will someday pass the stream scene shown above, enroute to expansive views of the Columbia River – but with a short route that it will be welcoming to casual hikers and young kids. Watch this space for more news on this project!

TKO and State Parks crew surveying a new trail at Viento Bluff earlier this year

The picturesque view from Viento Bluff will someday become a family trail destination

The May calendar image features another stretch of the Salmon River (below). This pretty cascade has become a popular spot for photographers in recent years. I included it in this year’s calendar partly for symbolic purposes, as this scene appeared in the very first calendar in 2004. This is also where Greg Lief’s image at the top of this article of me shooting photos was captured in 2003 – hard to believe that was 20 years ago!

Springtime on the Salmon River

June brings another symbolic favorite, as Elk Cove appeared on the cover of the first calendar, and in several subsequent editions over the years – and almost always from this very spot (below) along the Timberline Trail. As much as the mountain has changed in recent years, this view remains a bit of a constant – always lovely, but especially the Western Pasqueflower are putting on their “Muppets of the Mountains” show.

Summer wildflowers putting on their annual show at Elk Cove

For July I selected another repeat spot, one of my favorite viewpoints of Mount Hood and the Eliot Glacier from the shoulder of Cooper Spur (below). I posted a look-back article on this area earlier this year to kick off a series of then-and-now photo retrospectives.

Mount Hood and the Eliot Glacier from the Cooper Spur Trail

For the August image, I selected another scene from a blog article, in this case a view of the recovering Muddy Fork valley where a landslide swept through two decades ago. This event and several now-and-then photo comparisons are over here.

Muddy Fork of the Sandy River

For September, I chose something a bit different, with a cliff-top view into the lower White River Canyon (below) at White River Falls State Park. So many things make Mount Hood unique (and worthy of national park protection!), but the compact collection of wildly different climate zones might be at the top of the list. There aren’t many places in the world where a 2-hour drive from the middle of a major metropolitan area takes you from rainforest to desert, with glacier-covered volcano rising above you the entire time!

Lower White River Canyon in desert country

The October image stays with the desert theme, and features Lower White River Falls. In spring, this canyon lights up with desert wildflowers that I’ve included in previous calendar editions, but the tawny yellows, gold and reds of autumn create their own beauty in this rugged landscape.

Lower White River Falls in Autumn

White River Falls State Park remains a diamond in the rough, with much potential for both improved recreation and conservation of the natural and cultural features in the park. The area is becoming more popular, and that has translated into some visible impacts – and therefore several proposals to respond to this increased demand are featured in this article from earlier this year.

Loop Trail concept for White River Falls State Park

For November, fall colors along Vista Ridge and fresh snow on the mountain are featured (below). This scene is surprisingly easy to get to – it’s along the access road to the Vista Ridge Trailhead, another increasingly popular spot on the mountain. This article from last summer includes some proposals for managing the pressures the newfound popularity is bringing to Vista Ridge.

Brilliant fall colors on Vista Ridge

Finally, a view of the mountain after the first big snowfall of the season (below) from the lightly traveled Gumjuwac Trail, gateway to the Badger Creek Wilderness. My favorite viewpoint hikes are to “pocket views” – those spots where a steep talus slope or rocky outcrop provides an unexpected view – and this rocky crest just below Gumjuwac Saddle is among the best, and was featured on the front of the 2016 calendar, as well.

Pocket viewpoint along the Gumjuwac Trail in winter

On the way up to the Gumjuwac viewpoint, I followed the chunky footprints of a Black bear for much of the route. Hiking in snow is a useful reminder that wildlife are always out there, even if we don’t have snow on the ground to record their travels. This is their home, after all, we are the visitors.

Bear tracks along the Gumjuwac Trail

Bear tracks in fresh snow on the Gumjuwac Trail

So, that’s it for my annual calendar review! If you made it this far and would like order one, they are available here – and all proceeds go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO):

2024 Mount Hood National Park Calendar

As always, thanks for visiting the blog. Looking ahead to next year, I already have several articles underway, with the usual collection of deep dives, new proposals and reflections on the past. I hope you’ll continue to stop by!

The author at Owl Point in 2008 (Andy Prahl)

Best to you in the coming year – see you on the trail in 2024!

_______________

Tom Kloster | December 2023

20 years of change on Cooper Spur… and the future?

January 1, 2023January 2, 2023 / Tom Kloster / 10 Comments

Workers cutting beams from solid pine trunks for the new Cloud Cap Inn during the summer of 1888. The (then) surging Eliot glacier loomed just beyond Cloud Cap in those early days (Author’s note: this is a modified historical image that I have colorized to bring the sense of the distant past a bit closer to our present-day world)

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When the builders of Cloud Cap Inn began construction in earnest in early summer 1889, the backdrop for Mount Hood’s first mountain lodge was radically different than today. The Northern Hemisphere was experiencing the final decades of a brief, still unexplained cooling period known as the Little Ice Age that stretched from the 1500s through the 1800s.

The cooling was modest, but enough to surge the Eliot Glacier down to the tree line, nearly filling the deep trough between the high lateral moraines that were created in the last true ice age, thousands of years prior. The debris-covered terminus (or snout) of the Eliot Glacier was in plain view from Cloud Cap, directly behind the workers on the left side of the photo, above. It was formidable wall of glacial ice and rock rising nearly 300 feet above the valley floor.

Early photo views of the Eliot Glacier’s terminus shows the river of ice already receding between the 1890s and 1920s

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The Little Ice Age faded in the 20^th Century, and as the photo pair above shows, the Eliot Glacier was already receding from its recent surge by the 1920s. Today, the Eliot Glacier has retreated about a half mile from its terminus in 1889, and lost as much as half its depth to our warming climate.

The following photo pair shows the dramatic change from 1920 to 2020. The change in the glacier’s thickness can be seen by (A) the exposed cliffs below Cooper Spur were carved into a vertical wall by the glacier at its peak. The glacier’s terminus (B) has receded dramatically over the past century, revealing the high moraines we now see rising above the Eliot Branch. A more subtle change (C) are the alpine forests gradually moving up the mountain as summer snowpacks diminish.

Another, more detailed 1920 view of the Eliot Glacier’s terminus compared to the same view in 2020 shows the radical change over the past century

[click here for a large version]

For much of the past century, these changes were gradual enough that only a few scientists and mountain climbers noticed the ongoing change. But since the turn of the millennium the pace of change has accelerated to an alarming rate as our climate warms.

This article documents this most recent period of change, over the two decades that span from 2002 to 2022, including how the landscape on the mountain, itself, as changed. The article focuses on the area around Cloud Cap and the Eliot Glacier, as viewed from the Cooper Spur trail, as this corner of the mountain has seen some of the most volatile change.

Why 2002 as a starting point? That answer has to do with technology, not climate change. That was the year that I began shooting with a digital camera. For someone who learned photography with a film camera (including plenty of spent time in the darkroom in the 1980s) the age of digital has been a revelation. Film and print paper was expensive, and while I have a lengthy archive of images going back to 1980, the digital era has allowed me to bring back hundreds of photos from a single trip to the mountain, where I might have captured a dozen during the film era that was rapidly winding down by the early 2000s.

Then and now – my 2002 pocket camera and 2022 digital SLR, along with the 2002 photos I hoped to re-create.

The result is enough archived images beginning in 2022 to create a fairly thorough then-and-now comparison of the Eliot Glacier and surrounding environment along the Cooper Spur trail. The 2002 images came from a Canon A50 PowerShot pocket camera, still one of the best digital cameras I’ve owned over the years. Not long after this trip in 2002, I added my first digital SLR to my camera collection, and I have long since retired my film cameras for good. The 2020 images were captured with an Olympus EM-10 digital SLR, my fifth digital SLR, and easily my favorite (thus far).

To re-create the images from that 2002 trip, I carried a folded-up, modern-day version of a film-era proof sheet from that earlier visit in my pocket on a hike up Cooper Spur last September. Along the way, I did my best to match the scenes as I had viewed them 20 years prior. Once home, I was able to assemble 19 pairs that were close though to allow for nearly identical side-by-side comparisons. I’ve also noted a few points of interest for each image, keyed to both the 2002 and 2022 versions, to help highlight the changes that have unfolded. Because the embedded images in this article are inherently small, I’ve also posted a link below each image to a large version that will open in a new tab.

And now, how about a tour of these places in 2002 and 2022?

Change is constant… and surprising!

[click here for a large version]

From Cloud Cap, the Timberline Trail route to Cooper Spur makes a dramatic entrance to the upper section of Tilly Jane Canyon and the first big view of Mount Hood. The changes in the first photo pair (above) are subtle, though telling. As is the case throughout the Cascades, groves of (A) Mountain hemlock continue their march to higher elevations, one more indicator of our changing climate. Lighter snowpacks (which translates to longer growing seasons) might also be the explanation for more expansive groundcover (B) of Juniper and Penstemon in the foreground. In distance (C), a pioneering Whitepark pine has survived to grow from a few feet tall to nearly 20 feet.

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Moving further up the mountain, the Timberline Trail reaches a junction with the Tilly Jane and Cooper Spur trails (above), just above the tree line. Here, the most notable change is the battering the old trail sign has taken in 20 years of winter storms and avalanches. The two signboards were still around as recently as four years ago, but they were finally swept away in the last couple years. The bottom of the 8×8” post remains, though it had snapped off mid-way several years ago — a reminder of the power of moving winter snow in this avalanche-prone area!

[click here for a large version]

Just uphill from the trail junction, the next photo pair (above) shows a venerable Mountain hemlock that has caught the eye of many hikers over the years. Notably, the Whitebark pine just behind the hemlock (A) has grown considerably, a hopeful sign for a keystone species that has been hard hit by climate change and disease in recent decades. The hemlock (B) shows some wear, however. The upper limb that reached out toward Mount Rainier and Mount Adams has lost the battle with the winter elements, and some of the lower limbs seem to be fading, too. But in the timeless cycle of nature, a completely new Mountain hemlock (C) has grown from beneath its elder, no doubt helped along by nutrients from the decaying limbs of the older tree and the protection from the elements the old hemlock still provides.

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Further up the trail, the old stone warming hut at Cooper Spur appears (above). These shelters were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the early 1930s, when the Timberline Trail was first completed. Thankfully, almost nothing has changed here, thanks to the work of volunteers who keep this old structure cabled to the ground and intact after nearly a century.

[click here for a large version]

Above the old warming hut, the Cooper Spur Trail heads into tundra country (above) as it nears the 7,000 foot elevation on the mountain. From this perspective, the retreat of the Eliot Glacier starts to become apparent, especially to those familiar with the area. The rounded ice crest known to climbers as the Snow Dome (A) is notably smaller and the depth of the glacier has receded enough in the lower reaches (B) to drop beyond the top of the east moraine from this perspective. In the foreground (C) alpine wildflowers continue their march to higher elevations where only a few grasses once grew because of once-lingering snowpacks.

[click here for a large version]

This photo pair (above) is from the first big view of the Eliot Glacier from the Cooper Spur Trail. The change over the past 20 years is unmistakable here. On the upper shoulder of the mountain (A), the snowfields that once led climbers to the summit well into summer are much smaller, making this approach in summer a very sketchy affair today, with much falling rock.

This pair of images also shows how the lower Eliot Glacier icefall has changed dramatically in just two decades of glacial retreat. The blue chaos of seracs and crevasses (B) that were once a prime ice climbing destination are now well below the “firn line”, the point at which a glacier is losing more ice than it is gaining. This line is generally where a glacier changes from blue and white clean ice to a gray mix of ice and rock, as the glacier gradually shrinks and melts in its descent. Further down (C), the decreasing depth of the glacier is especially notable where blue and white ice have disappeared.

[click here for a large version]

The next pair of images (above) is from an overlook just below the crest of Cooper Spur, at about the 8,000 foot elevation. Here, the Eliot Glacier is still impressive and awe inspiring as a mass of tumbling ice and wrinkled crevasses. The notable change in these views is the thinning of the ice (A and C) along the glacier’s margins, with piles of rubble appearing between lobes of flowing ice. The main icefall (B) also has some underlying rock showing as yet another sign of the thinning of the ice sheet

[click here for a large version]

This pair (above) is simply a closer look at the main icefall from the same vantage point, showing (A) where the thinning ice mass has revealed more of the north wall of the mountain, and (b) where rock outcrops are now pushing through the icefall from below. Icefalls form because of these outcrops, so the appearance of the underlying rock is measure of the glacier depth decreasing. Twenty years ago, enough ice flowed over this outcrop to completely overwhelm it, whereas today we’re beginning to see traces of the rock beneath the glacier.

[click here for a large version]

This is another view of the Eliot Glacier from just below the crest of Cooper Spur, looking across the upper part of the glacier. Here the shrinking snowfields on the climbing route above Cooper Spur (A) are more apparent, as are the exposed cliffs (B) below the north face of the mountain, where the thinning ice has revealed a vertical well. On the shoulder of the mountain, a once-crevassed section of moving glacier has slowed to become a snowfield along the margin of the glacier.

[click here for a large version]

This photo pair (above) is looking across the Eliot Glacier from the crest of Cooper Spur, at about 8,500 feet elevation. It’s subtle, but the permanent snowfields (A) along the upper end of the Langille Crags are smaller today, and the lower icefall (B) is dramatically diminished, as shown in previous views. In the near distance (C) the silver ghost forest of the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire shows up today along the Mount Hood’s northern foot. In the far distance (D) the massive (and completely unsustainable) logging spree being carried out by timber giant Weyerhauser since taking over the timber holdings in the West Fork Hood River area a few years ago is painfully apparent.

[click here for a large version]

This pair (above) is a closer view of the previous set, focusing on the lower Eliot Glacier icefall. This comparison shows the thinning of the ice sheet (A and B) against the cliffs of the Langille Crags, and (C) the dramatic change on the near side of the glacier, where the firn line has moved several hundred feet up the mountain over two decades.

[click here for a large version]

Moving away from the Eliot Glacier, this photo pair (above) shows the broad east slope of Cooper Spur from the crest, looking toward the canyon of the East Fork Hood River. The changes here are subtle, but still notable. Historic Cloud Cap Inn (A) still stands, despite being threatened by both the 2008 Gnarl Ridge Fire and 2011 Dollar Lake Fire. The ghost forests of the Gnarl Ridge Fire (B) are recovering rapidly today, filled with understory and rapidly growing Western Larch seedlings that are now 6-8 feet tall. In the distance, the human scars (C) caused by Forest Service clear cutting on the slopes of Surveyors Ridge in the 1980s and 90s are gradually fading away, too, as the forests there slowly recover.

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Happily, not much change at Hiroshima Rock (above) in 20 years – or even 122 years! This unlikely etching by a 1910 Japanese Climbing expedition has somehow survived more than a century of fierce ice and sand blasting, perhaps because the carving is on the leeward side of the rock? It remains a favorite touchstone for hikers passing through. Here’s an earlier blog article on this unique message from the past.

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This photo pair (above) is looking back toward the crest of Cooper Spur from a bit further up the mountain, with a feature known as Tie-in Rock in the foreground. As in previous photos, the burn scars (A) of recent forest fires can be seen in the distance. The seemingly inescapable modern phenomenon of rock stacking (B) is present on Tie-in Rock, too. Size is hard to gauge here, but the rock is about 15 feet tall and takes some effort scale — much less with rocks in hand! The Newton Clark Glacier’s retreat (C) is somewhat noticeable on the far right, though the changes are much more apparent in the image pairs that follow.

[click here for a large version]

This image pair (above) provides full-on view of the Newton Clark Glacier from Cooper Spur. This sprawling glacier faces southeast, and because it catches summer sun from sunrise until late afternoon, it is has been more visibly impacted by climate change than the northeast-facing Eliot Glacier. What was once an icefall (A) 20 years ago is now bare rock, with the glacier flowing around it. Along the margins of Cooper Spur (B and C) the shrinking expanse of the glacier is prominent.

[click here for a large version]

This is a similar view (above) looking south across the Newton Clark Glacier. Like the Eliot Glacier, the lower, blue and white ice crevasses (A) on the glacier have fallen below the firn line, replaced by a grey mix of moving rock and ice. On the far shoulder of the mountain the former icefall at the center of the glacier (B) has receded around the rock outcrop that once produced it. In the foreground (C), the thinning of the overall ice sheet is dramatic over just two decades. Mount Jefferson is visible on the far horizon.

[click here for a large version]

This photo pair (above) is from far below Cooper Spur, at an overlook above the Eliot Branch called Inspiration Point. I’ve included it in this series because the retreat of the glacier has had dramatic impacts downstream, too. As the glacier continues its retreat, the Eliot Branch is cutting a v-shaped channel into the soft, flat valley floor that was once beneath the glacier, releasing vast amounts of rocky debris into the stream below. Compounding that effect are periodic flood events that have repeatedly scoured the canyon. As this pair shows, the changes are extensive.

For reference, a grove of three trees (A) in the lower center of the above photo pair have dodged the mayhem, though a group just below this trio has been swept away by the Eliot Branch. Meanwhile, an entire stand of trees (B) on the west wall of the canyon has slipped away in a massive landslide, revealing raw, banded volcanic bedrock, below. Another stand of trees on the east side of the canyon (C) burned in the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire, as did the remaining trees (D) in the upper west side of the canyon. This continues to be a very active, dynamic area, with constant changes to the river channel and canyon walls.

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The final photo pair is a longer comparison of just over 120 years, as seen from Cloud Cap Inn. Mirroring the changes shown throughout this article, the Eliot is a much smaller glacier today than it was when my own grandparents were born around 1900. The mass of ice and rock (A) that once made up the terminus would be enough to fill up much of downtown Portland. The lesser-known Langille Glacier (B) has almost certainly stopped moving, and has become a series of icefields. The Coe Glacier (C) is also in retreat, despite its shady location on the north side of the mountain.

Changes like those we are seeing on Mount Hood are tough to absorb, and thus I was determined to end this article on a hopeful note. Why? Because I’m a hopeful and optimistic person to the core, but also because there is much we can do to slow the climate change that is affecting so much of our world.

[click here for a large version]

We’re not powerless against these changes, though we do have a limited time on this planet to do our part. And thus, the final image pair (above). Why, it’s me! In 2002 I was a 40-year-old with blond hair and a red beard. Fast forward to 2022 and… well, at age 60 there’s not much hair left and the beard has turned decidedly gray. Time is not on my side, to be sure, but there is plenty more I can do in my life!

The benefit of 20 more years of living is the knowledge that I can still hoof it to the top of Cooper Spur (if a lot more slowly — and feeling it more the next day, too!) and still see things I’ve never noticed before. In 2002 I was still just thinking about how I could help keep the century-old idea of a national park around Mount Hood and the Gorge alive. Two years later, I started the Mount Hood National Park Campaign website to put the idea into words and pictures (and yes, it does need an update!). Six years later, I started writing this blog to continue celebrating the future Mount Hood National Park. That’s something I can continue to do even when getting to the top of Cooper Spur is finally out of my reach!

At age 60 I know I can’t single-handedly stop the changes happening on Mount Hood and in the Gorge, whether it be from climate change to just the sheer growth in the number of people coming here. But age DOES bring the super-power of perspective that can only come from time and lived experience — and in my case, I’ve also got the photos to prove it! I’m able to put a face on those changes to help inspire caring and action toward a new vision for the future, one that focuses on sustainability and adaptation in the face of change. That’s the point of this article and the WyEast Blog, of course.

And what about the future..?

Throughout that day on Cooper Spur in September, I watched a group of young glacier explorers far below me, working their way through rock debris and over crevasses as they approached the main icefall on the Eliot Glacier. I took a few photos of the group along the way, and was thus delighted to run into them on their return to the trailhead that afternoon. I turns out they were students from Pacific University’s Outdoor Leadership Program, led by instructor Philip Friesen.

If the then-and-now photos of changes on Mount Hood are tough to look, this is where the real hopefulness in this article comes in. Phil’s program at Pacific is pointing a new generation of future leaders toward a life and careers in the outdoors that I believe will be transformational for many of the environmental challenges we’re facing today.

When I asked, here’s how Phil describes his program:

“I think the main thing to share with the world is that the students in our program focus on addressing systemic oppression and environmental issues while learning how to courageously lead others into the mountains, on rivers, and on the rock–we combine the joy of being outdoors in nature with the challenge of meeting some of our society’s biggest challenges.”

And there are many other educators like Phil out there helping young people of today turn their passion for the outdoors and their hunger to enact positive change into lifelong careers that will have a real impact in making a better world. As an old guy with only a few years left to do my part, I find this so inspiring and reassuring!

Phil Friesen (left) and his group of Pacific University students from the Outdoor Leadership Program are all smiles last September, even after a grueling climb up the Eliot Glacier!

Students in Phil’s program spend extensive time in the outdoors, learning how to hike, climb and kayak, so that they may be able to bring the outdoor experience to others over their lifetimes. This is the very best path toward conservation and sustainability, especially for our public lands. Only when we spend time there can we begin to feel the personal sense of ownership necessary to care for and protect these spaces in perpetuity.

I have great faith in what we have named “Generation Z”, and so does Phil. Young people majoring in Outdoor Leadership at Pacific are readying themselves for a life doing what they love, whether it be as a guide, ranger, naturalist or many other emerging careers in the growing outdoor industry. They’re also learning about the history of exclusion on our public lands, and the urgent need to remove barriers so that all Americans can enrich their lives in the same way that the most privileged among us already do. That hits home for them, too, as they are by far the most diverse generation in our history.

Phil plans to share these images with his students, most of whom were born around 2002, when I took that first set of photos. They will likely find them jarring, as they only know the Eliot Glacier of today, and may not realize how quickly it is fading away. But they have an abundance of passion for the environment, and I do think these photos will lend still more urgency to them in their commitment to make our world a better place.

The author getting his head straight in the shadow of mighty WyEast before heading home for another week in civilization (Photo by Andy Prahl)

The real power of the Outdoor Leadership Program – and this is true for anyone who spends time in the outdoors – is the cascade of reflections that immersion in nature fosters. No matter your walk of life, time on a trail, among the trees or through mountain meadows, ensures the perspective, peace of mind and hopefulness needed to make the rest of our busy lives more successful. I refer to as my mental health time, when I get my head straight before another week of Zoom meetings and e-mails. Phil’s students are learning this early on, and I’m certain it will be as restorative and rejuvenating in their lives as it is in mine.

Phil’s group was all grins after a grueling day climbing up a glacier. Such is life when you’re 20 years old! They don’t know it yet, but they are part of what could be the most consequential generation in our history. They have no choice but to grapple with enormous challenges that my own generation has so short on. But because I do get to spend a fair amount of time around today’s Generation Z, I’m more certain than ever that they are special. They are uniquely up for the challenge. Phil’s students are way too young to know this quote that has guided since childhood, but they are nonetheless embracing it like no generation has before them:

________________

“Unless someone like you cares an awful lot,

it’s not going to get better. It’s not.”

-The Lorax

________________

And a final note to Phil Friesen and his Outdoor Leadership Program students: Thank you for the great things you are about to do!

________________

Author’s postscript: My best to all who have followed this blog over these many years! I greatly appreciate the support and especially your passion and concern for the future of our WyEast Country. I have a bunch of new articles planned for the coming year and look forward to sharing them with you!

In the meantime, I hope to see you on the trail!

Tom Kloster • January 1, 2023

2023 Campaign Calendar!

December 7, 2022 / Tom Kloster / 2 Comments

It is that time of year, so I will indulge in my annual plug for the Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar, of which all proceeds go to benefit Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO). This article covers this year’s calendar scenes with some of their backstory, but if you’re itching to get a calendar before reading any further, here’s the link to my Zazzle store:

2023 Mount Hood National Park Calendar

Zazzle does a truly amazing job with these. They are beautifully printed on quality paper and orders typically arrive within about 10 days or so. I’ll post another link at the bottom of this article if you’d like to learn more about the images, first.

Another Year in WyEast Country…

Starting with the cover image (above), I picked an scene captured this fall, near Lolo Pass, on Mount Hood’s northwest side. This is my favorite profile of Mount Hood – a nearly perfect pyramid seemingly cut from solid stone that belies its origin as a stratovolcano. While most big Cascade volcanoes are lumpy and dome-shaped, glaciers have sculpted Mount Hood to have the many distinctive faces that often bely its volcanic origin. The sheer, towering Sandy Headwall in this view is among its most impressive.

For January (above), I chose an image of a stunted group of Oregon white oak over on the east side of Mount Hood. Here, the forests transitions in the dry rain shadow of the Cascades from Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir at higher elevations, to short, tortured oaks that seldom exceed 10 or 15 feet in height – a tenth of what they might achieve under less harsh conditions. Eventually the oaks give way to the sagebrush hills of Oregon’s desert country.

Freezing fog crystals on Oregon white oak leaves

On this particular visit, freezing fog had hovered over the area for several days, leaving everything flocked in elaborate ice crystals. It’s one of my favorite weather phenomena, and it is surprisingly common in select spots on the east side of the mountain, where freezing fog often banks up against the Cascades in winter.

Freezing fog crystals on an Oregon white oak

The February image (below) in the new calendar features the last light of a winter day on Mount Hood’s crater, as viewed on a snowshoe trick into the White River Canyon. From this perspective, you can visualize the extent of the mountain’s last major eruption in the 1790s. The smooth south slopes on the left that extend all the way from the crater area to Government Camp were formed by debris flows that streamed down the mountain as new lava poured out in the crater. Though it seems timeless, today’s Crater Rock — an 800-foot monolith guarding the left side of the crater — was formed during this event, and is just 230 years old!

This snowshoe trip was memorable for the changing conditions. It was a brief ray of winter sun between storms. It had been a cloudy day, with the mountain mostly hiding in the overcast. The next weather system was already moving in, but as evening approached, the clouds suddenly lifted from them mountain for about an hour. The image below was taken about 20 minutes before the calendar view, as the clouds were still lifting away from the summit. After the brief light show, sun dropped down and the mountain disappeared into clouds, once again.

Winter clouds lifting from the mountain in late afternoon

For March, I choose a sylvan scene at Columbia Hills Nature Preserve, on the north side of the Columbia River in the desert country east of Mount Hood. Here, the wildflowers were just beginning to bloom while the grove of Oregon white oak was still dormant after a cold, windy winter. The wispy spring clouds completed the scene! The Columbia Hills are a gem, and their transformation from cattle ranch to wildland over the past few decades is one of the great recent conservation stories in WyEast county.

While I was setting up this photo, a pair of Western fence lizards were courting on a stack of rocks, nearby. They had found a warm, protected spot on a brisk day and didn’t seem too concerned about me. Just two friends soaking up the sun, or was it a romantic interlude? Hard to say, but they clearly were enjoying the re-emergence of spring, too.

Just friends..?

…or maybe more..?

The April calendar image (below) is a bit of an abstract made possible by weird geology and the brilliant colors of spring in the desert landscape. These are the Ortley Pinnacles, a sharply tilted layer of flood basalts that has been so uplifted that the once liquid layers of rock now stand almost on end. The bright yellow patches are Bigleaf maple flowering on the steep talus and groves (still leafless in this view) of Oregon white oak can be seen in the upper left.

The scale of this image is a bit hard to appreciate, too, so this wider image (below) shows the river, a freight train and the 2,000-foot north wall of the Columbia River Gorge for reference. Though beautiful at any time of the year, the rainbow of colors in the east Gorge are especially striking in mid-spring.

Freight train passing under the Ortley Pinnacles in the east Columbia River Gorge

Staying on the east side of Mount Hood, the May calendar image features another Columbia Hills Nature Preserve scene. This view, looking toward Mount Hood (and Mount Jefferson for the sharp-eyed), is across vast fields of yellow Arrowleaf balsamroot and blue Lupine that famously carpet the area in spring.

This is an increasingly popular place for hikers and photographers during the spring bloom, with people coming from all over the world to capture the spectacle of these meadows.

While setting up another photo, I watched an unexpected drama suddenly unfold through my lens (below). A white SUV suddenly appeared, with the driver apparently unaccustomed to driving on backroads. Rounding the corner too fast, they skidded off the soft shoulder and were quickly stuck in the ditch. Another driver soon stopped, and everyone seemed to be okay. Later, I passed a tow truck from The Dalles finally arriving to pull them out. A memorable day for these visitors, but at least they had a lovely backdrop while waiting for the tow!

If you’re doing to ditch your car, you might has well choose a scenic spot!

For June, an image of White River Falls in all its spring runoff glory is the featured image. This is a favorite spot I’ve been visiting since the early 1980s. Over those years, it has continued to recover from its industrial past to re-emerge as one of the most striking features in the desert country east of Mount Hood. Until 1960, a small hydroelectric plant built at the turn of the 20^th Century operated here, and much of the old infrastructure still remains in place as sort of an industrial ruins.

As the park gathered popularity in the late 2000s, the interior of the old power house took a real beating, with lot of tagging and senseless vandalism. Like so many parks, the steep increase in visitation is also taking a toll on the trails at White River falls, with old staircases just wearing out from the heavy use and new user paths sprouting in all directions.

In recent years, Oregon Parks and Recreation Department (OPRD) has stepped up their efforts at White River Falls, including securely enclosing the power house interior against further damage and increasing their efforts to managing tagging at the park. On-site park hosts now care for the park for from spring through fall, as well. Fact is, any park with a swimming hole is bound to deal with these issues, so it’ good to see OPRD beginning to get ahead of the problem.

These steps made of railroad ties and concrete slabs have seen better days at White River Falls

I continued the White River Falls theme in July, with a view of the lesser-known Lower White River Falls. This lovely spot is a short walk down the canyon from the historic powerhouse and is framed by desert wildflowers in early summer.

The trail to the lower falls – like most in the park – are social trails. Unfortunately, they are have become increasingly tangled and impactful as ever more new trails form with the growth in visitation. In desert environments, managing trail routes is especially important, as new user trails can leave tracks that last decades.

The good news at White River Falls is that there is a lot of park and thus much potential to spread visitors out a bit with a modest expansion of the trail system. And, the trails in the impacted areas just need some care and management to become sustainable again. Much of the work could be done by volunteers, too. Given the relative remoteness of the park, one option could be “volunteer vacation” events where trail volunteers spend a week working at a site. This would take advantage of the new restrooms and other accommodations already at the park.

Keeping hikers on the few trails that exist at White River Falls is a challenge. These hikers walked right past a closure sign.

In the coming year I’ll be sharing some concepts for expanding trail opportunities at White River Falls with an eye toward accommodating the continued growth in popularity and preserving its beauty and history. Both can be accomplished with some thoughtful planning, much of the work by volunteers.

Moving to August, I made the unusual choice of an image with people in it! That wasn’t really the plan, but these hikers walked through my setup and so I captured a few images. I later decided they added to the story of the pilgrimage experience that hiking up the shoulder of Mount Hood offers so many – in this case, the venerable trail to Cooper Spur.

I had about a dozen images from this sequence and chose one that would be anonymous. However, another consideration was an off-leash dog with the lead group. I’m a dog-lover (I currently have three) and am of the view that dogs in wilderness should always be leashed. There are lots of good reasons for this, mostly for the benefit of both wildlife and the dogs. However, this is not the law, and even in the few National Forest areas where leashes are mandated, the U.S. Forest Service does little to enforce the rules.

Hikers (and a hiker’s best friend) on the trail to Cooper Spur

Given that reality, I’ve got a mostly-written piece on “dog etiquette for hikers” that I will eventually post on the blog. Dog owners are just looking for a great outdoor experience, after all, and mostly don’t realize the impact of off-leash pets, so in the end, managing how we take our pets into the wild really depends on awareness and culture change. I’m already seeing that happen, albeit slowly.

For September, I chose an image of the Eliot Glacier from the same Cooper Spur hike featured in the previous month. The Eliot remains Mount Hood’s largest glacier, and the view into its mass of crevasses and seracs is truly breathtaking from the upper reaches of Cooper Spur. Yet, for old timers like me, the changes in the glacier in recent years are increasingly worrisome. To put a face on the change over the past couple of decades, I’ll be posting an article soon that does exactly that: side-by-side comparisons of change over the past 20 years. The differences are startling, and hopefully helpful inspiration to do our part to address global climate change.

A pleasant surprise that September day on Cooper Spur were swarms of Ladybugs all along the crest! Entomologists have studied this phenomenon extensively, and the thinking is that when bugs from opposite valleys meet along ridgetops to mate, they are rewarded with genetic diversity. In the moment, however, it was just a wild and crazy party atmosphere among the little beetles!

Scenic spot for a Ladybug convention!

Lots of action, here – beetle romance in the air!

Moving on to October, I chose this image of Mount Hood from the shoulder of Vista Ridge. I’ve spent a lot of time on this side of the mountain over the past couple of decades, and like much of the mountain, this corner has seen a rapid increase in visitation. The Vista Ridge trailhead is really just a stubbed logging road, and thus ill equipped to handle the amount of traffic it sees, with cars park at crazy angles and backed up down the road on busy weekends.

Therefore, another piece I’m planning to post in the coming year is a new trailhead concept for Vista Ridge that I’m actively working on with Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) to advance.

The idea is to solve the current trailhead crowding issues while also converting a section of the current access road to become an accessible trail – turning the roadside view captured above into a trail destination for less able-bodied visitors or those with mobility devices. Far too few of these opportunities exist on the mountain, so this seems like a good starting point.

Future Vista Ridge trailhead? Maybe…

The relocated Vista Ridge parking area would move downhill by a half mile to a recently logged area (above) that is already disturbed and better situated as a trailhead. Some of this work could be done by volunteers, but it will take a partnership with the Forest Service to make this happen. More to come on this concept!

For November, I chose a wintery scene from the Ponderosa pine country of Lookout Mountain, located just east of Mount Hood in the Badger Creek Wilderness. This image is from still another freezing frost event, along with a skiff of snow on the ground from an early winter storm.

The contrast of rust-colored Ponderosa bark to the cool blues and greens of frost-covered pine needles is truly striking during these events. The effect is also fleeting, as even a light breeze can shake the ice crystals loose in a miniature snow flurry, and a break in the clouds would quickly melt them away.

Freezing fog scene in a Ponderosa forest

Ice crystals decorating Ponderosa pine limbs

Last up, the December image is from another winter trek into the White River Canyon (below). On this quiet trip, I followed another snowshoer and her dog into the canyon on a weekday afternoon when crowds on the mountain were few.

Heading into the White River Canyon in winter

On the way back down the canyon, I set up the camera for some evening views of the mountain using long exposures to capture the movement of the White River. This image (below) ended up being my pick for the calendar.

However, I wrestled between a couple of images from this trip for the calendar, both taken from exactly the same spot, though about 20 minutes apart. So, if you like pink alpenglow scenes, you’ll be disappointed in my choice of the previous photo for the calendar! The image below was last light on the mountain that day.

Alpenglow along the White River

As with most years, I chose the 13 calendar images for 2023 from about 150 “keepers” that I had pulled aside over the year as favorites. The best thing about putting the calendar together each year is sharing my experiences in WyEast Country, while also challenging myself to see new places, or see familiar places in new ways. Every year I learn new so many new secrets about Mount Hood and the Gorge!

Also among the photos each year are nine wildflower images on the back of the calendar. My thanks to Paul Slichter’s for his terrific Flora and Fauna Northwest website and to the Oregon Wildflowers Facebook group administered by Greg Lief and Adam Schneider for their help on identifying several of these beauties.

So, there’s the backstory! If you’d like a calendar, they’re easy to order online from Zazzle – and to repeat, all proceeds go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO), as always. Just follow this link:

2023 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar

As always, thanks for following the WyEast Blog for another year. I hope to run into you on the trail sometime in 2023!

Tom Kloster | December 2022

Let’s get this restarted..!

October 21, 2022 / Tom Kloster / 7 Comments

2022 brought new life for our 80-year-old house in North Portland!

Why, I haven’t posted an article since the end of May! Where have I been? Painting, scraping, nailing… repeat! For 30 years we have lived in a World War II-era tract house built above the North Portland shipyards back in 1944, and this year we celebrated three decades of living here by adding some much-needed space on our second floor.

Like so many workers in the COVID era, the pandemic converted me to full-time teleworker overnight, so the new space on the second floor is a new home office where I’m spending (too much) time in Zoom meetings by day and working on the house at night.

Lath from our old plaster-and-lath walls cleaned and bundled for reuse by the deconstruction crew

If you follow the photo sequence (opening image), you might note that our house was without a roof during the month of April this year – a month when Portland set the all-time record for the wettest April ever. It rained every single day! The roof had been scheduled to be installed the first week of that month, and we finally got it tacked on during the first dry stretch in early May, after 6 weeks under a leaky, whole-house tarp. The frosting (quite literally) during this saga was a freak snowstorm in mid-April (again, climate change at work) that nearly destroyed the tarp. It was like camping in our own upstairs!

My role in the project has to install trim and window casings throughout and complete all of the interior painting – work I enjoy, but also really time-consuming. Thus, the unintended “sabbatical” from my blogging. With this article, I’m happy to be putting the paintbrush aside (for a moment) and getting back to writing a few articles about all things WyEast. If working on the house left precious little time for anything else except my day job, the monotony of painting and trimming gave me time to dream up lots of new topics to write about here – so, much more to come!

Eighty-six years of very slow Douglas fir growth created this perfectly straight trim board, first installed in 1944

This article stems direction from the trim work. Whenever possible with the remodel, I recycled old trim, doors and casings from the original 1944 construction, as it is mostly made from dense, incredibly solid old-growth wood. Most lumber cut in the Pacific Northwest in the 1940s was still from centuries-old trees. This piece of 4” baseboard trim (above) was typical – it has 86 growth rings! Modern wood trim of this dimension might have ten rings, and it’s finger-jointed, engineered wood made up of foot-long sections glued together, not cut in a single plank, straight from a tree.

This was on my mind while taking a much-needed day off from nailing and painting trim a few weeks ago when I came across this fallen giant (below) along Elk Creek, near Lolo Pass. It’ an old growth Douglas fir that survived in an island of ancient forest that was passed over by the logging heyday of decades past, when much of the north side of Mount Hood was clearcut.

That’s a big log! This Douglas fir giant fell along Elk Creek in the Lolo Pass area last winter, temporarily blocking Lolo Pass Road

How big is it? Just over 4 feet in diameter – very large for a forest located just below timberline on Mount Hood

I’d always admired this old stand of trees, so I stopped to measure the fallen giant – four feet in diameter. It was not even close to the largest trees I’ve come across in Oregon’s remaining old growth forests, but then I began to count the growth rings, and stopped at two hundred when I was less than halfway toward the center of the tree! Surprised at its age, I took several photos so I could count the rings more definitively at home with the aid of computer monitor. Upon later inspection of the photos, this ancient Douglas fir turned out to be 516 years old when it was finally tipped by a storm last winter!

All around this downed giant are dozens of equally ancient Western hemlock, Western redcedar and Douglas fir growing in a spectacular, species-diverse stand that I had passed through scores of times over the years. I’d always appreciated these big old trees, but I had no idea just how long they had been growing here. How lucky we are that they have survived multiple waves of logging over the past 150 years!

These giants – Douglas fir, Noble fir and Western hemlock – are the surviving neighbors of the big tree that came down along Elk Creek last winter

Then I thought about the 86 growth rings on that old piece of base trim I’d been working with. It occurred to me that it had likely been milled from just such a tree, and was likely hundreds of years old, just as much of the wood in my 1944 house is. In the 1940s logging was still mostly focused on old growth forests, with trees that were centuries old, and the mistaken belief that it would all grow back and we would never run out of big trees.

What struck me about this 500-year-old giant is how casually it had been sawed out of the road, as like any other blowdown that got in the way. We’re still learning to appreciate these irreplaceable monarchs as more than just the board feet of lumber or sticks of firewood they can be converted into. So, to honor this ancient Douglas fir I attached a few human milestones from our frail, checkered history to its long, peaceful timeline, as told in 516 annual growth rings (below).

500 years covers a lot of recent human history. This big old fir took root as a seedling a couple years before the first Spanish settlements appeared in North America in 1508 A.D.

[click here for a large version of this graphic]

Thinking of pre-1960s homes as “old-growth homes” was a bit of a revelation for me, though it makes sense. While private lands had been heavily logged for a half-century or more at that point, second-growth forests still weren’t being logged in a significant way until well into the 1950s. Logging on public land also went into full swing in the late 1940s, flooding the market with a new supply of old-growth logs cut from mountainsides that had never been logged before.

That’s why I was pleased to learn that a big, old Portland home just a few blocks down the street from mine was being carefully deconstructed this summer, and the materials set aside for reuse. When I took at closer look at the notice posted in front of the home, I learned this was no whim of the developer – a few years ago, houses like this were routinely razed, and the debris sent to the landfill in Arlington. Now, the City of Portland now requires homes built before 1940 to be deconstructed and the materials made available for reuse.

What it looks like to un-build a house, one floor at a time – this home will be replaced with multiple dwellings in growing Portland

Behind the disappearing old home, salvaged wood and bricks are stacked in neat piles, waiting to be transported to the Rebuilding Center, a recycled building materials nonprofit working in partnership with the City of Portland in this effort. There, old reclaimed lumber and other construction materials can be reused by builders in older homes where it matches the varying lumber dimensions that were common before modern standards were applied.

Salvaged wood is organized by dimension on site and prepared for reuse at the Rebuilding Center

While it was great to reuse my old wood trim, fact is that original, old growth wood is increasingly an artifact from an era that will never repeat. Yet, wood-frame homes aren’t going away, either. Instead, they are increasingly being built with engineered wood products that are stronger, more stable and use wood cut from fast-growing, farmed tree plantations, not public lands.

Many of the new structural beams in our remodeled home were produced this way, to exacting dimensions that would be impossible with conventional cut lumber. All around Portland multi-story buildings are also being constructed with engineered cross-laminated timber beams and panels that replace steel and concrete.

This new six-floor office building on Portland’s east side streetcar loop is a wood structure, constructed entirely with cross-laminated timbers and panels, one of several new mid-rise buildings proving the value of this new material

This new industry of manufacturing cross-laminated materials (also called “mass timber”) is growing in Oregon, and has the benefit of using very small trees that can be harvested from commercial farms or – importantly – from plantation thinning on our public lands. In this way, there’s a tremendous potential for this new industry to restore rural economies around Oregon that were left behind when old growth logging faded in the 1980s and 90s. You can read more here about this emerging opportunity.

Big trees left behind during the logging heyday of the 1960s, 70s and 80s on Mount Hood’s north side now tower over the crowded plantations that cover old clearcuts. Many of these giants are hundreds of years old. Now that technology has created modern wood products that are superior to traditional lumber, will we allow these recovering forests to grow old, once again?

I like this glimpse into the future. It’s one that could allow our magnificent mountain forests to finally recover, without the future threat of commercial logging of large trees, while also providing the materials needed to house future generations of Oregonians.

This end result of having better, stronger building materials while also restoring our public forests is encouraging. If we do manage this transition, future generations will surely thank us, too.

_______________________________

Tom Kloster | October 2022

Adam Sawyer needs our help…

February 27, 2022February 27, 2022 / Tom Kloster / 4 Comments

Adam Sawyer and Kara Close at Palouse Falls (Photo: Adam Sawyer)

This post is a break from my typical articles, but I wanted to get the word out to those who follow my blog. Over the weekend, I learned that my friend Adam Sawyer lost his wonderful partner Kara Close when their home in rural Washington burned to ground.

Adam lost everything, including Kara’s little cat Lela. It’s both heartbreaking and unfathomable for any of us to imagine the loss Adam is experiencing. He is staying with family for now, but he needs our help to recover from this devastating blow. A GoFundMe page has been set up by his sister to directly help Adam:

Help Adam Sawyer Recover GoFundMe Campaign

Adam and Kara in Washington Park (Photo: Adam Sawyer)

Why am I posting this here? That’s easy. Adam loves the Pacific Northwest outdoors, and he makes his living writing field guides, news and magazine articles and leading tours that bring outdoor experiences within reach of everyone. Nobody gets rich in his business. He’s in it for his love of the outdoors and to share that love with others. The joy he finds in guiding others to adventure shines through in his writing, too. Adam has led an adventurous life — including being a veteran — but his literary bio blurb perfectly sums how he embarked on the life he now lives:

“After giving up a soul-crushing corporate job, Adam Sawyer now describes himself as a Professional Gentleman of Leisure. A freelance writer and photographer, he also offers guided hikes around the Portland, Oregon area. He has hiked extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest and enjoys sharing his discoveries.”

Adam’s field guides are “people’s guides”. They are aimed at a broad audience to include people who might not otherwise explore the outdoors discover the beauty of our amazing Pacific Northwest. They’re accessible and fun to read, yet they also cover trail ethics and especially the impacts that we humans have on our public lands. Adam calls on his readers to consider volunteering with trail stewardship organizations to give back and pitch in to care for our amazing trail network – something you don’t often find in a hiking guide.

Adam and Kara on the water (Photo: Adam Sawyer)

Adam and Kara in the air (Photo: Adam Sawyer)

Kara joined Adam on many of his adventures, and she was a constant source of support for him in realizing his dream of being an author and guide – including long stints away from their home. Adam was on just such a trip when the fire occurred, likely saving his life, but taking Kara’s. It’s too often a cliché, but Kara and Adam were, indeed, soulmates. That’s plain to see in these photos that Adam has shared.

Support Adam’s Writing

While the GoFundMe campaign will help support Adam in this moment of tragedy, we can continue his excellent work going forward by simply supporting his writing. To say that Adam is a prolific writer is an understatement, as you can see in this rundown (below) of his many guides currently in print. Have a look… and then buy every single one of them! Then buy a couple more for friends or family! They make great gifts.

I’ll post a couple links at the bottom of this article (to Amazon and Powell’s) where you can pick up any of these titles. Please note that for the purpose of getting this post up quickly, I’ve included the publisher’s descriptions for each of these books (italicized).

Urban Hikes | Oregon (March 1, 2022)

Oregon, whimsical paradise of the Pacific Northwest, is known for its lush landscapes of forests and mountains. But you don’t have to go all the way into the backcountry to experience what the state has to offer. In Urban Hikes Oregon you’ll hit the trail to discover the landmarks and hotspots that shape the state’s cities and towns. From arboretum trails to picturesque waterfront walks, this guide explores the 40 best urban hiking trails throughout the state.

Best Outdoor Adventures Near Portland (2016)

Who says you have to travel far from home to go on a great hike, paddle, or bike ride? Best Outdoor Adventures Near Portland, Oregon details nearly forty of the best hikes, paddles, bike routes, and adventures within an hour’s drive from the Portland, Oregon, area. This book is perfect for the urban and suburbanite who may be hard-pressed to find great outdoor activities close to home. This guide not only include the best cycling, hiking, and paddling, but also ziplining, rock climbing, and disc golf – perfect for families!

Hiking Waterfalls | Oregon (2020)

This beautiful, full-color guidebook features 64 of the best waterfall hikes in Oregon, with another 19 honorable mentions. From the Coast Range to the Cascades, along with the breathtaking Columbia River Gorge, you can explore those special places where water cascades over cliffs. Some waterfalls are remote while others are just a short hike from the trailhead, some are gentle trickles and others are roaring giants. Yet all of them offer a peaceful escape and are worth seeking out.

Hiking Waterfalls | Washington (2019)

Hiking Waterfalls in Washington includes detailed hike descriptions, maps, and color photos for the area’s most scenic waterfall hikes. Hike descriptions also include history, trivia, and GPS coordinates. This book takes you through state and national parks, forests, monuments, and wilderness areas, and from city parks to the most secluded corners of the area to view the most spectacular waterfalls.

Best Easy Day Hikes | Salem & Eugene (2021)

Best Easy Day Hikes Salem and Eugene includes concise descriptions and detailed maps for easy-to-follow hikes in and around two of Oregon’s most charming and adventurous small cities. Stroll along the river in Salem and visit the Northwest Rainforest outside Eugene’s hip college town.

Unique Eats and Eateries of Portland, Oregon (2018)

“Adam Sawyer uncovers the stories of the people behind the city’s ascension to culinary greatness. Along the way, you’ll discover the best places to try it all!” – katu.com

“You have more than 90 eateries, and as I read through all of them, there wasn’t a loser among any of them. I want to take someone visiting Portland to each of these places.” – Portland Culinary Podcast

“This book covers all locations around the Portland area, no cravings unanswered! Highly recommend as the perfect research resource for your next date night in Portland.” – Reader review

Forthcoming titles to watch for from Adam Sawyer:

25 Outdoor Adventures on the Tillamook Coast
Hiking Waterfalls: Idaho

You can order Adam’s books from these online booksellers (and Kindle versions from Amazon):

Adam Sawyer on Amazon

Adam Sawyer at Powell’s City of Books

Adam Sawyer and Kara Close in 2017 (Photo: Adam Sawyer)

If you’ve been a reader of this blog for a while, you might remember this post from 2012 that features Adam on a trip dedicated to restoring Warren Creek Falls:

Warren Falls Close-up Article

I have such fond memories of that trip, and it resulted in this Oregon Field Guide story on OPB:

Warren Falls on Oregon Field Guide (2012)

I met Adam 15 years ago when Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) and the Oregon Hikers Forum were just getting started. It has been such a pleasure to watch his life as a “Gentleman of Leisure” unfold over that time, and I know he’ll find his path through the hardship and grief that he’s now facing.

Adam has had other challenges in his life, more than most of us have faced. But he’s a man of unusual grit, good humor and a big heart, and that has always pulled him through. I wish him well, and I thank you for considering your part in helping Adam through this especially tough part of his life journey.

Adam, thank you for the spirit and passion you bring to our amazing outdoors!

___________________________

Tom Kloster | February 2022

Mount Hood National Recreation Area Legislation: 10 Things to know!

January 3, 2022January 7, 2022 / Tom Kloster / 5 Comments

Mount Hood from Lolo Pass

After nearly ten years of informal meetings and town halls, Senator Ron Wyden and Rep. Earl Blumenauer recently released a much-anticipated framework for legislation that will fundamentally change the management direction for Mount Hood and expand protections for the Columbia River Gorge.

The legislative details are forthcoming, but for now Sen. Wyden and Rep. Blumenauer are asking for public comment on a general legislative concept by January 7 – this Friday! That’s a very short comment period, but if you love WyEast Country (and you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t!) please consider weighing in, even if only to send a sentence or two on what is most important to you as this legislation takes shape.

Here are 10 things to know about this new proposal for Mount Hood and the Gorge:

1. It’s a very big deal for Mount Hood! At this time, it’s still a legislative concept, but it will frame the ultimate details of the legislation, and the scope of the concept is broad. This is the most sweeping legislation proposed for Mount Hood since the Oregon National Forest was created in 1908 (and later renamed the Mount Hood National Forest in 1924). This is a big deal for Mount Hood. More than the original Mount Hood Wilderness area created with the Wilderness Act in 1964, more than the subsequent wilderness additions in 1978, 1984 and 2009. And more than the Northwest Forest Act of 1992.

Why? Because the legislation would shift the core function of the forest away from commercial logging and toward forest restoration and enhanced recreation. This is a sea change for the Forest Service – and for the mountain. The degree to which this pivot is enforced in law depends solely on what the coming legislation says, and therefore the importance of weighing in early and often (as Rep. Blumenauer likes to say).

2. It’s big deal for the Gorge, too! While the greatest impact of the proposed legislation would be on Mount Hood and the federal lands that surround the mountain, additional protections and recreation enhancements for the Gorge are part of the proposal. They represent the most important step forward since the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area was established in 1986.

Crown Point and the Columbia River Gorge

3. Say it with me: Mount Hood National Recreation Area! The central and most powerful feature of the legislative concept is a dramatic expansion of the Mount Hood National Recreation Area (NRA). “Expansion” you might ask? Since when has a Mount Hood NRA even existed? Since 2009, as it turns out – though few know this, and it’s understandable. The awkwardly titled “Lewis and Clark Mount Hood Wilderness” bill that President Obama signed into law in 2009 added new wilderness and a number of other protections for Mount Hood, but tucked into the bill were three small areas to the east and southeast of the mountain deemed the “Mount Hood NRA”.

At the time, the creation of these NRA postage stamps was really just a consolation prize to mountain bikers who stood to lose access to trails falling inside the new wilderness areas. This is a frustrating and contentious issue among should-be conservation allies that was never anticipated when the Wilderness Act was signed into law in 1964 (bicycles are interpreted as mechanized, and thus excluded under the law). Though token as the original Mount Hood NRA units were, I wrote in this article several years ago that they also represented an opportunity to someday help Mount Hood achieve full recognition as a national treasure worthy of permanent protection. It was legislative foot in the door that may be about to open much wider.

The power of the NRA is clear in the legislative concept: it would encompass most of the Mount Hood National Forest north the Clackamas River, or roughly half the forest. The Forest Service would be thereby directed to write a new management plan for this vast area that focuses on forest restoration, recreation and watershed and water quality. This is a long-overdue change from the commercial logging mission that has hammered the mountain since the 1950s. As envisioned in the legislative concept, the new mandate would be to restore forest health and promote recreational activities that are in concert with a recovering forest that will be allowed to grow old, once again.

Rainforest along Whale Creek on the Clackamas River Trail

Did you know the current plan guiding the Forest Service for their management decisions was adopted more than 30 years ago, in 1990? The Portland region, alone, has grown by well over 1 million residents in that time, but aside from expansion of the commercial ski resorts, recreation opportunities on Mount Hood haven’t expanded — with the resulting traffic and trailhead crowding we see as a familiar reminder. The legislative concept speaks directly to this crisis in management, with a clear directive to the Forest Service to change its focus to better reflect the interests and concerns of a changed region. This is a sea change for Mount Hood.

Conservationists remain wary of the NRA, however. Why? Because they rightly point to the fact that every NRA in this country is a bit different, each tailored to the specific area they were created for. In Oregon, this includes the Oregon Dunes and Hells Canyon, for example. While some NRAs are written with conservation in mind, others are relatively toothless and don’t give the Forest Service much direction in how to manage these areas. This is why the details in the legislative language matters.

4. More Wilderness and Wild & Scenic Rivers. Senator Wyden has been particularly focused on expanding Oregon’s system of Wild & Scenic Rivers in recent years, a protection that mostly prevents rivers from being dammed, but also offers other protections intended to keep river corridors healthy and functioning for wildlife. The proposed legislation would add sections of the West Fork Hood River, Lake Branch, Coe and Eliot Branches, Cold Spring Creek and the Dog River to the Wild & Scenic River system in the Hood River basin, alone. On the west side of the mountain, sections of the Clear Fork of the Sandy River, Zigzag River and Still Creek would be added to the Wild & Scenic River system. The limit to this protection is that it only applies to public lands, and most of these streams flow through private lands, as well. These stretches located outside public ownership are not included in the legislative concept.

Wilderness expansions are an expected part of any new conservation bill for Mount Hood and the Gorge, even though most of the truly wild areas have already protected through past legislation. Therefore, most of the new areas being proposed are expansions of existing wilderness, including Lost Lake Butte, the middle Coe and Eliot Branch canyons near Cloud Cap, popular Tamanawas Falls, the east side of Bluegrass Ridge, the Red Hill area along the Old Vista Ridge trail and several small expansions along the east end of the Salmon Huckleberry Wilderness.

Tamanawas Falls on Cold Spring Creek, one of the new wilderness areas in the proposed legislation

5. Moving trail stewardship up the Forest Service priority list? Ask someone who volunteers as a trail steward for one of the non-profits who work in WyEast Country (Trailkeepers of Oregon, Pacific Crest Trail Association, Mazamas, Backcountry Horsemen, Oregon Equestrian Trails, and Oregon Mountain Biking Coalition, to name among the most active) and they will tell you that one of the main obstacles in putting tools in the hands of volunteers on our trails is the Forest Service, itself. Compared to working with local and state land managers, navigating the Forest Service is a real challenge, even when you’re trying to bring needed resources in the form of volunteer labor.

The legislative concept builds on outreach conducted by Rep. Blumenauer’s staff to most of these groups to figure out what’s missing in the current Forest Service structure and what could be done differently to make trail stewardship volunteering easier. As written, the concept is a bit squishy, but the general themes of dedicating more Forest Service staff to serve as a coordination hub, and giving them new tools for coordinating virtually with volunteers is a good start. More thoughts on this topic follow in this article.

6. Talking with the tribes. This legislative concept has been in development for a while, and to the credit of Rep. Blumenauer and Sen. Wyden, it was slowed along the way to ensure meaningful consultation with affected tribes. As drafted, the legislative concept focuses on Forest Service obligations to better consult and coordinate with the tribes and to specifically to deliver on a first foods plan that would be added to the policies that guide forest management. More thoughts on this topic follow, as well.

Looking across the Columbia River to the town of Lyle from Rowena Plateau

7. Gorge Towns to Trails vision. Long advocated by Friends of the Columbia Gorge, this is a bold, long-term vision to create a European-style trekking network encircling the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. The legislative concept gives a nod to the vision in all but name, along with a general direction to the Forest Service to develop a comprehensive system plan for all trails the Gorge.

It’s no secret that in the past the Columbia Gorge Commission staff has viewed new trails in the Gorge quite negatively, and National Scenic Area staff have also been reluctant to consider trail expansion, as well. This, despite the overwhelming growth in demand and resulting overcrowding that is apparent to anyone who spends time in the Gorge. The proposed legislation would guide staff at both agencies with a clearer vision for how and where trails will be expanded in the Gorge, and how existing trails experiencing overuse can be better managed.

8. Improving Mount Hood & Gorge Transportation. Who can argue with this? It can only get better, right? And yet, this is perhaps the squishiest of the elements in the legislative concept, as most of what it calls for is already being provided and the concept simply calls for more – as in more public transit and transportation “options” (read: bikeways?), more rest areas, more law enforcement, more emergency response capacity. What the concept misses is that transportation, itself, is a recreation experience, not just a service. More thoughts on this topic follow below, as well.

The Dollar Lake Fire on Mount Hood (September 2, 2011)

9. Forest Fire “management”? Well, it’s safe to say that as a society we are beginning to grapple with the reality that a century of aggressive forest fire suppression coupled with a warming climate has set up an impossibly volatile circumstance in our forests. But I would emphasize the word “beginning”, because while the scientists and public agencies (and even a few politicians) understand the situation, there remains intense public pressure to somehow prevent forest fires – especially from people who live in the so-called “urban-rural interface”. This is policy jargon for people who live on private forested acreages abutting our public lands in places like the U.S. 26 corridor, and who are at real risk from catastrophic forest fires.

At best, we might be able to reduce the number of human-caused fires. These are still the majority, including the massive Riverside (2020) and Eagle Creek (2017) fires that scorched a large chunk of Mount Hood National Forest in the past five years. The proposed legislation tries to ease into this with by requiring the Forest Service to create a “mitigation and adaptation” plan for managing both fire risk and response. “Mitigation” would include prescribed burns and thinning crowded plantations on old clear cuts to improve forest health and fire resilience – two of the main ways the Forest Service is responding to the growth in catastrophic fires in the West.

“Adaptation” is less defined in the proposed legislation, however. The elephant in the room are the thousands of homes and summer cabins (hundreds of them on federal land through 99-year leases) located in that “urban-rural interface”. Can they be protected? The fire that tore through the communities of Talent and Phoenix in Southern Oregon in 2020 didn’t stop at the urban-rural interface, they burned right in developed urban areas. “Adaptation” suggests that we might change how and where we live in relations to forests in the future, so what does that mean for the urban-rural interface, before or after fire? I don’t envy the Forest Service on this task, nor will this legislation solve the larger policy dilemma, but there’s no question it will need to be part of developing a Mount Hood NRA plan.

In a rare moment of justice, these target shooters were caught in a no shooting zone on Wildcat Mountain, and asked to clean up their trash while the deputy watched (2010)

10. Who isn’t for public safety in our forests? This is another topic the proposed legislation didn’t have much choice in acknowledging. Most who visit Mount Hood in the Gorge are keenly aware of the lawless activity that finds refuge in a vast area with little law enforcement presence. The legislative concept calls for more funding, including for local law enforcement, as well as “public education”. More thoughts on this topic follow, as well.

So, I’ve highlighted the main take-aways as a WyEast advocate who has long dreamed of a fundamental shift on management focus like this, but the legislative concept has more.

You can download the concept document here:

Draft Legislative Concept

You can also view and download the surprisingly detailed draft concept map here:

Draft Concept Map

And you can comment directly on the proposed Mount Hood NRA legislation here:

Public Comment Form

This will take you to an online form for sharing your thoughts. The following are what I plan to share during this comment period – and they might be useful to you, as well.

What’s Missing from the Concept?

Though there’s a looming comment deadline of January 7 (this Friday!), this legislative process is just getting started, and there will be more opportunities to weigh in while congressional staff drafts the actual legislation. With any luck (and some will be needed!) and enough support, this just might make it through the most divisive Congress in recent memory.

Here are a few things I’d like to see in the new Mount Hood legislation:

1. Restorative justice for the tribes. This means more than “living up to our statutory obligations”, as currently written in the legislative concept. Most of the statutes governing tribes in this country are rooted in our dark history of displacement and oppression of native populations, and the presumption that what was taken from the tribes must forever be lost. Restorative justice means to reverse the harm, and for Mount Hood and the Gorge might include restoring the ecosystems that provide first foods – as included in the legislative concept. But it might include dedicating or expanding public lands for the sole purpose of restoring exclusive tribal access to sacred places.

Restorative justice should include an inventory of interpretive and directional signage and symbols, too, to become inclusive of pre-white settlement history and customs, and reverse some of the cultural erasure caused by place names and white-centric written history. The most egregious examples are interpretive signs located along the Oregon Trail and Barlow Road. In my view, every one of these should include the perspective of native peoples who were pushed aside by westward expansion. But only the tribes can speak to this history from a perspective of cultural suffering, loss and continuing harm these migratory roads represent.

Only by meaningfully engaging and listening to the tribes can the Forest Service know what a larger restorative justice commitment would look like, but it should be part of their mandate for the proposed Mount Hood NRA.

Restorative justice for tribes begins with never forgetting — nor accepting — the cultural harm to native peoples caused by white settlement in WyEast country (Celilo Falls in the late 1950s, a few years before it disappeared behind The Dalles Dam)

2. Making public lands truly public. Show up at a popular trailhead in the Gorge or on Mount Hood and you’ll immediately see that our public lands are an overwhelmingly white space. This is especially true for trails and campgrounds, as many recent studies have documented. Why is this?

Ask a person of color, and researchers will tell you that white people who dominate the trails and campgrounds are a big part of the problem. The hostility ranges from outright and overt racist attacks to simple comments like “it’s so nice to see a person like you out here.” Well meant? Perhaps, but also unwelcome and uninvited when a simple “hello” is how a white person might have been greeted. Official signage at trailheads and campgrounds can be similarly hostile and unwelcoming in ways that are racist. It’s a problem that requires a plan of action to change.

Removing the barriers that make our public lands unwelcoming to people of color is within our reach, and must be at the core of how the proposed Mount Hood NRA is managed

The legislative concept should speak explicitly to this in the provisions required for the Mount Hood NRA management plan. As written, the concept vaguely mentions providing a “variety of recreational experiences to serve diverse users”. It should be more specific: our public lands have a racial diversity problem that implies specific bias that prevents black and brown Americans from sharing these special places equally. That’s unacceptable and should be a filter for everything in the new management plan.

Like the previous topic on restorative justice for tribes, this work must begin with the Forest Service directly engaging – and listening — to communities of color as they develop a plan of action. This conversation also means meeting black and brown communities where they are, not at a remote ranger station located miles from the nearest population center. It’s a long-overdue conversation and the proposed Mount Hood NRA is the perfect vehicle to begin this work.

3. Law enforcement without all the baggage? When I walked into White River Falls State Park last summer with a friend who is a young Black man, he groaned, cringed visibly and shook his head at a giant new sign (below) that the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department had placed at the trailhead. No doubt it was installed to deal with heavy vandalism in recent years to the historic structures in the park, but I’m quite sure the park managers didn’t intend the reaction my friend experienced. They message was intended to protect the very resources he came here to enjoy, but made him feel deeply unwelcome, instead.

This sign at White River Falls betrays a tone-deafness to how images of law enforcement might impact communities of color – in this case, literally the image a faceless authoritarian with a finger pointed at arriving visitors

It’s a painful fact that we live in fraught times with our law enforcement. So, when I read the public safety element of the legislative concept, I had that new sign at White River Falls in mind. What is the law enforcement issue there? Largely, young people tagging historic structures. I doubt the new sign with have much impact (except to become a new target for tagging?), but an occasional human law enforcement presence might help – or perhaps a security camera?

I don’t presume to know the answers, but having my own vehicles broken into a couple of times at trailheads — and having encountered much more troubling lawless behavior away from the more popular areas—I do think the idea of providing federal funding for expanded law enforcement through local counties is a good one. But given the times we live in, I’d also like to see that funding come with strings attached: the officers should be uniformed distinctly and differently from their local agency, as Mount Hood NRA officers. Creating a new, hybrid law enforcement identity would also be an opportunity to build some racial diversity in the generally rural law enforcement jurisdictions that would carry out this work.

I’m also quite open to security cameras at trailheads – as most hikers are (especially younger hikers). There was a time when this might have been controversial (say, ten years ago?) but today these are among the few public places that don’t have some sort of security monitoring, right down to our front doors, complete with doorbell cams. Lawless people know this, and it’s evidenced by the piles of broken glass than can be found throughout most of the major trailheads in the Gorge and on Mount Hood.

Law enforcement on public lands is a thorny topic, indeed, but one that needs more thought and attention than is reflected in the current legislative concept.

Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) volunteers building new trail at Punchbowl Falls Park

4. Set benchmarks for recreation. You may know that Congress has a long history of setting annual logging quotas for the Forest Service that must be met. So, if the purpose of the Mount Hood NRA is to shift the management emphasis of the forest from commercial logging to forest recovery and recreation for Mount Hood and the Gorge, why not set quotas for recreation?

This could be in the form of new trails and trailheads constructed, or the number of hikers who show up at trailheads – or both – measured per capita, as defined by the population living within 100 miles of the Mount Hood NRA, for example. Since the late 1960s, the Forest Service has acknowledged an ongoing growth in demand for trails, yet the system hasn’t grown, and what we have has increasingly fallen into disrepair. Why is this?

One of the greatest barriers to expanding trails is simply a mindset within the Forest Service. After decades of inadequate funding from Congress for trail construction and maintenance, the agency culture has been apprehensive to even talking about new trails. This, despite the obvious demand and overcrowding on the existing system. The problem also includes doing the needed planning, engineering and environmental assessments needed to advance new trail projects when funding does come – a critical obstacle that only the Forest Service can remove.

The proposed Mount Hood NRA provides an opportunity to link the new agency focus on recreation to both the growing interest in trails and sheer numbers of people living in proximity to the forest. If specific benchmarks were set up as funding incentive in the legislation, it could speed the transition of the Forest Service culture from logging to forest recovery and recreation, including making the planning work needed to move new trail projects from concept to construction a priority in agency budgets.

The opening segment of the new Mirror Lake Trail, the first accessible trail built on Mount Hood in decades

5. Accessible trails and trailheads are not a luxury. For too long our public land agencies have viewed recreation opportunities for people with disabilities as something outside the norm. The result is a woefully inadequate system of accessible outdoor trails for people who use walkers, wheelchairs or other mobility devices. As our population becomes increasingly older in coming years, and the share with disabilities grows, this unmet need for accessible trails will only accelerate.

There have been some shining successes – the Lost Creek nature trail and Little Crater Lake trail area couple of my favorites. But even these trails fail to get the basic maintenance needed to remain fully accessible. The legislative concept should include a specific provision that a complete system of accessible recreation facilities and sites be incorporated into the Mount Hood NRA plan and constructed as part of the benchmarked targets described above.

Who hasn’t stopped here to admire this roadside view?

6. Transportation IS a recreation experience! There’s a spot near Hood River, along the Mount Hood Loop, that I blogged about years ago. The view of Mount Hood and the upper Hood River Valley that unfolds there is world class. More often than not on a clear day, there’s a car or two pulled over, with someone taking photos with their phone. It’s not surprising, as since the original Mount Hood Loop was completed in the early 1920s, it has been a classic touring route. It just hasn’t been managed that way for many years.

It’s true that the modern Mount Hood Loop carries a lot of traffic, and the proposed legislation concept speaks to the basic transportation needs that exist – the lack of meaningful transit, the complete lack of a safe bikeway along Highway 35 and U.S. 26 and (less explicitly) the lack of what planners call “demand management” to promote incentives for visitors to use travel options like transit and visit outside of peak travel times. Demand management would include managing peak period parking at major trailheads and destinations in the Gorge and on Mount Hood – again, implied, but not specific.

These are all good things needed to make traveling around the mountain and through the Gorge a better experience, and less of a barrier to people who don’t have access (or prefer not to use a car), in particular. But the legislative concept should also call for the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) and Forest Service to work collaboratively to create a transportation vision – a long-range plan to make the experience of traveling to and around the mountain a destination, in itself.

Congress can’t directly regulate ODOT, but it can regulate an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation known as the Western Federal Lands Highway Division. This is an agency with a regional office in Vancouver that has led several projects on Mount Hood in recent years, including the White River Bridge replacement, the historic Sahalie Falls Bridge restoration and designing and constructing the new Mirror Lake Trailhead. They have long worked with ODOT, and could be the avenue for the new legislation to be specific about improving the traveling experience on the mountain through a collaborative planning effort with ODOT.

ODOT’s designs for new structures in the Columbia Gorge draw from a carefully developed policy guidance developed by the agency (the new Fifteenmile Bridge on I-84)

Elements of a Mount Hood NRA transportation plan could build on the excellent design policy that ODOT has followed for the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area over the past two decades. This policy guides the design and maintenance details of I-84 and the Historic Columbia River Highway from the smallest details (did you know the back of freeway signs in the Gorge are painted “national park brown”?) to bold, as ODOT gradually replaces old slab-style concrete freeway bridges in the Gorge with handsome new structures that are a visual complement to scenic area (shown above).

A Mount Hood NRA transportation plan should also incorporate the re-imagining of several long- abandoned or bypassed sections of the old loop highway into a continuation of the world-class Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail that is nearing completion in the Gorge. ODOT has built the in-house expertise for this work, and will soon have the capacity once their work on the Gorge trail “final five” miles is completes over the new few years. I posted two articles on this concept for Mount Hood early in 2021 (and have also shared these with congressional staff – please feel free to mention them in your comments, too!)

Mount Hood Loop Highway State Trail Proposal – Part One

Mount Hood Loop Highway State Trail Proposal – Part Two

Another piece of the transportation puzzle that calls for a plan under the new Mount Hood NRA are the off-highway, paved forest routes, like Lolo Pass Road (FR 18/ FR 1810), Dufur Mill Road (FR 44) and White River Road (FR 48) that function as scenic drives, but suffer badly from disrepair and a complete lack of visitor amenities. Each of these routes needs a management plan and vision for making them the positive recreational experience that the public is already seeking when the venture on to these roads.

Which brings me to a final element of a Mount Hood NRA transportation plan – gateways, enhanced directional signage, waysides, pullouts and interpretive displays that tell the story of WyEast country to the traveling public. These are all things you would find in a parkway design in one of our national parks, and the Mount Hood NRA should have parkway designations for Highway 35, U.S. 26 and the off-highway routes mentioned above, too, with design guidelines to ensure a great travel experience as the system is developed over time. There are plenty of great parkway plans to draw from, the proposed legislation just needs to provide the mandate to do the work.

Civilian Conservation Corps crews building trail in the 1930s

7. The CCC? It was a great idea in 1932… And it’s still a great idea: the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to get young, idle men off the street and into productive work that would give them job skills, food, housing, clothing and a modest paycheck ($30/month, of which $25 was sent to their families!). It was among the most popular New Deal programs, but sadly, the CCC was disbanded in 1942 as our country went to war.

The proposed Mount Hood NRA provides a unique opportunity to revive the CCC model, but in modernized form. The benefits to the NRA are clear, with youth workers helping to restore, build and maintain trails, trailheads and campgrounds, along with habitat and forest restoration work – all things the original CCC did, and whose work still shapes what we see in our forests today.

A modern CCC would be open to all youth, not just young men, and compensation could include college tuition credits, along with a paycheck, room and board. Mount Hood already has Forest Service facilities that could (again) become CCC camps – Camp Zigzag, Timber Lake in the Clackamas River corridor and the Herman Creek work center in the Gorge, to name some of the more obvious options.

The legislative concept hints at this possibility, but it should be fully incorporated as a core element of the vision for the Mount Hood NRA in order to drive the needed Congressional funding.

Badger Creek Wilderness and Mount Hood from the White River Wildlife Area

8. Let’s get the boundaries right. The overall scope of the Mount Hood NRA, as expressed on the draft map [link], is terrific. Notably, it includes both Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands along the west edge (along the US 26 corridor), as well as the various pieces of federal land that frame the upper Hood River Valley. It would have been easy to leave these small parcels out, but they provide an important starting point for public land acquisition by the Forest Service to better define the Mount Hood NRA – though a directive to do this work should be included in the legislation. The now-permanent Land and Water Conservation Fund already provides an important funding conduit for these needed land acquisitions.

There are also a few pieces missing from the proposed Mount Hood NRA on the concept map. First, most of the Badger Creek Wilderness is excluded. This is a big oversight if the goal of the proposed Mount Hood NRA is to shift the Forest Service focus to recreation. Why? Because the Badger Creek Wilderness has a deep backlog of trail maintenance needs that are out of reach for urban volunteers doing day trips, as many of the Badger Creek trails are remote and require overnight crews.

Second, the nearby Dog River drainage that falls within The Dalles watershed management area is excluded. The Dog River is proposed to become a Wild and Scenic River in the legislative concept, and the Dog River basin already has a lot of recreation activity, as it is not a fenced watershed. Well-traveled Dufur Mill Road (FR 44) travels extensively through the watershed, and a number of other forest roads, hiking and biking trails are in or near the watershed, including the popular High Prairie trailhead. It makes sense to include Dog River in the Mount Hood NRA in order to more effectively manage these activities — and to ensure that recreation will continue to be allowed here.

Pup Creek Falls is excluded from the proposed Mount Hood NRA, along most of the Clackamas River National Recreation Trail

A third map oversight is along the south edge of the proposed Mount Hood NRA, where the south half of the Roaring River Wilderness is left outside the proposed recreation area, along with a section of the Clackamas River that is traversed by the Clackamas River National Scenic Trail. Some of this area was burned in the 2020 Riverside fire, and that reality, alone, is reason enough to bring it into the NRA to direct resources toward rebuilding and restoring trails and campgrounds. While I would like to see the entire Clackamas basin brought into the NRA, that will have to wait for future legislation. For now, extending the proposed Mount Hood NRA boundary south to the Collawash River confluence would be a reasonable start.

The Upper Sandy Guard Station in better days. Today, it is on the brink of being unsalvageable, despite being on the National Historic Register

9. Don’t forget our history! Finally, an important missing element in the legislative concept is some sort of recognition that we are rapidly losing historic structures through the Mount Hood National Forest. The 2020 Riverside Fire destroyed several of these priceless buildings, so recognizing and preserving the remaining gems is even more urgent today. The Mount Hood NRA management plan should include an updated historic resources inventory and plan for capital investments needed to stabilize or restore sites and structures – ideally, in partnership with non-profit partners.

What can you do?

That’s a deep dive into the legislative concept, along with ways it might be improved. If you have read this far, kudos for being a friend of Mount Hood and the Gorge! The next step is to weigh in, and you’d be surprised how much your thoughts matter to congressional staff – they really do care! The timeline for commenting on the concept and map is short – they must be submitted by this Friday, January 7. Again, here’s the online form for commenting:

Mount Hood NRA Proposal — Public Comment Form

That said, if you’re not able to weigh in during this round, watch this space – I’ll post updates on the legislation as it (hopefully) moves forward. While there is a lot of major legislation churning through Congress right now, it’s entirely possible that this concept will get turned into a bill that makes it through both chambers… with a little luck and a push for all who love Mount Hood and the Gorge!

2022 Campaign Calendar!

December 12, 2021 / Tom Kloster / 1 Comment

If you have followed this blog for a while, then you know I gather up my best WyEast images each year and publish them in the Mount Hood National Park Campaign Scenic Calendar. They are available online, and all proceeds from the calendars go the Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO), a non-profit trail advocacy and stewardship organization that I’ve volunteered with since TKO formed, way back in 2007.

I’ll post more on how to order the 2022 calendar at the end of this article. But first, here’s a preview of the images, along with a few stories behind the photos.

The January image (below) and cover shot (top) in the new calendar were taken on the same magical evening at Lolo Pass, just a few weeks ago. The clouds framing the mountain were condensing right above me on this clear, cold evening, as they often do here, when moist Pacific air is compressed as it pushes over Lolo Pass on Mount Hood’s northwest shoulder. In winter, this geographic phenomenon can create a localized freezing-fog event at Lolo Pass, though it might be sunny and dry for miles in every direction!

January features Mount Hood alpengow from Lolo Pass

I’ve spent many evenings at Lolo Pass photographing alpenglow on the mountain under these conditions, and the fun (or frustration!) comes with the mountain peeking through the clouds, then quickly disappearing, once again. Because the prime evening light lasts for only a few minutes, those moments when the clouds suddenly part to reveal alpenglow on the mountain are a real thrill for photographers. On this evening, I was joined by another photographer, and we both cheered when the clouds opening up to reveal not just the mountain, but also the moonrise appearing over his shoulder! The moment was over after just a few seconds, but it is captured in the cover photo for this year’s calendar. It was the also the last time WyEast revealed himself on that memorable evening.

For February, I chose an image of Cedar Island, a botanical anomaly located in the heart of the Deschutes River canyon. This article from earlier this year tells the story of this odd group of Incense Cedar trees mysteriously growing far outside their normal range and habitat and somehow thriving in the middle of desert country, thanks to a confluence of unique conditions.

February features mysterious Cedar Island in the Deschutes River Canyon

These trees are truly oddities, but as described in the article, they’re also doing quite well. They have now established a satellite colony on the shoreline opposite the island, where a combination of shade and underground springs has allowed them to thrive. You can visit this grove by following the Deschutes River access road north from Sherars Falls for a few miles, just beyond Beavertail Campground.

As the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire begins to fade into our collective memory, and the post-fire recovery of the Columbia River Gorge continues to unfold, there are plenty of surprises. Perhaps most startling are the twin cliff collapses at Metlako Falls and nearby Punch Bowl Falls, along Eagle Creek. The Metlako overlook collapse occurred about nine months before the fire, but the Punch Bowl Falls event followed the burn. Some speculate the latter event was triggered by changes in runoff and the water table resulting from the burned forest. It’s an intriguing theory, though we may never really know for sure. What is certain is that both events are part of the ongoing evolution of the Gorge landscape, though we tend to think of it as static.

A similar collapse on a much larger scale occurred at nearby Tanner Creek in 1973, temporarily damming the creek and forming a lake that persisted for several years. The March calendar image features Wahclella Falls (below), framed by house-sized boulders that mark the many cliff collapses that have occurred here over the millennia.

March features Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek

The Eagle Creek Fire burned lightly in the lower section of the Tanner Creek canyon, sparing many of the big, old trees here. However, the story in the upper Tanner Creek canyon is starkly different, with much of the overstory completely killed. Though just four years have passed since the fire, hundreds of logs from trees burned upstream have already collected in the side channel just below Wahclella Falls (below), forming a huge log jam that spilled onto the trail! Volunteers from TKO had to saw a path through the debris to reopen the trail in the winter of 2020-21.

What will the post-fire future bring to Tanner Creek and Eagle Creek? A LOT more logs, that much is certain. Some logs will make it downstream to the lowest stretches of the Tanner Creek, where biologists once placed logs and boulders in an attempt to improve salmon habitat. Now, the Eagle Creek fire is about to provide a major assist in that work by delivering a lot more logs in coming years.

Panoramic view of the new log jam below Wahclella Falls

The logs in Tanner Creek (and other major streams in the Gorge affected by the fire) may be new to us, but they are really just a return to what used to be, before fire suppression, when the Gorge was much less forested and the streams were filled with a lot more logs. That’s good news for the health of the forest and the endangered salmon and steelhead that rely on log-filled streams to spawn, as well as wildlife that depend on a forest with a mosaic of old growth forests, recovering forests and open patches created by fire.

For April, I chose a somewhat deceptive image from a spot called Fairbanks Gap (below), in the eastern Columbia River Gorge. One deception comes from the fact that Interstate-84 is not only out of sight, but also out of hearing range from this spot, despite being directly below the cliffs that frame the gap. Another is that this scene is on private land, and thus a reminder that without the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area protections, a lot more places like this would have vacation homes (or worse) constructed on them. Instead, this remains a working cattle ranch – though I hope someday it will make its way into public ownership for permanent protection.

April features Fairbanks Gap and the east Columbia River Gorge

You can follow a nice backroad loop past the Fairbanks Gap by taking Fifteenmile Road out of The Dalles, and turning sharply uphill onto gravel (and signed) Old Moody Road at the rural crossroad community of Fairbanks (which features a lovely one-room schoolhouse). From here, Old Moody Road climbs to the gap, then traverses high bluffs above the Columbia River, with many spectacular views, before descending to Deschutes State Park, along I-84. My favorite time to visit this area is in late spring, when wildflowers line the old roads, and the eastern Gorge is verdant green.

The May image also features the eastern Gorge, this time at Rowena Plateau during the annual wildflower show. Yellow-flowered Arrowleaf balsamroot and blue-blossomed Lupine are the showy stars here, but the plateau is home to dozens of wildflower species, some found only in this part of the Gorge.

May features Rowena Plateau (and the town of Lyle, across the river)

In recent years, Rowena Plateau and the trail to McCall Point have been “discovered”, and the place is often crowded with adoring visitors. To address some of the impacts of all those feet on the trails, TKO has been working on some realignments and repairs to the McCall Point trail, with an eye toward improving the grades and drainage in a way that makes the trails more resilient to both weather and boots.

The Nature Conservancy owns much of Rowena Plateau, and continues to allow visitors to their preserve. This is a real gift for the public to enjoy, and while the vast majority come to enjoy (and revere) the scenery, big crowds inevitably mean a few thoughtless people. So, while I was frustrated to see tagging on a boulder along the lower part of the McCall Point trail on this trip, I also wasn’t surprised.

Tagging on a boulder on Rowena Plateau – a growing scourge in the Gorge

Tagging has become a problem throughout WyEast country, and especially in the Gorge. It’s especially frustrating at Rowena, where a private non-profit has shown the generosity of allowing us to visit their preserve. We probably can’t stop tagging, but you can support the Nature Conservancy of Oregon with a donation for the excellent work they are doing in the Gorge.

Our early and unusually warm spring this year came on the heels of an excellent snowpack, and that translated into heavy runoff and an impressive scene at White River Falls State Park, in the desert country east of Mount Hood. The June calendar image features a raging White River Falls (below), framed with bright green Cottonwood trees. The park encompasses the two-tiered main falls and a lesser-known lower falls, along with the fascinating ruins of a turn-of-the-20th Century hydroelectric project that once powered The Dalles.

June features White River Falls during spring runoff season

Only photographers would notice this aesthetic improvement to the main falls overlook – but sometime over the past years, a pair of long-dead Cottonwoods that partly blocked the view finally collapsed… or were perhaps were removed by park officials? The latter explanation is quite plausible, as the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department has stepped up their efforts to maintain this somewhat remote park, including buttoning up the historic powerhouse, where vandals had covered some of the walls with tagging and damaged some of the old machinery.

Snaggy former view of White River Falls… these dead trees are gone!

In the years I’ve spent visiting this little park, it has gone from very obscure to quite popular, and even the boot path to the once little-known lower falls is now well-worn. In a coming article, I’ll post some trail concepts for improving some of these boot paths and adding new trails to better manage some of the human impacts as visitation continues to grow.

Lower White River Falls and Gorge

For July, I chose an image from a favorite spot along the Cooper Spur Trail, overlooking the mighty Eliot Glacier, largest of Mount Hood’s glaciers. Our long spring and record-setting summer heat were hard on Mount Hood’s glaciers, and by late summer the Eliot Glacier was looking especially beleaguered. This image (below) was captured in late September, after an early snow had given the glacier a new coat of white, and the annual summer melting had finally slowed for the year.

July features the still-magnificent Eliot Glacier

As I was shooting this image of the mountain and the Eliot Glacier, I spotted a mountain rescue team training at the base of the lower icefall. There was a time not too long ago when the seracs (or ice pinnacles) in the lower icefall with turquoise-blue and a prime ice climbing area.

Climbers training in mountain rescue below the lower Eliot Glacier icefall

But the continued retreat of the Eliot Glacier has now moved the firn line above the lower icefall in recent years, and the seracs are now dark with glacial till and rock. The firn line is where a glacier is losing more ice than it is gaining, so as the glacier recedes the firn line gradually moves higher.

This is pair of images (below) that I’ve taken over the past decade from this spot, and I post them not to make readers feel sad or discouraged, but rather, to underscore the sense of urgency we all must feel in our collective response to global warming.

The Eliot Glacier has receded markedly over just the past decade

[click here for a much larger version of this comparison]

The accelerated Eliot Glacier retreat over the past two decades has had all sort of impacts, but near the top of the list of concerns is the impact on downstream fisheries that depend on cold, dependable runoff from the glacier. A more visible impact has been the deep erosion and periodic floods and debris flows that have reshaped the Eliot Branch canyon, below the glacier.

Though I know both the science and politics are challenging, I’m hopeful that we’ll find a path toward a worldwide shift away from carbon pollution in my lifetime. Future generations may not see the Eliot Glacier as I once knew it, but hopefully there will be a smaller Eliot Glacier they can stand in awe of, still tumbling down the slopes of Mount Hood.

At the opposite end of the glacial spectrum, the August calendar image features the icy stream that flows from Mount Hood’s tiniest living glacier, the tenacious Glisan Glacier, located high on the northwest shoulder of the mountain. For some reason, this glacial outflow was never given a proper name by early mountain explorers, despite many smaller streams on the mountain being named. The oversight is a bit of a mystery, as there were several well-documented trips to this side of the mountain in the early 1920s and 1930s by the Mazamas for the very purpose of mapping and naming the features here.

August features “Glisan Creek”, the glacial outflow from the tiny Glisan Glacier

As a default, many call this “Glisan Creek”. That’s not a bad option, since there’s a good chance the glacier, itself, will fall victim to global warming in coming decades, and only the creek will remain. The Glisan Glacier was named for prominent Portlander Rodney Glisan in 1938. Some of the history of all of Mount Hood’s smallest glaciers is included in this earlier article on Mount Hood’s Pint-Size Glaciers.

After an especially long and dry spring and summer in WyEast Country, fall brought early snow and some of the best fall colors in memory to the mountain. The scene below, at the McNeil Tarns, was captured after the first dusting of snow in late September, and it’s also the calendar image for that month in the new calendar.

September features the McNeil Tarns on Mount Hood

This is a well-known spot along the Timberline Trail, as it is located along the approach to popular McNeil Point on the northwest shoulder of the mountain and visited by thousands of hikers each year. While most hikers know of the pair of McNeil tarns located immediately adjacent to the Timberline Trail, few know of the third, lesser-known tarn in this trio. It’s located just off the Mazama Trail (below). Thanks to a dense veil of trailside Huckleberries, Mountain Ash and young Mountain Hemlock, this beautiful tarn is known to surprisingly few, but it is no less lovely than its more popular siblings.

The Mazama Tarn near McNeil Point on Mount Hood

Over the past five years, I’ve posted several articles about Punchbowl Falls Nature Park, the newest public lands in WyEast Country. The new park is the product of determined volunteers at Thrive! Hood River and Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO), and features a surprising abundance of forest types, river scenes and waterfalls. Dead Point Falls (the October calendar image, below) is among the park highlights, especially in fall when Bigleaf Maple, Vine Maple, Western Dogwood and Oregon White Oak light up the surrounding forest in shades of orange, yellow and red.

October features Dead Point Falls and the West Fork Hood River

Meanwhile, higher up on the mountain, beautiful Heather Canyon on Mount Hood’s southeast flank is especially lovely in fall, when Huckleberry and Mountain Ash turn the canyon into a brilliant watercolor of orange and yellow. Lower Heather Creek Falls (below) is the featured image for November in the new calendar.

November features Heather Creek on the southeast slopes of Mount Hood

There are a couple ways to hike into Heather Canyon, but I always opt for the Newton Creek Trail approach, mostly to avoid walking through the Mount Hood Meadows ski resort. In the coming year, I hope to post a long-planned article with a somewhat radical proposal for rethinking Mount Hood Meadows – something we should all be considering as climate change threatens to put ski resorts as we know them out of business in coming years.

Anyone visiting Lookout Mountain on Mount Hood’s east side has probably noticed this beautifully framed view from Lookout Mountain Road (below), and I chose it for the December image in the new calendar. If the conditions are right, early snow on the mountain appears just as the Western Larch trees are turning to yellow and gold, and such was the case this year!

December features Mount Hood framed by Western Larch

I’ve photographed this spot too many times to count over the years and I’ve always thought of it as a scene only hikers knew about. However, a couple of days after capturing the calendar image, I was walking through my neighborhood grocery store and did a double take when I saw the scene on the cover of a nationally marketed calendar!

This looks vaguely familiar…

The photographer (and I’m not sure who it is) captured a less snowy version of Mount Hood, though it remains a beautiful image, and it’s great to see this lesser-known view of the mountain in wide publication.

Finally, the back cover of the new calendar features wildflower highlights from around WyEast country, ranging from the elegant Mount Hood Lily and Pacific Rhododendron to our state flower, the Oregon Grape (below).

The back cover of the calendar features a selection of wildflowers

There you have it! If you’d like to purchase a calendar, it’s easy to order direct from Zazzle:

2022 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar

Each page in the calendar measures 11×14 inches (or 22×14” unfolded on the wall) and I’ve designed this as a functioning calendar, with date squares that you can actually write in! Zazzle prints these with exceptional quality and ships them carefully packaged with a backer board and moisture seal.

For another week or so, the calendars will sell for $29.75, but after December 20 that price will bump up to $34.95, with the additional five dollars of markup also going to directly to TKO, bringing the total to about $10 from each calendar to TKO for the great work they do. Zazzle typically ships these within a few days of ordering, and I usually receive orders within about 10 days.

Thanks for reading this far, and as always, thanks for visiting the blog – I hope to see you here and on the trail in the coming year!

Tom Kloster • December 2021

Gorge Roundup (addendum)

May 29, 2021May 29, 2021 / Tom Kloster

Tribal fishing platforms line the Columbia River as Mount Hood floats on the horizon at the proposed Columbia Hills pumped energy project site

A few folks had questions about the Goldendale Energy Project (what I called the “Columbia Hills Energy Project” in my last post), so I thought I’d post some resources for anyone looking to learn more about the project and how to help the coalition of opponents.

______________________

Recent coverage by Northwest Public Broadcasting:

‘It’s Irreversible’: Goldendale Green Energy Project Highlights a History of Native Dispossession

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February 2020 letter to Governors Jay Inslee and Kate Brown from the coalition of opponents:

RE: Opposition to Rye Development’s proposed Goldendale Energy Storage Hydroelectric Project

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Columbia Riverkeeper statement and Q&A on the project:

Stand in Solidarity with Tribal Nations

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November 2020 announcement of acquisition of the project by foreign investors:

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) Acquires Pumped Storage Project

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Washington Department of Ecology website for the project:

Industrial Facilities Permits: Goldendale Energy

Gorge Roundup: The Great, The Sad… and The Ugly

May 24, 2021May 24, 2021 / Tom Kloster / 3 Comments

Do you take scenes like this in the eastern Columbia River Gorge for granted? Read on…

As we slowly emerge from a year of pandemic, three milestones in Columbia River Gorge news are noteworthy for those who love WyEast Country. What do they have in comment? In each case, the multi-layered governance (or lack thereof) in the Gorge continues to be a hurdle, even when the news is very good… or even great!

The Great: Mitchell Point Tunnel Project

For many years the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has been quietly moving toward actually replacing the legendary Mitchell Point “tunnel of many windows” with a new windowed tunnel. The new tunnel is along the bike and pedestrian trail that ODOT has been building to reconnect the original Historic Columbia River Highway, and construction began this spring. It’s a bold and visionary project, and another dramatic nod toward historic restoration along the old route. The former Oregon Highway Division destroyed the original tunnel in the 1966, when it was deemed a hazard to traffic on the modern freeway being constructed directly below, and it has been a dream for many to see it restored ever since.

The new 655-foot tunnel will have five arched windows, roughly patterned after the original Mitchell Point Tunnel. When completed, the tunnel will become the crown jewel of the larger Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail, a concept 35 years in the making, with just five miles of trail remaining to be constructed. When the last five miles are complete, the trail is destined to become a world-class cycling destination that will allow visitors to ride from Troutdale to The Dalles without traveling along the modern freeway.

The iconic Mitchell Point Tunnel was completed in 1915, but it was destroyed by freeway construction just 51 years later in 1966. It lives on in our collective memory as the greatest engineering marvel of the original Columbia River Highway

This 1920s view of the original Mitchell Point Tunnel from the Washington side of the Columbia River shows both west viaduct that led to the tunnel and the famous series of windows (on the left). Freeway construction at the base of the cliffs in the 1960s destroyed both the tunnel and viaduct

The new Mitchell Point Tunnel will enter the basalt walls of Mitchell Spur, the smaller, northern offshoot of Mitchell Point, proper, and connect the existing Mitchell Point Wayside on the west side of the spur to a future trail and historic highway alignment east of Mitchell Point. Between the two new tunnel portals, five windows will frame Gorge views and light the way for visitors, providing an experience similar to what early motorists enjoyed from their Model-Ts in the early 1920s.

ODOT has posted a video on YouTube with drone footage and more background on the new tunnel:

While the new tunnel is certain to draw visitors who simply want to walk its length and enjoy the views, it also offers a terrific opportunity to create loop hikes that build upon the existing Mitchell Point Trail. This steep and difficult to maintain route is more like a goat path, but has become an increasingly popular viewpoint trail as placed like Angels Rest become overwhelmingly crowded. The Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation (OPRD) has already adopted a new loop trail concept for the west side of Mitchell Point that also would provide a better graded approach to the summit, and a loop for those willing to return along the existing, very steep route.

This ODOT rendering shows the planned approach to the west portal of the new Mitchell Point Tunnel from the perspective of the Historic Columbia River Highway State Trail, which currently stubs out at these cliffs (ODOT)

This rendering also shows the new west portal that ODOT is constructing for the new Mitchell Point Tunnel. A bump-out viewpoint (on the left) is also included in the design (ODOT)

This concept shows the design for five windows that will be incorporated into the new tunnel at Mitchell Point. ODOT describes the tunnel interior as “modern concrete”, so the exposed rock surface in this rendering and visible in the previous portal rendering may not be part of the final plan (ODOT)

This view shows the existing overlook at the Mitchell Point Wayside, where the paved trail stubs out at berm at the base of Mitchell Spur’s cliffs. The west portal to the new tunnel will enter the cliff visible just beyond the berm, at the right in this photo. The berm will be removed to extend the trail to the new tunnel portal.

The west portal design for the new tunnel preserves this relatively new (2013) overlook at Mitchell Point, already a popular stop for Gorge visitors

The new tunnel also offers a loop trail opportunity from the east side of Mitchell Point, with the tunnel providing a return to the main trailhead. Loop trails are popular with hikers because you get to see more scenery for your effort. But they can also be managed as one-way trails where crowds are a problem, greatly lessening the impact of passing hikers on heavily traveled trails. The OPRD plan for the Gorge also includes a loop trail concept for Angels Rest with this exact purpose in mind. From a hiker’s perspective, one-way loops also mean encountering far fewer people along your hike, so it can greatly improve the outdoor experience.

[Click h ere for a larger Mitchell Point West map]

[Click here for a larger Mitchell Point East map]

Will Mitchell Point become as crowded as Angels Rest? Maybe someday, though not anytime soon, simply because it’s much farther from Portland. But it will certainly become more popular than it is today, as foot traffic here has steadily grown over the past decade or so. With this in mind, one of the disappointments of the Mitchell Point project is the failure to plan for future crowds, and especially to differentiate between visitor types in the planned parking improvements. In the past, most visitors to Mitchell Point were there to walk to the existing overlook at the wayside, spending just a few minutes there while on their driving tour of the Gorge. Hikers, meanwhile, can spend several hours laboring up the steep path to the summit.

Currently, both kinds of visitors compete for the same limited number of parking spots at Mitchell Point. As with unmanaged waysides elsewhere in the Gorge (Latourell Falls, Wahkeena Falls, Starvation Creek are just a few examples), hikers are now filling all of the spots at Mitchell Point on weekends, leaving touring families with no place to park. The new ODOT plan will create 18 parking spaces (including one disabled spot) compared to 16 today (including two disabled spaces). The net increase of two parking spaces is a drop in the bucket for this increasingly popular trailhead.

The existing parking area at Mitchell Point is relatively new – completed in early 2013, when this photo was taken. It provides a total of 16 parking spots, including two disabled spots. The construction of the Mitchell Point tunnel includes a complete reconstruction of the existing parking area

There are a couple of solutions that ODOT and OPRD could easily incorporate into the current construction phase without rivisitng the basic parking plan. First, mark a few parking spots for short-term, 30-minute parking for touring motorists to visit the wayside viewpoint and walk the new tunnel. Yes, it would have to be enforced to be effective, but even sporadic enforcement with a healthy fine would send a shockwave through hiking social media sites.

This is an ODOT rendering of the new parking area at Mitchell Point. While it’s surprising to see the fairly new parking lot being reconstructed so soon, the new design does manage to have a smaller paved area while expanding parking spaces (to a total of 18 compared to 16 today) and has a more efficient circulation design. The areas shown with picnic tables were once part of a very large parking area here as recently as 2012, so it’s disappointing that this design doesn’t better accommodate demand by included more spaces in that area (ODOT)

Second, ODOT and OPRD could take formally advantage of the long access drive to the Mitchell Point Wayside to allow for overflow parking. At a meeting of the Historic Columbia River Highway Steering Committee last summer, I asked if overflow shoulder parking would be allowed along the access road, and the ODOT response was a disappointing “no”.

That’s not only short-sighted, it’s also a state of denial. Already, the nearby Starvation Creek wayside routinely has cars parked along both the access and exits roads, all the way to the freeway, for lack of a trailhead space and an effective parking management plan. As a result, weekend touring motorists hoping to visit the falls or use the restrooms at Starvation Creek have no prayer of finding a spot, as the entire lot is packed with hikers, most of them on hours-long hikes to the summit of Mount Defiance. That gives ODOT and OPRD a black eye, and a similar situation will surely unfold at the new Mitchell Point trailhead if parking isn’t more actively managed.

The Sad: Oneonta Tunnel Restoration

The Oneonta Tunnel in about 1915,, soon after it opened and before this section of the Historic Columbia River Highway was paved

In other tunnel news, ODOT recently (re)completed the restoration of the Oneonta Tunnel, near Multnomah Falls. The agency once again rebuilt the timbered interior of the tunnel, restoring work that was originally done back in the mid-2000 and completely burned in the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire. It’s a beautiful restoration effort, and you should go see it soon, before it is once again destroyed by vandals carving up the restored woodwork. Because that sad fate is all but inevitable.

I wrote about this project recently in A Second Chance and New Vision for Oneonta? While there may be no appetite at ODOT or OPRD to pursue something more whimsical (like the museum proposed in the previous article!), it is frustrating to see the new restoration completed with zero consideration given to protecting the public’s investment from vandals. At the same meeting of the Historic Columbia River Highway Steering Committee last summer, I asked ODOT officials if there was a plan to secure the tunnel with gates of some kind, and the response was “no, because under national scenic area regulations, we can only restore it to its exact condition before the fire.”

Mobs of young people descended on Oneonta Gorge each summer before the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire closed the area. Many made a point of vandalizing the wood interior of the Oneonta Tunnel while they were there

Still more frustrating is the fact that top officials from the U.S. Forest Service and ODOT who oversee funding for Gorge projects and scenic area regulation were part of this virtual meeting, and sat in silence when I asked whether this was a good use of public resources. Another committee member commented that vandalism in the form of tagging and graffiti has always been a problem in the Gorge. Perhaps, but is the point is that we shouldn’t care?

Well, I’m still not buying it. If there is one thing that’s certain for large, well-funded agencies like the Forest Service and ODOT, it’s that where there is a will, there is a way. The cost to install gates would have been negligible compared to what ODOT budgets for the Gorge in a given year, and surely would be less costly than another redo in the coming years. In this case, there was simply no agency interest from the Forest Service or ODOT in protecting the newly restored tunnel, and that’s really discouraging.

ODOT completed the second restoration of the Oneonta Tunnel this spring, replacing the wood lining that was burned away in the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire. Despite its recent history of vandalism, the tunnel is now open and completely unprotected, night and day

So, as lovely as the (second) restoration of the Oneonta Tunnel is, it falls under the column of “sad” for its poor stewardship of both the historic resource and the public funds spent to restore it. But who knows, maybe once the tagging starts up and triggers some unwelcome local media coverage, we’ll see some protection installed? A late response would be better than not at all, and I’d sure like to be proven wrong on the fate of the old tunnel.

The Ugly: Columbia Hills Energy Project

These beautiful, mosaic talus slopes along the Columbia Hills are ground zero for a proposed energy project that threatens to change the area forever. A jarring sea of giant wind turbines were installed along the crest of what is a sacred ridge for area tribes over the past 15 years, and now the turbines are the basis for still more energy development in this unprotected part of the Gorge

I will reluctantly end this article with one of the toughest development proposals to emerge in the Gorge in recent years. As ugly as the project is, however, the picture is not entirely bleak. The proposal is formally known as the “Goldendale Energy Project”, taking its name from what used to be the Goldendale Aluminum Plant, located adjacent to the John Day Dam in the eastern Gorge. But the site is miles away from Goldendale, Washington, and more importantly, it’s within the Columbia River Gorge and centered on Columbia Hills, a place sacred to area tribes. So, I’ve called it the Columbia Hills Energy Project for this article.

The aluminum plant at the John Day Dam went out of business decades ago, leaving badly polluted soils and groundwater behind where smelters once stood. It has since been undergoing a gradual cleanup operation, work that is ongoing. The Columbia Hills “stored energy” project proposes to build a large water storage basin in this polluted brownfield, connected by pipes to a second basin at the crest of the Columbia Hills, 2,000 vertical feet directly above the John Day Dam and the old aluminum plant site. When wind turbines are generating excess energy, water from the lower basin would be pumped to the upper basin, and could then be released back down to the lower basin to power hydro turbines during periods of peak demand (or low wind).

The system on the right is proposed for the Columbia Hills (Rye Development)

To the Ka-milt-pah band of the Yakima Nation (known in English as the Rock Creek Band), the Columbia Hills here are sacred. Their significance goes to the very creation of the Columbia Gorge, itself. Scientists believe the ice age Bretz (or Missoula) floods continued to repeatedly overwhelm the Gorge with hundreds of feet of water for nearly 2,000 years, finally ending some 13,000 years ago. Virtually every aspect of the Gorge as we know it was shaped by the floods, including the steep, exposed cliffs and rock monoliths that give the Gorge its iconic beauty. Their oral tradition tells us that the ancestral Ka-milt-pah people climbed to these ridge tops to escape this series of massive ice-age floods, watching the cataclysm from these high vantage points.

Today, the Ka-milt-pah continue to gather first foods from these same hills, though now with the permission of farmers who own deeds to the ceded tribal lands here. In yet another insult to traditions and the defacement of their sacred places, tribal members now must gather foods under the shadow and hum of giant wind turbines that send “green” electricity to Portlanders. Unseen to urbanites are the miles of gravel access roads that were cut into pristine desert soils along these ridges to build and maintain the turbines, destroying still more of the ecosystem that the Ka-milt-pah people relied upon for millennia. And in yet another cruel irony, the windmills are now are central to the Columbia Hills Energy Project, as well.

The defunct, polluted aluminum plant at John Day dam (seen far below in this view) is proposed to hold the lower reservoir for the closed-loop energy system. This view is from the crest of the Columbia Hills, on sacred tribal land 2,000 feet above the river, where the upper reservoir would be constructed (Portland Business Journal)

The towering wind turbine that now line the Columbia Hills above John Day Dam are aggressively marketed as benign sources of clean energy, and yet each turbine requires a new road to be built, leaving a permanent scar on the land and introducing invasive plants to the largely pristine desert landscape. This snaking section of road in this view is on sacred tribal land near the proposed Columbia Hills Energy Project (Google Earth)

The service roads built for these windmills on the crest of the Columbia Hills resemble suburban cul-de-sacs, each cut into desert ground that had never even been plowed, and has provided tribal first foods for millennia (Google Earth)

Did you know that the stunning stretch of the Columbia River Gorge east of the Deschutes River does not enjoy the protections provided by the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area (CRGNSA) to areas west of the Deschutes? The most jarring evidence of this second-class status are the hundreds of massive, white wind turbines that now dot the Columbia Hills along this unprotected stretch of the Gorge, from Maryhill Museum east to the John Day river and beyond. The visual impact of these turbines therefore wasn’t even a factor when they were constructed over the past 15 years.

It is truly a miracle and testament to the tenacity of Gorge advocates in the 1980s that we even have a CRGNSA to protect the Gorge, yet it’s also true that leaving the eastern portion of the Gorge out of the bill left the area tragically vulnerable to energy and development schemes that continue forever scar the Gorge we shall leave to future generations. The Columbia Hills Energy Project may be the latest scheme, but it certainly won’t be the last (lesser-known fact: the Maryhill Museum was among the opponents of the CRGNSA in the 1980s, which explains the forest of windmills that now mar the Gorge rim directly above the museum and continue for miles to the east).

The ancient and sustainable trumped by the new and industrial: the 1971 John Day Dam dwarfs traditional tribal fishing platforms, located just downstream from the dam

For the Danish corporate investors behind this project, the windmills along the Columbia Hills provide a world-class opportunity for pumped storage development. The hills rise anywhere from 1,200 to 2,000 feet above the Columbia River, a ready source of water to fill storage tanks. That’s probably as much as they know. The fact that it’s also remote from Portland urbanites who might otherwise be shocked to see a development of this scale proposed in “their Gorge” is just good fortune for the investors.

And so, it has fallen to the Confederated Yakima, Umatilla and Nez Perce nations to defend their homelands from yet another assault by Europeans seeking to, once again, commodify their native lands.

Countless generations of tribal fisherman have harvested salmon on these pebble beaches in the east Gorge for millennia. The lower reservoir for the proposed “energy loop” would be a stone’s throw from this iconic scene. Is it even possible to measure economic impacts of energy project against threats to the very culture of indigenous people?

The pace of change in the eastern stretch of the Gorge has been breathtaking in the past few decades. In 1957 – just 64 years ago — the gates on The Dalles Dam closed, drowning Celilo Falls and surrounding tribal settlements under 40 feet of water. This ended a way of life for indigenous peoples who had thrived here for thousands of years. Nine years later, in 1966, ODOT blasted and filled a 4-lane swath through the Gorge to construct today’s Interstate-84, destroying miles of wetlands and beaches along the way, and cutting off access to traditional tribal fishing sites in the process. In 1971, the gates were closed on John Day Dam, at the head of slackwater created by The Dalles Dam. Another stretch of rapids along the once-wild river disappeared, along with more beaches and wetlands.

The vast, colorful pebble beaches in the east Gorge were left here by ice age floods that brought rock from the northern Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River Gorge. This river-worn piece of petrified wood is typical of these deposits

Both dams brought hundreds of steel transmission towers and thousands of miles of electrical cable that now drapes across the once-pristine Gorge landscape. And in the 2000s, big utilities rushed after state and federal renewable energy tax credits to line the Columbia Hills with hundreds of windmills, many built on sacred tribal sites. It’s true, these are all renewable energy sources that our region depends upon to power our homes and industry. Yet, it’s also true that our cheap energy has come at a catastrophic cost to tribal culture and economies, and wreaked havoc on one of the most spectacular natural landscapes on the planet. Isn’t it time to question just how “green” the energy harnessed in the Gorge really is?

Fortunately, a broad coalition of conservation advocates have joined the tribes in challenging the Columbia Hills Energy Project. They include both the Oregon and Washington chapters of the Sierra Club, the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, Columbia Riverkeeper, Food and Water Watch, Portland Audubon and several other organizations. This is encouraging, as corporate energy projects are famously costly and drawn-out battles with deep-pocketed (and often foreign) investors who are willing to ride out the opposition and ingratiate themselves to local elected officials. Witness that Washington Governor Jay Inslee recently signed a fast-track provision for energy storage projects just like this one (though we don’t know his position on this specific proposal).

This lovely desert gulch along the Columbia River is immediately adjacent to the proposed Columbia Hills Energy Project. How will it be impacted? We don’t know yet…

Thankfully, the Washington Department of Ecology has determined the project to have “significant environmental impact”, ensuring that some rigor will be applied in the state permitting review. Whether that review can truly measure the impact of this proposal on tribal rights and traditions remains and open question that courts will likely have to decide.

Yes, stored energy projects are a good idea. They’re a creative, sustainable solution in a world facing a global climate crisis. We should welcome them!

Just not here.

2021 Campaign Calendar!

December 20, 2020December 20, 2020 / Tom Kloster / 7 Comments

As I write this annual year-end post after a calamitous 2020, the world seems just a bit more hopeful. The presidential election will shift public lands policy 180 degrees back toward conservation and restoration, and with the release of two COVID-19 vaccines, the end of the world pandemic is finally on the horizon.

And so, I share some of the stories behind this year’s Mount Hood National Park Campaign scenic calendar with a cautious spring in my step (or my fingers as they type this sentence, at least). You can pick up a copy of the calendar here for $29.95:

2021 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Scenic Calendar

As always, all proceeds will go to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) to support their ongoing effort to care for trails as gateways to our public lands. Zazzle prints these calendars with exceptionally high quality, and they also have large enough boxes to be quite functional for tracking important dates and your trail plans. They make nice gifts, too, of course!

Over the years, I’ve described the Mount Hood National Park Campaign as “an idea campaign” with the simple goal of keeping alive the promise of better protections and restoring the grandeur Mount Hood and the Gorge. I started the project in 2004 as a way to continually remind Oregonians and Washingtonians living in WyEast Country that national park protection was proposed at least three times in Congress, in the 1890s, 1920s and the 1930s. Each time, logging and other extraction industries (and later, the emerging ski industry) were the chief opponents — along with the Forest Service, itself.

Thomas Cole painted this idyllic scene of Native American life in WyEast Country in the 1870s. The mountain continues to be beacon of inspiration and awe for people living in its shadow to this day

If you’ve watched Ken Burns’ magnificent National Parks series, you know that every park was a battle, typically between short-term exploitation interests and progressives looking toward posterity for future generations. There were no easy wins.

And, so it will be for Mount Hood and the Gorge until enough locals (or our children and grandchildren) recognize national park protection as both urgent and deserving for these world-class places. We haven’t treated them too well over the past 150 years, but real change is suddenly afoot in 2020. What? Yes, you read that correctly… and I will share more about that exciting news in future blog posts!

This beautiful cove at the foot of Crown Point was called “Echo Bay” when it was still connected to the Columbia River in this 1870s photo. This was among the spots that inspired the first Congressional effort to create a national park here

But until then, this article is a tour of some of the places that make WyEast country special, and are featured in the 2021 MHNP Campaign scenic calendar. As always, every image in the new calendar was captured over the past year and, as in past years, there are some lesser-known places mixed in with some of the more familiar.

The 2021 Calendar Images

Salmon River in late Autumn

The cover image for the 2021 calendar comes from a very familiar spot along the Old Salmon River Trail, near the community of Zigzag. This quiet trail was bypassed — and spared — when the Salmon River Road was built in the post-World War II logging boom. Today it offers one of the most accessible trails into ancient rainforest anywhere in the Pacific Northwest. This photo was taken just a few weeks ago, too. Because of its low elevation, it’s a trail you can hike year-round. Here’s the Oregon Hikers Field Guide description of the trail.

For January, I chose an image captured from above the West Fork Hood River Valley, on Butcher Knife Ridge. In this scene, Mount Hood is emerging from the clouds after the first big winter storm of fall. I’ll be posting more articles in 2021 about the West Fork valley, as there is some very exciting news to share about this area.

Mount Hood’s rugged northwest face in early winter as viewed from Butcher Knife Ridge

The February image is a familiar view of Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek, one of the premier trails in the Columbia River Gorge. Before the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire, I visited this trail several times each year, as it’s not only a personal favorite, but also a trail that makes for a great introduction to the Gorge for new hikers or visiting family.

Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek

The image in the new calendar is from a visit last winter, and it was my first since the fire. Though the fire did burn through the lower Tanner Creek canyon, many trees survived, especially around Wahclella Falls. Notably, a pair of big trees familiar to hikers also survived — the twin Douglas firs flanking the lower trail (below). As of this year, their upper canopies are still green more than two years after the fire, and that bodes well for them to survive for many years to come.

The familiar twin Douglas firs along the Wahclella Falls Trail have survived the 2017 Gorge fire… so far

What I couldn’t have guessed is that the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions kicked in just a couple weeks after my visit, and Wahclella Falls was once again closed to the public.

As hard as these Gorge trail closures have been for hikers, there are a couple of silver linings. First, they have allowed trail volunteers from TKO, the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA) and other volunteer trail organization to continue the hard work of restoring trails damaged by fire without having to accommodate hiker traffic. Perhaps more importantly, the closures have also allowed forest recovery to begin within the pressures that heavy visitation on popular Gorge trails brings.

Lower White River Falls in spring

The March image (above) features Lower White River Falls, a lesser-known cascade downstream from the main falls at White River Falls State Park. Where the main falls is a raucous spectacle, the lower falls is quiet waterfall in a secluded canyon, where it is framed by desert wildflowers in late spring.

Poison likes to grow in the shade of boulders along the White River — watch where you sit!

The user path to the lower falls has become increasingly prominent in recent years as more visitors discover this pretty spot (and its excellent swimming hole), but be forewarned, the path is lined with Poison Ivy. This relative of Poison Oak bears a close resemblance, but grows as a ground low ground cover in the sandy floodplain along the river, often in the shelter of boulders and old logs.

Lower White River Falls

For April, I selected another scene from Mount Hood’s rain shadow, a wildflower meadow on the edge of the tree line where forests give way to the desert country east of the Cascades. This bucolic scene looks across the rolling wheat country of Wasco County, toward the Columbia Hills and the Columbia River, on the horizon (below).

Wildflower meadows on the east slope of the Cascades near Friend

Though you wouldn’t know from this photo, the South Valley Fire swept through this area in 2018, one of three major range fires that combined that year to burn nearly 200,000 acres. Two years later, and only the scattered snags of Ponderosa pine, Western juniper and burned fence posts hint at the fire, as the sage and grass savannah has recovered in a remarkably short time. But the fires had a human toll, too. Homes and barns were burned, as well as several historic farmsteads that can never be replaced.

Only a few charred remains tell the story of the 2018 range fires east of Mount Hood

Switching back to the west side of the Cascades, I chose a scene from a visit to Silver Falls State Park for the May image. With many of the Gorge waterfall trails still closed by the aftermath of the Eagle Creek Fire, Silver Falls visitation has exploded over the past couple years, as hikers look for new places to get their waterfall fix.

Visiting Silver Falls State Park is pretty close to a national park experience, as the park is loaded with 1930s Civilian Conservation Corp construction and the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department do an excellent job maintaining and curating the park’s network of scenic trails. Lower South Falls (below, and the May image in the new calendar) and nearby Middle North Falls are favorites among photographers in the park, and they have some similarities. Both begin as a wide curtain of falling water before crashing onto the rocky basalt aprons that make up their base, and both have a trail behind them.

Lower South Falls on Silver Creek

A few years ago, a local Republican legislator introduced a bill proposing National Monument status for Silver Creek. The bill didn’t go anywhere, but it was a nice opportunity to showcase the area and a reminder that seeking national park status can be a bipartisan effort, even in these days of deep political division.

Pandemic-compliant blogger at Silver Creek State Park

Visiting Silver Falls State Park (and most other state parks) in 2020 also meant controlling the COVID-19 virus while huffing and puffing on a buy trail. While I was discouraged by the disregard for masks on my trips to Silver Falls last spring (maybe 1 in 5 had one), there has been a noticeable uptick in mask use in our state parks national forests since. That’s good, because in a year of pandemic shutdowns and closures, the benefits of being outdoors and connecting with nature have never been greater.

Crowds of pandemic-defying hikers at Silver Falls State Park on Memorial Day 2020

For June, I chose a scene from just off the Timberline Trail, along the rim of the White River Canyon (below). This expansive Lupine meadow is only a few steps from the trail, but just out of view and thus known to surprisingly few.

Summer Lupine meadows along the rim of White River canyon

If only this blog had a virtual scratch-and-sniff, as there is nothing quite as heady as the sweetly-scented mountain air in a Lupine meadow, and this one was no exception. For those who haven’t had the experience, Lupine are in the pea family, and have the same sweet aroma as garden sweet peas — but with a mountain backdrop!

For July, I chose another wildflower scene, though this one fits more of a rock garden motif, featuring yellow Buckwheat and purple Penstemmon among the chunks of andesite scattered here. This is the historic Cooper Spur shelter, just off the Timberline Trail on the mountain’s north side. Cooper Spur, proper, rises to the left and the Eliot Glacier tumbles down Mount Hood’s north face to the right of the shelter. This is one of several stone shelters built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930s and today is one of just three that still survive (the other survivors are at McNeil Point and Cairn Basin).

Cooper Spur Shelter in summer

Follow the climbers trail to the right of the shelter to the nearby moraine viewpoint (marked by large cairn) and you’ll have a front-row view of the Eliot Glacier. While I was there, a house-sized ice blocks suddenly collapsed (below), filling the canyon with a roar! It’s always a thrill to see and hear our glaciers in action.

Icefall collapse on the Eliot Glacier!

Another mountain scene fills out the summer as the August image in the new calendar. This multi-image composite assembles the impossibly massive scene at the western base of the mountain, where the Timberline Trail fords the twin branches of the Muddy Fork (below). From here, the mountain rises more than 7,000 vertical feet above the scene, and dramatic waterfalls tumble down the 800-foot cliffs that frame the canyon.

The wide-open scenery of the Muddy Fork canyon

The Muddy Fork valley is a volatile, continually changing landscape. In the early 2000s, a massive debris flow swept through, felling an entire forest and leaving a 25-foot layer of rock and sand on the valley floor. The Muddy Fork has since carved through the debris, all the way down to the former valley floor, revealing the stumps of trees that were snapped off by the event. Some are visible along the stream at the center the above photo. Meanwhile, the rest of the Muddy Fork debris flow is already dense with Red Alder, Cottonwood and Douglas Fir pioneers that are quickly re-establishing the forest, continuing the eternal cycle of forest renewal.

Several photos in this year’s calendar are from the dry country east of Mount Hood, in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range. I made several trips there while researching the strange desert mounds unique to the area (see “Mystery of the Desert Mounds“) and I fell back in love with the landscape, having spent time living there in the early 1980s. The September image in the new calendar is of a lesser-known gem in this area, the historic Nansene Community Hall (below) located on the northern slopes of Tygh Ridge.

Remains of the historic Nansene Community Hall on Tygh Ridge

The community hall dates back to the early 1900s, when sheep ranching was still the dominant industry in the area. Sprawling wheat fields and cattle have long since replaced the sheep herds, but thanks to the arid climate, abandoned wood structures from the early white settlement era can survive intact for a century or more. But they can’t survive fire, and while many historic homestead structures were destroyed by the 2018 range fires that swept through the area, Nansene Hall was among those spared.

Thankfully, the iconic grain elevator at Boyd survived the fire, too, and this photo (below) was a candidate for the calendar, save for the fact that Mount Hood isn’t peeking over the horizon!

Grain elevator on Fifteenmile Creek at Boyd

Several historic schoolhouses in the area also survived the fire, including the picturesque Center Ridge Schoolhouse (below), located a couple miles northeast of the Nansene Commumity Hall. This amazingly intact old building was designed with more aesthetics in mind than you might guess. The big windows along the west side of the structure define its single classroom, but the building was sited at an angle to ensure that Mount Hood filled the horizon through those windows, while Mount Adams looms to the north of its playground!

Center Ridge Schoolhouse and Mount Adams

While exploring the Tygh Ridge area this year, I happened upon a toxic creature that was unknown to me: the Green Blister Beetle (below), part of the legendary family of bugs that Spanish Fly is derived from. This iridescent native of the western states is highly toxic to the touch, though I only learned that later, when I was trying to identify this bug from photos I had taken while surrounded by a swarm of them in the field!

Don’t touch the Green Blister Beetle! (though the smaller beetles in this photo don’t seem to be bothered by their toxic neighbor)

Fortunately, I did not handle them, as that can lead to a potentially dangerous reaction. So, while we don’t have many toxic plants and creatures to navigate in the Pacific Northwest, here’s a new one for the list of those to avoid.

The Blister Beetle confab was unfolding in the historic Kingsley Catholic Cemetery, one of the more photogenic spots in the Tygh Ridge area. While walking among the pioneer graves that day last June, I also spotted this wonderful note hanging from a tree, a most welcome bit of hope and optimism in an otherwise grim pandemic year:

Sometimes a simple note can make a tough year a little better…

I later shared the note with a friend in the Dufur area, who in turn shared it in local circles there, hopefully drawing some interest. Little discoveries like this are poignant reminders that the future is always bright through young eyes, and it’s our job as elders to embrace their optimism and sense of promise.

For October, I selected a scene familiar to many (below). This is the view from just below the Vista Ridge trailhead, where the mountain suddenly unfolds for arriving hikers. It’s a popular roadside spot for evening photography, especially in fall when Vine Maple light up the scene.

The popular photographers’ tableau at Vista Ridge

However… when I stopped there this fall, I was quite annoyed to see that Forest Service contractors hired to brush out the road had dumped their slash right in the middle of this lovely talus slope! Sacrilege! So, I took a deep breath, put on a pair of gloves and spent a couple hours dragging the slash down the road to another debris pile that was out of view in a nearby wooded area.

Aargh!

Sacrilegious!

Why get my dander up over this? Because talus slopes are special. They’re scenic and offer welcome views in our heavily forested region, of course. But they’re also home to species that depend on these unique places to survive. The best known are the tiny Pika who live exclusively in talus fields, but they are just part of the unique web of plants and animals found in these rocky islands. They deserve to be revered as unique places in the same way that our understanding of deserts has evolved in recent years to see them as places full of life, despite their lack of trees.

For November, I went back to yet another image from the slopes of Tygh Ridge (below). This is a view looking north across the broad, gentle apron of the ridge toward Mount Adams, shining on the far horizon. Less obvious in this autumn view are the many fallow fields where wheat was once planted, but now are carpeted with wildflowers and native grasses. What gives?

Tygh Ridge Locust trees frame Mount Adams

This photo (below) from a nearby spot was taken in June, and shows the expansive meadows that now cover formerly plowed land on Tygh Ridge. It turns out that these areas have been allowed to recover with native grassland species to benefit wildlife as part of the federal Conservation Reserve Program. It’s an opt-in program that compensates farmers for making long-term commitments (typically 10 or 15 years) to leave fields fallow for wildlife recovery. Hundreds of acres on Tygh Ridge are now part of this program.

Lupine meadows on Tygh Ridge are part of the Conservation Reserve Program that compensates famers for allowing fields to revert to natural cover to benefit wildlife

Heading back to the west side for December, I chose another image from beautiful Silver Falls State Park, though not of one of the iconic waterfalls. Instead, this scene (below) captures a classic winter rainforest scene, with the bare, contorted limbs of moss-draped Bigleaf maple revealed, now that their summer jacket of leaves has been discarded for the winter.

North Fork Silver Creek in winter

With all of the tragedy and trauma that 2020 brought to the world, this simple scene seemed most appropriate for closing out the calendar for the coming year: calming, cool and reflective, and with a needed sense of order and eternity that a misty day in the rainforest can bring us.

Remembering 2020..?

Riverside Fire exploding into a conflagration in September

Assembling this year’s calendar was yet another reminder of the horrendous year we are leaving behind. While spending time in the outdoors is always a needed escape, in 2020 we suddenly found many of our favorite forest sanctuaries closed by COVID-19. Later, the massive Riverside and Beachie fires roared through the Clackamas and Mount Jefferson areas, perhaps closing them for years to come, and with little known about the full impact of these fires at this time.

As I sorted through about 130 images that I’d set aside over the year, everything fell into two categories: burned in the fires or not. We still don’t know just how extensively the Riverside Fire burned the Molalla River watershed, for example, though we do know that it reached all the way to the Willamette Valley, causing evacuations in several communities on the valley floor — an unthinkable development in our recent history with fire. The Molalla River corridor remains closed, and it could be years before the Bureau of Land Management reopens the area to the public.

The Molalla Eye… before the fire

Some spots were spared, if just barely. Just south of the Molalla corridor, the Riverside and Beachie fires converged and bolted Silver Falls State Park. The park was spared, but not nearby Shellburg Falls, which was intensely burned, with no surviving forest. The Little North Fork valley was equally charred, including historic structures at Opal Creek.

Upper Butte Creek Falls… spared by the fire

Meanwhile, the fires followed ridgetops above Abiqua and Butte Creeks, but left the waterfalls and big trees there intact. Butte Creek was on my mind, as I had just made a trip there last June, when I ran into a family learning to fly fish at Upper Butte Creek Falls. While this spot didn’t burn, it will still likely be affected by the fires. As we’ve learned following the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire in the Gorge, stream corridors spared by the actual fire will soon fill with logs downed by the burn, and this will likely be the case in places like Butte Creek in coming years.

Fishing at Butte Creek

I’ve posted many articles about fire, and our need to come to terms with both its inevitability and benefits. And while it was frustrating to learn that the Riverside Fire was — once again — human-caused, it’s also the case that the forest will recover. With that recovery comes opportunities to rethink how we manage the Clackamas River watershed, and I’ll be posting more on that topic in the coming year. If catastrophic fires are a reset for the forest, then they can also be a reset for how we manage them.

While the wildfires took center stage in Oregon in September, the COVID-19 crisis is the tragedy that will forever mark 2020. Like many, social distancing took me outdoors, but I quickly found that my usual haunts were packed with people, and too many were without masks or observing basic precautions for preventing transmission of the virus.

So, I ventured a bit farther afield in WyEast country, visiting several places for the very first time, but also taking great pains not to interact with others and risk accidentally being a spreader, myself. Once such place was Cliffs Park, a remarkable spot along the Columbia River that offers a stunning view of the Columbia River. On a quiet Sunday, I had the place to myself, but the empty fishing platforms were a reminder that indigenous peoples have been fishing these beaches for millennia — and that in our pandemic, Native Americans have been among the hardest hit by the virus.

Tribal fishing platforms at Cliffs Park

Cliffs Park

Looking downstream at Cliffs Park, WyEast rises above the basalt walls of the Gorge, and the scene seems timeless. Turn around and look upstream, and the John Day Dam fills the horizon, another reminder of the cultural devastation that white settlement brought to the indigenous societies that had flourished along the river for millennia — and the trauma they still carry from the loss of Celilo Falls, just downstream from Cliffs Park, and inundated by The Dalles Dam in 1957. This recent piece in Portland Monthly on the subject is well worth reading:

The Rise and Fall of Kah-Nee-Ta

It’s fairly easy to be socially distant (and completely alone) in the wide-open desert country east of Mount Hood, but what about some pandemic solitude on the mountain? It turns out to be in plain sight, if you’re willing to do some boulder-hopping. Over the summer, I made several cross-country forays into the White River flood zone, and to my surprise, the river channel abruptly changed sometime in late summer, before my final visit in late September.

The White River strikes back… again!

My guess is that a cloudburst or just some steady rain had kicked off a debris slide far up the canyon, but the volume was such that the entire floodplain was affected, with a couple feet of new sand and cobbles left behind by the flood. On my visit, the river was still trying to find its new course, and made a wonderful clattering noise it rocks and pebbles rolled down the stream in the muddy water.

The White River finding its new path

It’s not the first time the White River has changed course, that’s for sure, and it certainly won’t be the last. Seeing the raw forces of nature steadily at work was also quite reassuring. Yes, humanity has been struggling with a pandemic this year, but the mountain didn’t even notice. Nature has a way of putting our human frailty in helpful perspective, and reminding us that we’re temporary features here.

And, on a personal note…

Everyone has their list of reasons to hate 2020, and I certainly have mine. I’ll start with an odd one that connects some dots, and it’s about my photography. After decades of making some of the most innovative, compact cameras that seemed to be designed with hikers and active photographers in mind, Olympus announced last June that it would be selling off its camera division. What..??

It turns out that like all traditional camera makers, Olympus had seen sales sag with the explosion of smartphone and their amazingly good photo capability. No surprise, there, and I’m no exception. I marvel at what my iPhone can do. But I’ve also been a loyal Olympus user since I was 18 years old.

End of an era for this photographer? Not a chance! My newest Olympus (complete with collapsing 14-45mm zoom lens) sitting in the palm of my hand…

The good news is that the buyer of the Olympus line is planning to continue offering a full lineup under the old brand name, so we’ll see how that goes. But in the meantime, I used this troubling news as rationale to double down and pick up a few lenses and another camera body that will help me keep this blog full of photos for years to come!

Here’s where I will connect some dots, as the Olympus news had deeper significance with me, as I got the photography bug from my oldest brother Pete, who died in 2017. Pete is on my mind whenever I’m out in the forest or up in the mountains shooting with my beloved Olympus cameras. He helped me pick out my first Olympus camera when I was a teenager.

Me (left) as a 20-year old with my late brother Pete and my first Olympus way back in 1982. Pete was my photography inspiration and my mentor

Pete and I had a special connection that went beyond photography, and I’m thankful for the time I had with him, but I’m especially thankful for the time I still have to be out exploring the world. I’d wish he could still join me, and after losing him, I’ll surely never take my time on this earth for granted again.

This regrettable year also marked the passing of my dad on September 1. He was 91 years old, and like my brother Pete, had a huge impact on my life. Dad moved our family out here from Iowa in 1962, just few weeks before I was added as the last of five kids (and the only one born in Oregon). Dad was drawn to the Pacific Northwest by the active outdoor life, and passed that appreciation on to his kids — and to my mom, who passed away in September 2018. Together, they climbed mountains, backpacked, camped, fished and when it came time to retire, lived out their years on a forested hilltop.

My folks enjoying a pitcher and pizza just three years ago, in September 2017. These transplanted Iowans gave me my love of the Pacific Northwest outdoors

Needless to say, my life moving forward has changed forever with the loss of both parents and my oldest brother. But if every kid wants to make their family proud, I felt good when it came time to sort through the things my folks left behind. Their home was full of photographs, sketches and sculptures that I’d made for them over the years, and they had even saved every Mount Hood calendar I’d printed since starting these in 2004!

So, I know they were pleased that they had successfully planted that outdoor life and conservation ethic in me, and whatever I can do as a conservationist and advocate in my remaining life, it will be an extension of their influence — and Pete’s, too. I’ll always miss them, but whenever I’m in the outdoors, I’m really still with them!

Their passing is also a reminder to me (and all of us) that an essential part of being a conservationist and steward for our public lands is to pass along that ethic and passion to those who will follow us, a role that is now even more prominent in my own mind.

Looking forward to 2021!

What’s coming in 2021 for this blog? As always, I have lots of articles underway, and as I mentioned at the top, the potential for some very big news for the mountain. I will post on that topic as soon as I learn more. I also hope to see some of the Riverside Fire aftermath first-hand and report on what the Clackamas watershed looks like today, along with ongoing visits to some lesser-known spots in WyEast country.

The author at Lower White River Falls in June (with mask in stored position!)

Most of all, a return to life beyond the pandemic is on all of our minds, perhaps as soon as next summer. Until then, thanks for reading the blog and for indulging me in these annual reflections. Best to you in 2021, and I hope to see you on the trail, sometime!

Tom Kloster | December 2020

2020 MHNP Campaign Calendar!

December 8, 2019 / Tom Kloster / 2 Comments

The coming year marks the 16th annual scenic calendar that I’ve assembled for the Mount Hood National Park Campaign, with each calendar drawing from photos from the previous year of Mount Hood country. In the beginning, the proceeds helped defray the costs of the campaign website and (beginning in 2008) the WyEast Blog. But for the past several years, all proceeds have gone to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO), our premier trail stewards and advocates in Oregon (more on that toward the end of this article).

Looking back, the early calendars were more than a bit rough, especially given the clunky on-demand printing options in those early days of the internet and the emerging state of digital cameras, too! This is the “homey” inaugural cover that featured Elk Cove as it appeared way back in 2004:

The first calendar! Way back in 2004… a bit rough…

Over the years, the calendar has evolved, and on-demand printing quality has become downright exceptional. Each year I set aside my favorite photos over the course of the year, typically a few dozen by the time calendar season rolls around. Then the hard part begins: picking just 13 images to tell the story of Mount Hood and the Gorge. And as in years passed, this blog article tells a bit of the backstory behind images in the new calendar and includes a few photos that didn’t make the calendar.

________________

For 2020, the cover image is from a favorite spot on Middle Mountain, the rambling series of forested buttes that separate the upper and lower portions of the Hood River Valley. The sylvan view of Mount Hood from here is hard to match:

The stunning view of the Upper Hood River Valley frm Middle Mountain

But the story of Middle Mountain is a bit less idyllic. Though most of the mountain is owned by Hood River County, the agency still hasn’t gotten the memo on modern, sustainable forestry and continues to aggressively log these public lands with old-school clearcuts.

This makes for low (or at least lower) taxes for Hood River County residents, but at the expense of future sustainability of the forest — which means future generations in Hood River are really paying the tab. This rather large clearcut (below) appeared this year, just east of the spot where the cover image for the calendar was captured, on a climate-vulnerable south-facing slope.

Still doing 1950s forestry practices in Hood River County…

Will the forest recover here once again, as it always has before? Probably. But Pacific Northwest forest scientists are warning Oregonians not to take our low-elevation Douglas fir forests for granted, as they may not return, especially on hot south and west-facing slopes. Consider that just uphill from this spot some slopes on Middle Mountain are already too dry to support conifers, and are home to a few scattered Oregon white oak trees. Now would be a good time for Hood River County to adopt a longer view of its forests, and begin planning for more selective, sustainable harvests that don’t put the survival of their forests at risk.

For the January calendar image, I chose a close-up of the Sandy Headwall, which forms Mount Hood’s towering west face. This is a favorite spot for me after the first big snowfall of the year, when the mountain is suddenly transformed into a glowing white pyramid:

January features the Sandy Headwall on Mount Hood’s west face

I have a little secret to share about this view, too. It turns out I’m not much of an “alpenglow” fan, which is downright sacrilegious for a photographer to admit! So, you’re unlikely to see one in the annual calendar. I just prefer the long shadows and shades of blue and ivory that light up in the hour beforesunset that are featured in the January image.

If you’re not familiar, alpenglow is that rosy cast that often appears at or just after sunset, and pictured on waytoo many postcards and calendars — at least for my taste! But my other little secret is that I still capture plenty of alpenglow photos, too. Who knows, maybe my tastes will change someday?

The following image didn’t make the calendar, but it shows the transformation from the above view that unfolded over the course of 30 minutes or as sun dropped over the horizon that cold, October evening:

Some people really like Alpenglow… apparently…

February also features another snow scene, this time along the White River, when the stream nearly disappeared under ten feet of snow last winter:

February features the White River smothered in winter snow

But the White River photo came courtesy of an aborted snowshoe trip that day at nearby Pocket Creek. My plan was to hike up to a view of Mount Hood and Elk Mountain from the north slopes of Gunsight Ridge. I had made the trip about ten years ago and liked the sense of depth that having Elk Mountain in front of Mount Hood created from this angle. Instead, here’s what I found when I reached the viewpoint:

This isn’t the first viewpoint that has disappeared behind growing forests in my years of exploring Mount Hood, nor am I sad that the view went away. After all, this one came courtesy of a 1980s Forest Service clearcut, and while the view was nice, a recovered forest is even better. And besides, I still have this photo from 2009 to remind me of view that once existed here:

The view in 2009 was a bit more expansive!

So, I returned to the trailhead that day and headed over to the White River for a short snowshoe trip in the evening light. While I picked a photo of the river and mountain for the calendar, there were some very pretty views unfolding behind me, too. These images capture the last rays of winter sun lighting up the crests of Bonney Butte and Barlow Butte. They may not be calendar-worthy, but are lovely scenes, nonetheless:

The frosted crest of Bonney Butte lights up as the sun goes down

For the March calendar image, I picked a scene from Rowena Plateau, a spot famous for its spectacular displays of yellow Balsamroot and blue Lupine. The calendar view looks north across the Columbia River to the Washington community of Lyle, a town that nests seamlessly into the Gorge landscape, thanks in large part to the protections of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area:

March features the annual flower spectacle on the Rowena Plateau

But the view behind me that day was pretty nice, too, though it didn’t make it into the calendar. This image (below) looks south toward McCall Point from the same vantage point, with still more drifts of wildflowers spreading across the terraced slopes:

Wildflower drifts on the slopes of McCall Point

For April, I chose a popular scene along the Old Salmon River Trail on Mount Hood’s southwest side just as the bright greens of spring were exploding in this rainforest. Here, a grove of 600-year old Western red cedar and Douglas fir somehow avoided several cycles of logging in the 1800s and 1900s to survive as the closest ancient forest to Portland:

April features ancient rainforests along the Old Salmon River Trail

How big is that Western red cedar on left? I’ve been asked that question a few times, and short of actually measuring it, I stepped in front of the camera to serve as a human yardstick (well, two yards, as I’m exactly six feet tall). Subtract a few inches for my hat, and I’d estimate the trunk to be about 15 feet across at the base and about 10 feet thick a bit further up.

What do you think?

Ancient hiker among the forest ancients…

One thing is for sure, we’re so fortunate that these old sentinels have survived to give us a glimpse into what many of our rainforest valleys used to look like.

Further down the trail, I also captured this scene (below) of a pair of leaning giants that mark the spot of an ancient nurse log, long since rotted away and revealing the roots that once anchored these trees to the nurse log when they were youngsters. Someday, they will fall and become nurse logs, too, repeating the rainforest cycle.

This unique pair of trees is easy to find if you’re exploring the Old Salmon River Trail. They’re located right along the river (below), at a scenic spot just off the trail where there are plenty of boulders for picnics and even a tiny beach in summer. It’s just beyond one of the rustic footbridges along the trail, and downstream from the ancient tree grove.

The Salmon River along the Old Salmon River Trail… alas, this photo didn’t make the calendar!

For May, I chose another photo from the Rowena Plateau, partly because it was such a good bloom this year, but also for the gnarled Oregon white oak that grows on this little knoll (below).

May features White oaks at Rowena surrounded by bouquets of Balsamroot and Lupine

After exploring Rowena that day, I crossed the river and spent the evening over at Columbia Hills State Park, in Washington. While this sprawling preserve is certainly no secret these days, you can still count on it being pretty lonely once you hike into the vast meadows along the park’s trails.

This is the scene looking back toward The Dalles and Mount Hood as the sun dropped over the horizon on that lovely spring day:

Vast wildflower meadows sweep toward the Columbia River and Mount Hood at Columbia Hills State Park

For June, I selected an old standby, the understated but elegant Upper Butte Creek Falls (below), located in the Santiam State Forest. I visit Butte Creek at least twice each year, just because the area is so delightful, and also because it’s a showcase of what Oregon’s state forests could be.

The Oregon Department of Forestry has gradually expanded recreation opportunities throughout the state forest system over the past couple of decades, in recognition of growing demand for trails in our state. It’s an uphill battle, as state forests have generally been viewed by our state and local governments as a cash register, thanks to 1930s era laws that have traditionally been interpreted as promoting logging above all else.

June features lovely Upper Butte Creek Falls in the Santiam State Forest

Today, a group of Oregon counties are actually suing the state for “retroactive” payments based on this interpretation, though it’s an absurd and misguided case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. If successful, the “state” (that’s you and me) could pay over $1 billion to a handful of counties (possibly you, possibly me) to right this purported wrong. This power play further underscores the need to radically rethink how we manage our state forests in an era of climate change and changing values among the public.

While the area along the Butte Creek trail remains a verdant rainforest, it’s really just an island, with much of the surrounding public forest logged in the past, and planned for more logging. Adjacent private timberlands are faring even worse, with companies like Weyerhaeuser liquidating their holdings with massive clear cuts in the lower Butte Creek canyon.

The changing climate is starting to take its toll here, too. This view of Butte Creek Falls was taken on the same visit as the June calendar image, but as the photo shows, the creek is running at perhaps a third of its “normal” June flow after dry spring this year, with much of the falls already running dry. We’re learning that “normal” is no longer as drought years continue to become the new normal.

The warning signs of the changing climate are already showing up on the rocky viewpoint above Butte Creek Falls, where several Douglas fir (below) finally succumbed to the stress of summer droughts this year on the thin, exposed soils of this outcropping.

Early victims of climate change above Butte Creek

This is how climate change is beginning to make its mark throughout our forests, with trees growing in poor or thin soils lacking the groundwater moisture to make it through summer droughts. These trees are often further weakened and eventually killed by insects and diseases that attack drought-stressed forests.

The good news is that a new generation of forest scientists is sounding the alarm and as we’ve seen, a new generation of young people are made climate change their rallying cry. So, while we’re very late in taking action, I’m optimistic that Oregon will emerge as a leader in tackling climate change, starting with our magnificent forests.

For July, I chose another waterfall scene, this time in the sagebrush deserts east of Mount Hood, where the White River crashes over a string of three waterfalls on its way into the Deschutes River canyon (below).

July features thundering White River Falls

Most people hike the paved trail into the rugged canyon, which begins an impressive, but partly obscured view of the dramatic upper falls. But few follow the fenced canyon rim upstream to this nice profile (below), just a short distance off the paved route. From here, the basalt buttes and mesas of Tygh Valley fill the horizon and remnants from the early 1900s power plant that once hummed here are visible on a side channel, below.

In 2011, I posted this article with a proposal for expanding tiny White River Falls State Park to save it from the kind of development it had just dodged at the time. Hopefully, we’ll eventually see White River Falls better protected and some of its history restored and preserved!

The August image in the new calendar is from my beloved Owl Point, a spot on the north side of Mount Hood that I visit several times each year as a volunteer for Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO). In this view (below), evening shadows were starting to reach across the talus slopes below Owl Point, where low mats of purple Davidson’s penstemon painted the summer scene.

August features Owl Point in the Mount Hood Wilderness… of course!

I was alone that day, scouting the trail for an upcoming TKO volunteer work party, so I had the luxury of spending a lot of time just watching the evening unfold through my camera. For photographers, clouds are always the unpredictable frosting that can make (or break) a photo, and the lovely wisps in the calendar image floated in from nowhere to frame the mountain while I sat soaking in the view.

I joined a TKO trail crew the next weekend for our second year of “officially” caring for the Old Vista Ridge Trail to Owl Point since TKO formally adopted the trail from the Forest Service in 2018. We had a great turnout, with crews clearing several logs with crosscut saws and doing some major rock work (below) where TKO will be realigning a confusing switchback along the trail.

TKO volunteers doing some serious rock work on the Old Vista Ridge Trail

TKO crews at Owl Point in August, celebrated a day of successful trail stewardship

For September, something a little different for the calendar: Sawmill Falls on the Little North Fork of the Santiam River (below). This is a well-known spot on the Opal Creek trail, but the surprise is that I’d somehow never hiked this trail, despite growing up in Portland and having spent a lot of time exploring nearby Henline Creek over the past several years. But my explanation is fairly simple: this has been among the most notoriously crowded trails in Oregon for many years, and I’ve always just shied away.

September features Sawmill Falls in the Opal Creek Wilderness

Then my friend Jeff e-mailed to remind me that we were way overdue for a hike, and so we picked Opal Creek as one that neither of us had checked the box on before. It turned out to be a lovely day on a very pretty trail, and because we had picked a weekday, it was surprisingly quiet, too.

The photo of Sawmill Falls gives a better sense of the weather that day — lots of sun, and so this image is among a very few long-exposure waterfall scenes I’ve attempted in full sun. It’s also a blended image from three separate exposures, which is a lot of work to capture an scene! One benefit of shooting in the sun was the opportunity to include some puffy clouds and blue sky as a backdrop, making this a very “summery” image.

Here’s a secret about my good friend Jeff: he’s the founder of TKO!

The conditions were more forgiving that day when we reached the bridge above Opal Pool, as a nice bank of clouds floated over and provided the kind of overcast that I’m normally looking for with long-exposure waterfall photos. Here’s a view (below) of Opal Creek taken from the footbridge that didn’t make the calendar:

Opal Creek cascade from the bridge above Opal Pool

The October image in the new calendar is from a roadside pullout that nobody seems to stop at, and yet it provides a very nice view of Mount Hood and the East Fork Hood River (below). This spot is on a rise along Highway 35, just south of the Highway Department maintenance yard.

October features the East Fork Hood River and Mount Hood after an early snowfall

If you stop here in mid-October, you’ll enjoy quite a show, with brilliant Cottonwood lighting up the valley floor in shades of bright yellow and gold and Oregon white oak in the foreground providing orange and red accents. And if you pick a clear day after the first snowfall, Mount Hood will light up the horizon with a bright new jacket of white.

How bright are the fall colors? Here’s the exact scene a few months earlier, for comparison:

The East Fork overlook as it appears for most of the spring and summer…

Like the earlier scene near Bennett Pass, this viewpoint is gradually becoming obscured, too. You can see the difference in the two Ponderosa pines on the left side of the photo. The larger, more distant tree (at the edge of the photo) hasn’t changed as visibly, but the younger Ponderosa (second from left) is quickly blocking the view of the river.

For comparison, here’s a photo from 2008 showing just how much the younger pine has grown, along with the Oregon white oak in the right foreground:

…and the East Fork overlook in 2008, when the trees were much smaller!

In this case, however, the East Fork Hood River is on the side of tourists and photographers. The river is famously volatile, thanks to its glacial origins on Mount Hood, and periodically undercuts the steep banks here, taking whole trees in the process. This is a scene of almost constant change, and I won’t be surprised if the younger Ponderosa nearest the river eventually becomes driftwood on its way downriver!

The October image is also from the Hood River Valley, and also a roadside view. This well-known scene is located on Laurance Lake Drive, just off Clear Creek Road, near Parkdale. Thanks in no small part to Oregon’s statewide planning laws, this remains an operating farm more than a 170 years after the area was first cleared by white settlers.

November features Mount Hood from the road to Laurance Lake

The patch of Cottonwoods at the center of the field that provide the fall color show have been growing there for some time, too — or at least they are descendants from an earlier grove. This view (below) from the 1940s shows how the area appeared when most of the roads were still gravel and twenty years before the reservoir we know as Laurance Lake was even constructed. This image is from the Oregon State Archives, and staged for tourism ads, as you might guess!

1940s tourism stock photo from the same spot as the November calendar image!

Here’s a tip if you’re exploring the Hood River Valley in October and the Cottonwoods have turned. At about the same time the Western larch along the upper stretches of the East Fork and east slopes of Mount Hood area also turning to their fall shades of yellow and gold.

In fact, the November calendar photo was just a stop on the way for me as I headed up to the mountain to take in the Western larch colors. These photos feature the east side of Mount Hood and its many groves of Larch as viewed from the slopes of Lookout Mountain, and are among those that didn’t make the calendar this year.

Western larch lighting up the east slopes of Mount Hood

Mount Hood framed by golden Western Larch on the slopes of Lookout Mountain

For December, I chose another scene along the East Fork Hood River, albeit lesser known. This spot (below) is near the confluence of the East Fork with Polallie Creek, and was captured after a couple days of freezing fog in the upper Hood River Valley:

December features this frosty scene along the East Fork Hood River

This is one of my favorite times to be in the forest, though it can be a bit treacherous! The unmatched scenery makes the slippery trip worth it, as the frosted forests combine with the fog to create a truly magical scene.

Here are a couple more images from that day in the freezing fog that didn’t make the calendar:

Frost-flocked Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine on the slopes above the East Fork

Since switching to Zazzle to produce the annual calendars, I’ve had a back page to work with, and I have used this space to feature a few wildflower photos from the past year (below).

Nine wildflower shots from hikes throughout Mount Hood country this year fill in the back cover of the calendar

Each wildflower image has a story behind it, and among the most memorable is the Buckwheat in the lower right corner. This little plant was growing at the summit of Lookout Mountain (below), in the Badger Creek Wilderness, east of Mount Hood.

Buckwheat adding color to the rocky summit of Lookout Mountain

Buckwheat is a tough, low-growing, drought tolerant wildflower that thrives in the rocky soils there, but what made the spot memorable were the thousands (millions?) of Ladybugs swarming on the summit that day. Entomologists tell us that several inspect species migrate to ridges and mountains from adjacent valleys to mate, keeping their gene pool stable and healthy in the process, but I’m thinking they might just enjoy the mountain views, too?

Hard to photograph, but picture this on every surface on the summit of Lookout Mountain!

The Wild rose in the top row is also in foreground of this image of Crown Point and the Columbia River Gorge (below). I considered this image for the calendar, but skipped it until I can capture a more prolific flower display in the foreground… maybe next year!

Gorgeous Gorge! But the Wild rose blooms..? Meh…

Finally, the white Mockorange in the center of the bottom row was captured at this somewhat obscure spot along Butcher Knife Ridge (below), in the West Fork Hood Valley. This was another also-ran as a calendar image, but watch for some exciting news in a future blog story about this corner of Mount Hood country!

Mount Hood rising above the West Fork valley and framed by Mockorange blossoms

If you’d like a calendar, they’re easy to order online for $25 from Zazzle. Just follow this link:

2020 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar

They’re beautifully printed by Zazzle, ship quickly and make nice gifts! And I’ll also be donating all proceeds to Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO).

_______________________

If you’ve followed the WyEast blog for a while, you probably noticed that things look a bit different around here, as of this month. It’s true, a mere eleven years after I made this first post…

You know, that first article was just weird..!

…I’ve changed the WordPress theme for the blog. But I do admit that I didn’t have much choice. My most recent posts were having serious formatting problems, as in my last post (below) where the column text and photos were out of alignment. Other less obvious problems were popping up when publishing new posts, making what for a very cumbersome process.

Alert! Formatting unraveling! Abort! Abort!

In digging through pages of tedious WordPress documentation to figure out what was up, I finally came across this unwelcome message:

What? My theme is retired? Since when..? And who says!

Ah, the pace of progress. So, recognizing that things would only get worse, I’ve spent the past couple weeks customizing a “modern” theme called “Hemingway” to retain as much of the look and readability of the blog as I can. I’ll probably need to continue tweaking the settings, so thanks in advance for your patience!

If you’re wondering about the new banner, the backstory is that I originally created banner below. However, it didn’t work well with the new theme, which resizes the banner for whatever device the user is viewing, and decapitated Mount Hood in the process! Aargh!

So, I opted to continue the “misty forest” look from the original banner, which was from a scene captured in 2008 near Horsetail Creek in the Gorge. The new banner draws from image captured of Horsetail Creek, Katanai Rock, located in Ainsworth State Park.

The original Katanai Rock image was taken several years ago, on a spring day as storm clouds were just clearing from the walls of the Gorge, creating a mystical scene that Tolkien might have dreamed up:

Mists on Katanai Rock as a storm clears…

To create the banner, I converted the original image to sepia and did some toning to soften the shadows a bit:

[click here for the large view of Katanai Rock]

Look closely at the large view and there’s a wispy waterfall floating down the west side of Katanai Rock and lots of massive old trees wrapped in mist… it’s Rivendell!

Finally, the new banner incorporates just the top of Katanai Rock in a crop that allows it to adjust to anything from an iPhone to a 27″ monitor like the one I’m working on, right now:

So, that’s how the new look came about! And as with each of the previous 11 years on the blog, I’m looking forward to another year of articles. I’ve got lots of topics in the hopper, and hopefully some that you will enjoy and find worth reading.

Thank you for stopping by over the past year, and thank you for being a friend of Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge!

I’ll see you on the trail in 2020!

Tom Kloster • WyEast Blog