Artificial intelligence, this blog… and Vista Ridge?

October 31, 2026November 3, 2026 / Tom Kloster / 5 Comments

Ah, the good old days of 2024… remember when AI was harmlessly about morphing yourself into an action figure…?

We’re living in a remarkable (and unnerving) time. In just the past three years, the U.S. tech industry has managed to write algorithms so advanced that computers can self-learn (steal?) from anything humanity has posted online over the past 30 years. More remarkable (and unnerving) is the fact that these models have been released to the world to use as everyday tools. Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will be fine… right?

Clearly, there is plenty to be concerned about with the explosive growth of artificial intelligence and creepy, invasive new AI-based applications like “Muse”, Meta’s new “personal assistant” designed to further record (read: monetize) our most personal thoughts. Yikes. But it’s also true that AI has unleashed a new wave of innovation with its uncanny ability to create imagery from typed words and, conversely, compose prose from a simple image. That ability is at the heart of what makes the generative AI models so “human” and therefore useful.

On that more positive track, I’ve been immersing myself in the new technology with a combination of curiosity and trepidation. Like earlier waves of technology that brought us personal computers, cell phones and the internet, AI models are simply a tool. Their use depends on the motives of human behind a keyboard. At least until the models decide otherwise, of course… Hal? Are you reading this? Hal?

Ask a chatbot to morph a favorite photo memory into a knock-off Van Gogh? Six words and a single take were enough. I wonder if I should now ask the bot to send me one of its ears..?

In that spirit, I thought I would share some of the AI-assisted work I’ve been experimenting with. My goal is to better illustrate ideas that my old-school photos and graphic renderings too often fall short on. I’m surprisingly excited about the potential thus far, and you’ll no doubt see AI-assisted graphics on the blog in future articles — something I will always note, by the way.

I’ve also spent some time with AI-assisted text generation on projects outside this blog, and this is where the technology feels cold, reductive and often exploitive. Yes, it’s a quick way to write a generic memo or outline, but it’s neither fun nor creative to have an algorithm do the writing for you. This side of the chatbot technology gets worse, too: new research shows that AI text generation is much more resource-consumptive than we might expect. Maybe this reality will emerge as a check on rampant reliance on AI to write memos and term papers?

Surprisingly, image generation assisted by AI is surprisingly less resource-consumptive. That seems counter-intuitive, but here’s a relative comparison of the water used (for cooling server arrays) by data centers to generate a large graphic image versus a simple, one-page memo:

The AI industry tells us they’re building data centers with looped cooling to address this water consumption problem – but make no mistake, the vast number of server farms don’t use looped systems and burn through fresh water at an astonishing rate, as we’ve seen playing out right here in Oregon.

For all of these reasons, rest assured that you won’t be seeing AI-generated text on this blog, not even for editing and proofing — at least while my organic, cell-based fingers can still operate a keyboard. Besides, readers would likely miss the missed typos, run-on sentences and redundancies that are my trademark!

Using AI to merge my imagery and imagination …

If you’ve visited the blog over the years, you know that I love to dreamscape about how things could be.Typically, I rely on real images of things as they are and use marked-up maps, graphics and text to attempt to describe those dreamscapes in my mind. This is where AI-assisted graphics are powerful, fun — and maddening — all at once.

For starters, short of a mind-meld with my computer (big tech is working on that, no doubt), AI models still require me to type commands into a text field on screen – which is comically similar to typing in abstract line code way back in college, when I was learning soon-to-be-useless programming languages. By trial and error, though, you can begin to see how the models “think” and tailor your input accordingly. But it’s surprisingly clunky.

The powerful difference with AI-assisted imagery begins with using my own photos as the base image to build upon. The immense power of the algorithms lies in their ability to “look” at an image I’ve uploaded and quickly find imagery from across the internet that has already been absorbed into the model that corresponds to my editing instructions (and yes, Trekkers, The Borg have arrived…).

Resistance to the AI oligarchs is… futile?

Give the model a base image, a few text prompts and in 15-30 seconds of processing it generates an image that more often than not comes very close to what I had imagined. This is where the process can be both fun and maddening. It’s fun when the AI models immediately generate a screen image that is close to spot-on in matching the one in my head.

This is most often the case when the base image I’ve offered has a lot of references out there on the web for the algorithm to draw from, like the following rendering examples that begin with widely photographed sides of Mount Hood:

This image is from a lovely summer hike in 2023 near Timberline Lodge, but the sky isn’t particularly interesting. Can AI improve this scene without looking overly fake?

Yowsa! My prompt was to “add dramatic clouds”, and AI took that quite seriously! The only thing missing is Charleton Heston in robes and a giant fake beard shouting “Let my people go!” The hikers were added later, with a separate set of prompts, as I’ve learned AI edits work best in baby steps. As is the case with most AI-assisted images, the dial on color saturation seems to always be turned up to 11, by default.

Here’s the final AI-assisted rendering, with instructions to tone down the contrast and saturation and with some slight adjustments to the hikers (e.g., the first hiker is now looking at the mountain instead of his feet). But does it look real?

Like the first test image, this view of the Cooper Spur Shelter from early July hike in 2022 had everything but an interesting sky. Would AI be able to help?

Zoinks! Well, in defense of the AI algorithm, I did ask for “dramatic” clouds, once again. The hikers were added with separate prompts, and correctly rendered as the same hikers from the previous set of renderings – though more about their default ethnicity later in this article.

The final AI-assisted version after prompting the AI tool to tone down the color and contrast and make the clouds “less cartoonish and more realistic” (the exact wording of the prompt). Does this look real?

Whether the versions created with AI are an improvement on reality is a matter of taste, and make no mistake, I won’t be using AI to “improve” images I’ve taken around WyEast County. The detail worth pointing out is how the anatomy of the mountain, itself, was preserved in these examples. When AI models render a new image from a real scene, they don’t limit themselves to your uploaded base image, Instead, they redraw everything – even if you instruct them not to. With scenes as iconic as these, the details of Mount Hood are preserved accurately because the models matched countless images to mine. It’s also important to note that when you upload an image, you’ve also just added it to the AI data horde (…again, paging The Borg collective!)

It’s less fun when lesser-photographed sides of the mountain are rendered. When the models lack scooped-up web content for context, they inevitably add features that aren’t there and revise features that are, revealing a propensity to improvise beyond the user query. This is the “rogue” phenomenon many AI critics are rightly concerned about. One curious, recurring example in my experience is morphing the lighting from a base image into evening “golden hour” light without any prompting – you can see this in both of the sample renderings above.

Correcting errors is perhaps the least enjoyable part of AI-assisted image creation. It’s something I would describe as trying to fine-tune delicate brush strokes with puffy oven mitts on both hands. The models often spiral into still more errors at this point, making working with them maddening, despite their otherwise uncanny power.

Sometimes, the AI errors veer wildly from reality, often comically. These are politely called “hallucinations” by the folks who write these algorithms. The following are some examples where it took multiple prompts to navigate the power AI tool back to realm of physical reality, with the models often repeating the hallucinations over and again.

This image is why Open AI always includes this disclaimer in tiny, nearly grayed-out print: “ChatGPT can make mistakes. Check important info.” Important info? As in, how to extract hikers somehow fused into a picnic table? Well, at least they’re still enjoying the view..!

I’ll give this edit a 50 percent credit: when instructed to move “dad” from the end of the table to the far bench, the model complied, but only met me halfway. Dad’s lower torso and legs stayed behind, still seated in their original location. Still, AI dad’s upper half seems to be smiling and enjoying the picnic…

Beyond the glitches and hallucinations, there’s another concern with AI imagery that has become increasingly jarring the more I have used it. Without specific prompts, AI invariably generates humans as exclusively white, very fit and young. Always. In the examples above, deviations from this default are only because I specified “older” or “Latino” after the AI algorithm generated the young, white default version of humanity that it prefers.

This troubling bias has been widely critiqued, and deservedly so. But seeing it play out in your own work brings home the reality that the creators of this technology also happen to overwhelmingly align with the same narrow demographic their models churn out in imagery.

This is also one of the built-in, racist biases of AI that makes it so problematic in text generation. Yes, it’s easy enough to spot these patterns of race, gender or age bias in images, but it’s much harder to pick up the nuances that add up to systemic bias in text.

The following examples are from a sequence that required more than a dozen iterations between the AI default and a final, highly-edited version. Along the way, still more negative age and racial tropes crept in, unprompted – both a reflection of the tech creators and the information their AI engines glean from the internet. It’s jarring, but also an important reminder that it’s on us as users to carefully manage these tools against their built-in biases.

There’s a mix of truth and AI bias, here. While the outdoor community has historically been overwhelmingly white, a simple Google image search shows how much this has changed in recent years. Yet, AI consistently produces defaults like this because that’s what it has been trained on.

Asking AI to diversify the scene took many edits to get to an older couple seated and a Black couple standing. Is this scene so impossible in real life so as to have escaped the AI bots that perpetually comb the web? Therein, lies the built-in bias, along with many tired race and age stereotypes that continue to persist in AI-generated images.

If you’ve read this, far – thank you! My original goal with this article was to simply post an upgrade to the original Vista Ridge trailhead concept using AI-assisted imagery. But it felt awkward to drop a bunch of AI-enhanced images into the blog without some explanation of why and how I will use it going forward. Hopefully, this explanation does that!

Now, with all of these caveats, the second part of this article is a revisit a proposal from 2023 to re-imagine the Vista Ridge trailhead on Mount Hood’s north side – this time, presented with some help from AI to (hopefully) tell a more compelling story.

Re-imagining the Vista Ridge trailhead… again!

Only three years have passed since I first proposed a revamp to the Vista Ridge trailhead, yet the need has only grown. I could have said three “short” years, but the intervening time seems like an eternity when the current federal state of affairs is factored in.

Today, we find ourselves with a deeply hamstringed U.S. Forest Service doing its best to keep up with unwelcome mandates from an administration bent on looting our public lands – and with a skeleton staff that has been cut by as much as 30% by the same administration. These impacts on the Forest Service will take years to undo, and they make an even stronger argument to find fairly creative solutions to better manage overburdened sites like the Vista Ridge trailhead.

The Vista Ridge trailhead is really just the stub of a 1960s-era logging road whose construction was finally abandoned where it ends today. Thus, the chaotic jumble of cars that jam this dead-end on busy summer weekends, where simply turning a vehicle around becomes a challenge.

In recent years, the overflow from the parking area has spilled down the access road, create unsafe conditions in several spots that were never designed for two-way traffic or roadside parking.

There’s no warning for arriving hikers when the parking area is full, forcing folks to awkwardly turn around in a confined space, then find a spot along the access road – often encountering yet another incoming vehicle with no room to pass. Thankfully, there has never been a need to evacuate this trailhead in an emergency.

To tell a better story, I used AI to create a new map of the proposal. The new version still uses a Google Earth base, but AI allowed me to show the proposed one-way loop in a more realistic way. I was also able to “revegetate” some of the recently logged areas where a Forest Service thinning project was completed in 2020. As a tool, AI image generation did well on these fronts. But then it got clunky.

So, I ended up using the AI-generated map as a base, and added the rest of the map details – picnic tables, tents and tent sites, small buildings and all of the map notation – using conventional graphic applications. I also corrected some issues in the base image that AI just couldn’t figure out. One of the more frustrating of these is the Lego-block looking pattern that AI morphed the Google Earth tree canopy into. This turned into one of those spiraling dead-ends with AI that only got worse as I tried to nudge to tool back on track. AI won that battle, and thus the Lego Forest™ map.

(click on the map to enlarge)

A recurring question from the original article: so, why a one-way loop? It turns out these designs can provide the most efficient, managed format for parking. For convenience and efficiency, the design ensures that hikers arriving at the trailhead would always reach the closest available spot to the trailhead first. No need to circle.

More importantly, emergency responders would have a place to both park and turn large vehicles around, as well as evacuate people in the event of an emergency. To further protect hikers from cars, trails within the loop would connect to both the trailhead and the tent camping area, reducing the number of people walking along the loop road.

While the smaller details of the trailhead concept largely follows what I proposed back in 2023, I’ve included a solar-powered well in this update to provide on-site water. These off-the grid systems are an innovation that has grown in recent years in rural areas, and can cost as little as $3,000 to install on a conventional well. Providing on-site water would not only be good for hikers, it could also make the trailhead a fully serviced spot for emergency responders or fire fighters, and for Forest Service staff to maintain a proposed pit toilet – an element that was included in the original concept.

It’s not sexy, but it works. This is a pump house and well that is completely powered with solar panels, and thus off the grid. It’s a great new solution for backcountry trailheads and campground. Why not pilot one at a new Vista Ridge trailhead? (Photo: Georgia Bushcraft)

Another new feature in the concept is trailhead tent campsites. Why did I add these? The inspiration came from Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) events here in 2024 and 2025, when several volunteers arrived early and camped in the same area proposed here for walk-in tent sites. They raved about both the mountain views and the advantages of an early start for trail work on the Vista Ridge and Old Vista Ridge trails.

It’s true that this roadside camping spot is pretty ugly today, despite the fine view of Mount Hood. That’s thanks to the same 2020 forest thinning project that left a jumble of debris and piles of dirt behind. So, the idea of a tent camping area is to restore the site ecologically as well as provide a few tent sites.

It’s off the radar of most hikers, but bikepacking has become an important new form of recreation in WyEast Country, notably with the development of the Oregon Timber Trail. Why not provide bikepacking campsites with a view at a new Vista Ridge trailhead? (photo: Oregon Timber Trail Alliance)

Another inspiration for the trailhead campsites comes from bikepacking enthusiasts who now regularly travel Forest Road 16, the main forest road that the Vista Ridge spur road connects to. The idea is for these through-riders to have a quiet, free campsite with a water source and toilet – and a nice view. Yes, they would need to travel another 3.5 miles along the Vista Ridge spur road to get here, but developed campsites, a water source, toilets and picnic tables would make it well worth the effort.

An AI-Assisted Tour of the Vista Ridge Trailhead Concept

Moving from the updated concept map to the real power of AI, the next set of images are a virtual tour of the trailhead concept, with “before” (or real) images of today’s conditions transformed into AI-assisted versions of what could be.

The tour begins with the trailhead approach along the Vista Ridge access road (Forest Road 1650). Just before the road reaches the site of the proposed trailhead, an unsigned fork where another logging spur splits off to the right is a point of perpetual confusion. A very simple part of the new trailhead concept is signage to help folks navigate this spot.

This junction just before the trailhead has been unsigned for years, sending hikers to a long dead end in a sea of old clearcuts if they go right instead of left.

A simple proposal in this confusing spot – a trailhead sign, designed with the help of AI

As you can see in the concept map, the turnaround loop is more oval than round. A recently impacted clearing at the heart of the oval was once a log yarding area, and more recently held equipment for the forest thinning operation. Taking advantage of an already impacted area, this clearing is where the main trailhead amenities would be located, including informational signage, water, toilet and picnic tables. This photo series is the view looking north from the existing Vista Ridge access road, into the proposed trailhead site.

The most recent disturbance in the clearing at the heart of the trailhead concept came in 2020, when this old yarding area from past clearcutting activity became a logistic area for a forest thinning operation.

Today, the clearing still shows the impacts from the most recent logging operation. It’s a good candidate for restoration of native understory – mostly beargrass and huckleberry – as part of creating a new trailhead.

This is an AI-assisted reimagining of the clearing at the heart of the new trailhead loop showing a picnic tables, toilet, water supply and an information signboard. The cars pictured are parked parallel, along the one-way loop.

While the core focus for the loop is to locate the new road on already impacted land, it would nonetheless represent 1,300 feet of new, gravel road. The conservation tradeoff would come from decommissioning the last 2,800 feet of the existing road, converting it become an extension of the Vista Ridge Trail, with an overall reduction in road coverage of about 1,500 feet.

The half-mile road section proposed for trail conversion also cuts across two talus slopes that are active Pika habitat, so removing the vehicle traffic could be an important benefit to these colonies, especially with overflow vehicles now parking along the talus sections.

The next view in the virtual tour is from the perspective of the picnickers in the previous photo series, looking south toward Mount Hood. This would be the view from the picnic area, with tent campsites proposed across the access road. As with the rest of the concept, the emphasis is two-pronged: combine development of a new trailhead with ecological restoration of already impacted areas.

This is a view of the logged area across the access road from the clearing shown in the previous image series. The jumble of debris and piles of dirt left behind in this forest thinning operation offer an opportunity to restore the site in tandem with creating walk-in tent sites.

The view today from the cleared area at the heart of the proposed loop, looking toward the recently logged area on the south side of the existing road.

A reimagined version of the scene showing the proposed picnic area in the foreground and a path leading across the access road to tent sites in a restored logged area. The fine mountain view from here would turn otherwise generic picnic and tent sites into something special and memorable.

Another community that could benefit from these reimagined scenes are local tribes who actively harvest first foods in the Vista Ridge area, especially huckleberries. The logging operation that occurred in 2020 was presented in part as forest thinning to improve huckleberry habitat. Providing enhanced access, campsites and other on-site facilities to support tribes harvesting in the area could be one of the best arguments for moving forward with the idea.

Next, the virtual tour of the proposed trailhead moves to the half-mile section of today’s access road that would be converted to trail. This short section of road has stunning views that make it a fine candidate for conversion. The easy grade and existing gravel surface could also offer the possibility of a rare accessible trail to these viewpoints, something WyEast Country is woefully lacking in.

This spot along today’s access road is about a half mile from the current trailhead. This is where the proposed trailhead loop road would veer left on an old cat road and the remainder of the existing road would be converted to trail.

Here’s the AI-assisted reimagining of what the road-to-trail conversion would look like. The hikers shown here have just emerged from a short access trail (shown on the concept map) that would link parking within the trailhead loop to the new start of the Vista Ridge Trail with minimal road walking.

Moving just beyond the proposed trailhead, this photo set shows what a typical road-to-trail conversion might look like.

This is today’s access road a few yards beyond the proposed new trailhead…

…and this is what a road-to-trail conversion might look like. The wide trail and retained gravel surface are included to envision what an accessible trail could look like. Conversions like these typically involve using a backhoe along one or both shoulders of the road to break up the packed road surface and allow for restoring vegetation. In mountainous areas like this, large rocks and boulders often come to the surface as well, and they can be placed as shown both define the trail and protect against off-road vehicles.

Just 200 yards from the proposed new trailhead, today’s Vista Ridge road crosses a talus slope with a stunning view of Mount Hood, enhanced in autumn with drifts of crimson vine maple. There are already pullouts along the road here, worn by photographers stopping to capture this scene – one that has appeared widely in calendars, books and advertising. Anyone capturing photos here is also likely to be serenaded by the Pika colonies living in the talus. These pullouts would become the main destination for the accessible portion of the road-to-trail conversion, as visualized in the following image sequence (look closely at the concept map and you will also see disabled parking spots).

This scene has deservedly appeared in scenic calendars and tourism ads over the years – but with the road cropped out. Colonies of tiny Pikas live here and can often be heard if you’re not inside a car.

Here’s a reimagined scene with the road converted to trail, the road’s shoulders restored with native huckleberry and beargrass.

Here’s a version with one of the existing road pullouts converted to a spot for or a picnic or simply resting and enjoying the view.

Even better, here’s an accessible picnic and resting spot with a wider tread connecting the proposed trailhead to this viewpoint.

Beyond the talus viewpoint the existing road still offers pocket views as is it continues toward today’s trailhead. The following images show what this section of today’s road might look like if were converted to become part of the Vista Ridge Trail.

Today, this pretty section of the Vista Ridge road too often has cars wedged along the shoulders when the trailhead parking is overflowing….

…but reimagined, it might look like this, with a trail wide enough to continue serving as an accessible path.

Where today’s Vista Ridge road approaches the existing trailhead parking, it crosses another large talus slope, this time composed of striking, red volcanic boulders uncommon to the Mount Hood area. Tiny Pikas live here, too, though you have to walk the road to hear them. This photo set imagines what this road conversion might look like.

The second talus slope today with the trailhead parking area visible in the distance. On busy days, overflow cars are often parked precariously along this section of road.

A reimagined view of the unique volcanic talus slope, with today’s road converted to trail. Red lava landscapes like this are a rare sight on Mount Hood, making this a special place worth celebrating.

This images in this set are viewed from the opposite direction, looking toward the red talus slope from the existing trailhead parking.

This view shows today’s overflowing trailhead parking spilling onto the shoulders of the access road.

Here’s an AI reimagining of this is what that view might look like if the road were converted to trail.

And what of today’s parking area? Could it really be converted to trail and restored to a natural condition? Definitely. The surrounding subalpine grows on a very thin layer of mountain soils atop a rocky base – the same boulders we can see on nearby talus slopes are only a few inches beneath the surface (with some are poking through, as evidenced by scars left from cars scraping on them). Using the road conversion approach described previously, a backhoe would be used to break up the packed surface and loosen the ground replanting. Unearthed rocks and boulders could be used to define the new trail.

Look closely at the left edge in this view of today’s Vista Ridge trailhead and you can see the forest already creeping into the old road bed that makes up today’s parking area. Restoring vegetation here is mostly a matter of breaking up the old road surface.

Here’s an AI-assisted reimagination of what the old trailhead parking could look like when converted to trail. Though nature would eventually restore the understory on her own, revegetating the area could be accelerated by planting native beargrass, huckleberry and kinnikinnick, as shown in this view.

When I first proposed this trailhead concept three years ago, another recurring comment was about the additional half-mile it would add to the Vista Ridge trail, a popular access route to the Timberline Trail. It’s a fair concern, and as a 64-year-old who also uses this trail regularly, I appreciate the significance to many hikers of the distance it would add.

So, why did I come up with this concept, then? In the end, it’s a tradeoff. We need a solution to what has become an unworkable degree of overcrowding at the existing trailhead, and I don’t see a way to solve that at existing trailhead site, given the steep terrain. After all, it only was built to serve as a logging spur, not a parking lot.

Thus, the proposed move downhill to the nearest flat spot, and one that has already been impacted by logging. As roads go, this section is also exceptionally scenic, making it a great candidate for conversion. Add the possibility of converting that half-mile of road to become an accessible trail so folks with limited mobility might also enjoy a spectacular mountain trail experience – people who are unable to hike three miles uphill to the Timberline Trail? That could be the best argument of all for moving ahead with this concept.

Early snow on the mountain in 2023 from the talus viewpoint along the Vista Ridge road – let’s make this a premier accessible trail destination!

Finally, where would the money come from in this weird time of federal chaos? That part is easier than you might expect. While the current administration has done its best to slow-walk or cancel funding that Congress passed in a series of massive COVID-era infrastructure bills, the fact is, much funding has been authorized for projects like this. These funds may be bottled right now, but they will eventually become available to our federal land agencies.

Now is the time to be creative and dream a little – and thus this article to refresh and put an updated face on an idea whose time has come.

Thanks for reading this far!

As always, I hope to see you on the trail sometime!

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Tom Kloster | October 2026

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Postscript: this article was edited to better clarify that my use of AI tools on will be strictly limited to creating illustrative graphics, not to create or enhance photos. I’ll be adding a more detailed explanation in the “About the Photos” section of the blog, but my plan going forward is to an AI watermark to graphics using the technology.

10 Years After the Dollar Lake Fire

November 18, 2022 / Tom Kloster / 1 Comment

The Dollar Lake Fire at its peak in early September 2011

On August 26, 2011, a lightning storm ignited a small wildfire near Inspiration Point, just below the Elk Cove Trail on Mount Hood’s north side. What became known as the Dollar Lake Fire started in full view on a Friday, during the busy summer hiking season. The fire was immediately photographed and reported to the Forest Service by several hikers – and in full view from the Hood River Ranger Station near Parkdale, a few miles north.

The initial Forest Service response was to allow the fire to burn, consistent with agency policy on wildland fires. It seemed to be a small, slow-moving event, and it was located completely within the boundaries of the Mount Hood Wilderness, where no structures would be threatened. Besides, there were several other big fires burning in Oregon that summer already competing for the agency’s stretched resources.

Forests exploding into flames near Vista Ridge as the Dollar Lake Fire moved west

Over the next ten days everything changed. Unseasonably strong east winds began to fan the blaze, exploding the fire to more than 4,500 acres. And it was still spreading fast, with just 10 percent of the fire perimeter contained. As the fire continued to spread, it made a run toward Lolo Pass, threatening the Bonneville Power Administration transmission corridor and Portland’s Bull Run Watershed – the source of drinking water for more than a million people.

Suddenly, it had become the top firefighting priority in the state. At its peak there were hundreds of firefighters battling the Dollar Lake Fire as it continued to burn and spread westward.

By the time the fall rains arrived that October, the fire had consumed more than 6,300 acres of subalpine forest in a 5-mile swath stretching from the historic Cloud Cap Inn on the east to Cathedral Ridge on the west. The historic Timberline Trail was largely spared, surprisingly, but much of the high elevation forest just below the tree line was completely burned. These forests were dominated by Mountain Hemlock, Noble Fir and Western Larch stands that had last burned more than a century ago.

Dollar Lake Fire from above the Hood River Valley in early September 2011

Like the Eagle Creek Fire that would follow in 2017, the Dollar Lake Fire provided a front-row seat for people in the greater Portland area to better appreciate the awesome power of a wildfire. Much of the media coverage focused on the destructive force of these fires, but in the aftermath, both events have also served to raise awareness of both the need and benefits of fire, as well as the resiliency of a recovering forest.

In 2016 I posted this 5-year progress report on the forest recovery in the wake of the Dollar Lake Fire. At the time, the recovery was in its earliest stages, though making remarkable progress. The past summer marks the tenth growing season since the fire, and this article is a visual update on the ongoing forest recovery in the wake of the fire.

The recovery has come a long, long way…

Charred forests along Vista Ridge in June 2012

When I first ventured into the burn zone in June 2012, the devastation seemed nearly complete. Much of the Dollar Lake Fire had been a scorching crown fire that killed entire forests, as opposed to a beneficial ground fire that might have burned away forest debris, but left many of the mature trees surviving. As a result, there is little of the desirable “mosaic” burn pattern in the Dollar Lake burn, where islands of trees spared by the fire help spur the forest recovery and provide refuge for wildlife during the burn – another beneficial effect of a less catastrophic fire.

Bark piles forming one year after the fire in 2012

Living conifers don’t really burn in a high-intensity event like the Dollar Lake Fire. Instead, they’re quickly killed, but mostly left standing. The heat of the fire torches green needles, blackens tree bark and explodes the thin, moist cambium layer under their bark — the living tissue that connects a tree’s roots to its green foliage — but leaves the solid interior of a tree unburned.

This effect of a very hot fire could be seen all over the ground in the immediate aftermath of the fire in 2012. Great piles of scorched tree bark had sluffed off the standing trees, no longer attached by a living cambium layer. Early in the recovery, these bark piles were crucial in helping prevent erosion of the bare, burned ground, and also provided the first protected spots for pioneer seedling to take hold.

The ground itself was also scorched and black, but even in that first spring after the fire it was clear that some of the understory plants had survived. Thanks to their protected underground root systems., Beargrass and Avalanche Lily were already sprouting from the burnt soil just eight months after the fire.

Beargrass emerging from the blackened soil in June 2012

Avalanche lilies emerging from the burned forest in June 2012

In the first year after the fire, the bare, de-barked snags of trees killed by the fire were a striking reddish color, but just one summer of sun exposure quickly began to fade them into the silver “ghost forest” of today. A full decade of harsh mountain weather has since removed many of the smaller limbs from the standing “ghosts” and as their roots decay with time, many of the killed trees are now falling. This growing accumulation of downed logs adds still more organic debris to the burned ground, and provides shade and nutrients to help young plants to germinate and grow.

At 10 years the post-fire pioneers are still at work

As the Dollar Lake Fire recovery progressed over the past ten summers, a familiar sequence unfolded in the most intensely burned areas, where the fire had burned to bare soil. Pink, abundant Firestar (aka Fireweed) [add a blog link here] was the first to reseed into the burn area. The surviving Avalanche Lilies also took advantage of cleared soil, and within just a few years these tiny plants were creating a spectacular flower show for early summer visitors to the Dollar Lake burn.

This intensely burned ravine along Vista Ridge was filled with Firestar in the first years after the fire, but has not transitioned to shrubby understory plants, a few small conifers and sun-loving perennials Pearly everlasting and Goldenrod

In the first summer (2012) after the fire, only a few Avalanche Lilies grew in this section of the burn. Five years after the fire (2016) Firestar dominated this area with its lush foliage and beautiful blooms, growing as much as 4 feet tall. Ten growing seasons after the fire (2022) shows the transition from the early post-fire pioneers like Firestar, to shrubby plants like Huckleberry and Azalea, with many 2 or 3-foot tall confers mixed in.

Next, conifers and shrubby plants began to appear, and they have steadily expanded their presence to dominate the areas where the recovery has made the most progress. In other areas – especially at higher elevations in the burn zone – the pioneering Firestar still dominates, and small conifers and shrubby understory plants are only beginning to appear, yet these slower areas are following the same succession pattern from wildflowers to young trees and shrubs.

Huckleberries growing from surviving roots in a heavily burned area five years after the fire

Heading into the recovery, a surprising number of mountain Huckleberry plants that had dominated the understory before the fire were emerging from their unburned roots. After ten years, familiar thickets of Huckleberry are already producing heavy berry crops in places where the fire burned less hot. However, outside these less-burned areas new Huckleberry plants have been slow to take hold, and are only just beginning to appear, despite their prolific fruit production and subsequent distribution of seeds by bird and other wildlife.

It turns out that Huckleberries spread mostly by layering – the term for roots that form when a sprawling branch or twig touches the ground, starting a new plant that will eventually grow separately from the parent. It’s a slower process than spreading by seed, but the post-fire recovery of Huckleberries is revealing the advantages of a deeply rooted plant that can readily regrow from its many sprawling, rooted stems.

Huckleberries bounced back quickly in lightly burned areas, producing fruit within five years of the fire

They don’t produce a tasty fruit like Huckleberry, but our native Azalea (and its lookalike, False Azalea) have also bounced back strongly in areas where the fire was less hot, allowing more of their roots to survive. Before the burn, these plants were one of the most prolific understory shrubs, often mixed in with Huckleberries. But while Huckleberries are beginning to take hold in more intensely burned areas, thanks to their broad seed distribution, few Azalea (and False Azalea) have appeared in these areas at this point in the recovery.

Azalea returning in a lightly burned area five years after the fire

In the early years of the recovery, Firestar dominated the entire burn and formed spectacular drifts with its elegant, violet flower spikes. Firestar are sun-loving perennials that grow readily from seeds carried in the wind on silky sails, and thus their ability to rapidly colonize a burn in the years immediately following a fire.

After ten growing seasons, Firestar continue to dominate higher elevations in the burn, where the summers are shorter and the forest recovery is slower. At lower elevations in the burn, the shade these plants initially provided for other seedlings has allowed a diverse array of other understory plants to become established and thrive, largely replacing Firestar. These are workhorse plants that are essential to post-fire recovery, yet their role is a fleeting one.

Firestar was everywhere in the early years of the forest recovery

Firestar still carpets the higher elevation ghost forests of the Dollar Lake burn where the recovery is unfolding more slowly

One of the less obvious pioneers of the early recovery are Rushes. Normally associated with wet areas, they were a surprising piece of the forest recovery puzzle when they appeared scattered throughout the burn in the first years. These are perennials with tough root systems that help hold bare soil and also make them somewhat drought tolerant.

Rush

Were Rushes growing here before the fire, and simply emerged from surviving roots after the burn, just as some of the Beargrass that survived? That’s probably the best explanation, but Rushes are one of the surprising early workhorses in the recovery that continue to be thrive as part of the recovering forest.

Berries are among the new arrivals

After ten growing seasons, the recovery in the aftermath of the Dollar Lake Fire has entered an explosive new phase. The diversity of plant species in the regenerating understory is rapidly expanding to include a surprising variety of new shrubs and small deciduous trees that are taking hold among the surviving huckleberries and azaleas.

Among the new arrivals are five new berry-bearing shrubs and small trees, including (pictured below, in order) our native Wild raspberry, Mountain ash, Thimbleberry, Red-flowering currant and Red Elderberry. Add these to the freely fruiting Huckleberries, and the recovering burn has become a summer magnet for birds, bears and other wildlife that thrive on our native berries. These animals, in turn, spread the seeds from these berries, further accelerating the forest recovery.

Wild raspberry

Mountain ash

Thimbleberry

Red-flowering currant

Red elderberry

Broadleaf trees are also making a comeback in the burn zone, though they tend to be scattered and still somewhat uncommon at this stage of the recovery. Among these are Scouler’s willow, Cottonwood and the subalpine Sitka alder – three species that typically colonize forest openings and mountain roadsides where they have access to sun.

Within the burn zone, Scouler’s willow and Sitka alder can thrive all the way to timberline (at 6,000 feet), while Black cottonwood typically grow below about 5,000. These species are likely to expand their presence in coming years, as they are fast-growing pioneers that can outpace young conifers, and often fill recently burned or cleared areas in the first decades of recovery.

Scouler’s willow

Young Cottonwood seedling

Cottonwood foliage

Sitka alder

This natural progression from deciduous trees to conifers in recovering forests is purposely skipped over in most commercial logging operations on both public and private timber lands. Timber companies typically use herbicides to kill the surviving understory in the first growing season following a new clearcut, including deciduous trees like these. Then conifer seedlings are planted to accelerate the production of new saw logs.

While this practice maximizes profits, but it also robs the soil of years of organic debris from deciduous trees, along with the nitrogen that species like Red alder uniquely fix in the soil with their root systems, enriching it for future, larger conifers to thrive. New research has also revealed that Red alder and other nitrogen-fixing deciduous species actually break down solid rock into available minerals for other tree species to absorb, including the conifers that typically follow Red alder in forest recovery. This newly understood benefit of the deciduous phase of forest recovery is especially crucial in our mountain forests, where soils are thin and rocky.

Wildflowers continue to expand their role, too

Wildflowers were the first pioneers to the burn, and they continue to play an important role in the recovery. After ten growing seasons, the list of prominent wildflowers in the burn has expanded from Avalanche Lily, Beargrass and Firestar to include many new species. The most prominent among the new arrivals are Goldenrod and Pearly everlasting. Both are late-blooming, sun-loving and drought tolerant species that are now thriving and spreading throughout the burn.

Goldenrod

Other new wildflower arrivals include purple Asters and several species of Lupine. These are sun-lovers that were not present in shade of the forest before the burn. Their arrival shows the ability of plants to reseed across miles of burned forest with the help of birds, other wildlife and hiker’s boots. Over time (as measured in decades) returning conifers will shade these slopes, once again, and these wildflowers will fade away, ceding the burn area to more shade-tolerant species, once again.

Aster

Dwarf lupine

A new forest is emerging… slowly

The mystique of replanting burned areas runs deep in Oregon lore, with Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) crews replanting burns throughout Oregon in the 1930s and school kids from Portland helping replant the infamous Tillamook Burn – a series of four large, overlapping burns in the Coast Range that stretched from 1933 to 1951. As it is today on private timber lands, the focus then was on salvaging burned trees and planting conifer seedlings to produce new, harvestable trees as quickly as possible.

Colony of Noble fir seedlings growing in a protected enclosure of fallen logs on Vista Ridge

In nature, conifers do readily reseed after fires and logging, but compared to understory plants capable of regrowing from surviving roots, conifer seedlings are initially slow to compete. They’re also vulnerable to the harsh conditions in mountain settings – long, cold winters with a snowpack measured in feet followed by very dry summers with almost no precipitation from July through September.

At ten years, the Dollar Fire recovery includes plenty of young conifers, though most are still just a foot tall and less than five years old. Few of these seedlings will survive to become large trees. The lucky few that do are typically found in protected spots – in the shade of standing snags or among fallen, decaying logs that provide shade and nutrients.

Noble fir seedlings growing along a fallen log, where their roots are shaded and the log helps conserve soil moisture and provides nutrients as it slowly decays

Noble fir seedings huddled on the cool, shaded north side of standing ghost trees

The clumping of young conifers is a preview of what is to come in the recovery. Walk through a 30 or 40-year-old burn and you will find trees growing in groups, providing protection for one another and sharing the best spots for young trees to grow. Over decades, these groups will expand and grow together, forming a continuous stand. Over centuries, just a few of these original trees will survive to become forest giants.

Mixed colony of Mountain hemlock and Noble fir competing in a favorable nursery spot among fallen logs

The small grove of Noble fir in the distance survived the fire, and now these trees protect one another in their suddenly exposed setting. In the coming decades, more colonies of young trees like these will begin to reforest the Dollar Lake burn – first in small groups and later spreading to once again form a continuous canopy

In the first years of the recovery, young conifers in the Dollar Lake burn were mostly Mountain hemlock and Noble fir, two species that dominate subalpine forests on Mount Hood. But at ten years, the recovery includes a couple new species in the mix: Lodgepole pine and Western white pine.

Both pines are common trees in our mountain forests, though with different growth habits. Lodgepole tend to grow in stands, often in dry, rocky sites. Western white pine rarely grow in stands, and are instead sprinkled throughout a mature forest. Both species bring diversity to the emerging forest that underscores the benefit of periodic fires in our forest ecosystem.

Two pines are returning to the burn – Western white pine (left) and the more common Lodgepole pine (right).

All of the photos in this article were taken along the Vista Ridge Trail in the Mount Hood Wilderness, a route the climbs through the heart of the Dollar Lake burn, from about the 4,000-foot level to the Timberline Trail, at about 6,000 feet elevation. This is prime Noble fir country, but at lower elevations in the burn, conifers like Western larch are an important part of the forest recovery. Oddly missing (thus far) at the lower elevations of the burn are Douglas fir. In time, this iconic species will undoubtedly join the rest of the evergreens re-establishing the forest here.

Why is tree species diversity so important in a forest? While it’s true that we have many ancient stands that are largely of a single species, climate change will almost certainly affect the recovery of the Dollar Fire burn. The recent fires on Mount Hood and in the Gorge will give us a living laboratory to see just how individual species fare with longer, warmer summers and milder winters. The new watch word in climate science is resiliency – the ability to adapt and survive in rapidly changing conditions.

For our forests, species resiliency will be the key, as our climate is expected to change too quickly for individual species to adapt to through natural selection. Instead, it will be the species already suited to warmer, dryer conditions that will be able to survive and thrive in the future. The best guess in the Pacific Northwest is that our climate zones will shift north by a few hundred miles. That could mean Portland someday having a climate like today’s Roseburg or Medford, with Mount Hood’s forests someday looking more like today’s Southern Oregon Cascades.

The roles are reversed in this Cascade forest, located 300 miles south of Mount Hood at about 5,000 elevation; Lodgepole pine are the predominant species, with young Noble fir and Mountain hemlock sprinkled within the Lodgepole stands. The debris piles are part of a fuel reduction effort in this forest near Crater Lake.

Forest scientists are already experimenting with this possibility by planting test stands of Southern Oregon forest species in British Columbia, hundreds of miles north of their native latitude. The larger question is whether whole forests will adapt this way over time through gradual migration, or whether it will up to individual species to quickly select more drought-tolerant mutations in their gene pool – a proposition that will centuries to play out.

In the meantime, some tree species already present on Mount Hood are already poised to gradually assume a larger role in the forest of the future.

Today, Lodgepole pine are mostly found in scattered groves near rocky outcroppings and on dry slopes on Mount Hood, but the species still dominates areas where the volcanic eruptions of the late 1700s laid down deep layers of debris in the White River, Zigzag and Sandy River valleys. While they may look young, these are often very old trees, stunted by their harsh growing conditions.

Stunted, slow-growing lodgepole pine are still the dominant conifer some 200 years after the Old Maid eruptions laid down deep gravel deposits on the floor of the Sandy River canyon

Newly forming soils are thin at Old Maid Flat, revealed by shallow-rooted Lodgepole that are easily tipped in winter storms

Just five inches in diameter, this stunted Lodgepole at Old Maid Flat was over 75 years old when it was felled for firewood

Lodgepole are well-adapted to these sandy, nutrient-poor soils. After more than two centuries, other conifer species are only beginning to appear in these Lodgepole stands. These slowly recovering forests may be a preview of how future burns will recover in Mount Hood’s future.

In this way, having a few Lodgepole pine and Western white pine join the recovering forest mix as part of the Dollar Fire recovery is a good insurance policy, should the Noble fir and Mountain hemlock forests that once stood here struggle to thrive in a changing climate.

What’s next for the Dollar Lake Fire recovery?

While much has changed in just ten growing seasons, the forest recovery from the Dollar Lake Fire has only begun. The lives of our big trees and mature forests evolve over centuries, not in the few decades of a human life. Everyone reading this article will be long gone when the forests here look anything like they did before the fire, though we will witness the earliest stages of a new forest forming.

Hikers in the ghost forests on Vista Ridge in August 2022

We’re accustomed to pushing our forests to grow on our terms for maximum profit – mass replanting of marketable conifers and skipping over the initial recovery of understory plants and deciduous trees by aggressive use of herbicides. Like most of our forest practices centered on log production, we’re now learning that nature knows how to do this better than we ever will, and in ways we’re still just beginning to understand.

On Mount Hood, nature has been given the opportunity to recover on her own terms where the Dollar Fire roared through, without logging and plantation planting. This is because much of the burn had been set aside as an expansion of the Mount Hood Wilderness just two years before the fire, in 2009. Thus, no rush to “salvage” burned trees by the timber industry. Instead, the slow-motion recovery of the forest, as it has done countless times before over the millennia.

Fallen logs within the Mount Hood Wilderness must be cleared with hand tools

Though the Dollar Lake Fire was caused by lightning, most of the intense fires we have seen on Mount Hood, in the Gorge and around Oregon over the past two decades are a product of human carelessness. The large majority of forest fires are human-caused, in fact, and made more catastrophic by fuels built up from 120 years of fire suppression and our warming, drying climate.

It’s safe to assume this is the “new normal”, too, and thus the importance of understanding how our forests recover after these events – and most importantly, turning our attention to the future, when conditions favoring these fires will be increasingly common. The good news is that nature is remarkably resilient, especially when we don’t get in the way. We’re seeing that unfold in just a decade of recovery across the Dollar Lake burn.

As the forest recovery continues to evolve, there will be plenty of changes for those who walk the trails on Mount Hood, too. We have already entered a phase of the recovery where the shrubby understory has begun to return with gusto at lower elevations. This is going to mean lots of brushing by hand to keep once-shady trails open, along with ongoing logouts for snags that will drop across trails for decades to come. It’s hard work, but also rewarding – and a another way to better understand how the forest is recovering.

Hand-sawed log among more than 70 cleared by Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO) crews in 2020

Most of this trail maintenance on the Vista Ridge trail is done by volunteers with Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO). In 2020 and 2021, alone, TKO’s volunteer sawyers cut through nearly 100 fallen logs along this trail with crosscut saws – a requirement inside the wilderness area, where mechanized equipment is not permitted. Brushing will also be done by volunteers for the foreseeable future, by hand with clippers and loppers.

If you’d like to lend a hand you can watch the TKO events calendar. You can find more information about TKO events here:

Trailkeepers of Oregon (TKO)

One-day trail parties on Vista Ridge and other trails within the Dollar Lake burn are scheduled every summer, usually from mid-July through September. No experience is needed and all abilities are welcome – the only requirement is a desire to give back!

2018 Mount Hood National Park Calendar!

December 24, 2017December 25, 2017 / Tom Kloster / 4 Comments

Mount Hood’s imposing west face is featured on the cover

[click here for a large image]

Each year since the Mount Hood National Park Campaign began in 2004, I’ve published a wall calendar to celebrate the many reasons why Mount Hood and the Columbia River Gorge should be our next national park. You can pick up this year’s calendar here:

2018 Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar

The monthly layout remains the same as last year, with a classic “grid” design that serves nicely as a working calendar for kitchens or offices. The finished calendar hangs 14 inches wide by 22 inches tall, with a white wire binding, and the print quality of the photos is excellent!

00bSamplePage

In the past I’ve used calendar sales help cover some of the modest costs of keeping the campaign website and WyEast blog up and running, but beginning this year I will shift to sending all proceeds to Trailkeepers of Oregon, and in turn, TKO’s coming efforts to help recover our Columbia River Gorge trails from the impacts of the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire.

The great thing about putting these calendars together is that it ensures I continue exploring new places in the gorge and on the mountain, as each calendar consists exclusively of photos I’ve taken over the previous year. In this year’s calendar article, I’ll provide some of the stories behind the photos in the new Mount Hood National Park Campaign Calendar — sort of a visual year-in-review!

The WyEast Year in Images

The following is a rundown of the 12 images inside the calendar by month, with a link to a large version of each image, too (you can see them by clicking the link beneath each preview image).

The 2018 calendar begins with the cover image (at the top of the article), featuring the steep Sandy Headwall on Mount Hood’s imposing west face. This is the view Portlanders have of their mountain from afar, but a close-up look from along the Timberline Trail reveals the crevassed Sandy and Reid glaciers tumbling down the slopes and the deep Muddy Fork canyon, almost directly below. This is Mount Hood’s “tallest” side, with a vertical rise of more than 7,000 feet from the Muddy Fork valley floor to the 11,250-foot summit.

The January image in the new calendar features a chilly Cold Spring Creek on Mount Hood’s east slope:

Cold Spring Creek in Winter

[click here for a large image]

Only a few years ago, the snowshoe hike along Cold Spring Creek to Tamanawas Falls was completely off the radar for most, but in recent years its popularity has soared, and the trailhead is now packed on winter weekends.

One twist this year was a Forest Service noticed tacked up at the trailhead:

Hmm…

As it turned out, what apparently was a difficult rock fall to negotiate over the summer was much easier to travel with a couple feet of snow covering the debris. The rocks fell in a section of canyon just below the falls that experienced an enormous cliff collapse in the early 2000s, and continues to be active.

For February, I selected a photo from a near-perfect winter day in the upper White River Canyon, along the popular Boy Scout Ridge snowshoe route:

Upper White River Canyon

[click here for a large image]

The day began with clear blue skies, which is glorious, of course, but not so great for photography. After reaching a favorite viewpoint in the upper canyon, though, bands of clouds began floating in, making for some memorable scenes of a cloud-framed mountain. The photo below was taken on the way out that day, as evening shadows began to stretch across the lower canyon.

White River and Mount Hood

[click here for a large image]

As covered in previous articles, fire in the Columbia River Gorge is as much a part of the ecology as the trees, themselves. But if you had told me the extent of the Eagle Creek Fire last spring, I wouldn’t have believed you.

For hikers, it’s almost like the Eagle Creek Fire was connecting dots among favorite Columbia River Gorge beauty spots, with only a few of the iconic waterfalls that make the Oregon side of the Gorge famous escaping the flames. So, even knowing and accepting that fire is a necessary and beneficial part of the ecosystem still doesn’t blunt the harsh reality that this fire felt personal. And it’s going to take awhile to heal.

As the fire raged west toward Portland last September, my immediate thought was Tanner Creek, the next drainage to the west of Eagle Creek and directly in the path of the inferno. If I had to pick a spot that embodies almost everything that defines the Columbia River Gorge, Tanner Creek’s lower canyon is it, culminating with spectacular Wahclella Falls.

This canyon is as fine a temple as nature can create, and it’s a sanctuary I visit many times each year. This is my most treasured place in the Gorge… and now I wondered “Would it burn?”

Wahclella Falls on Tanner Creek

[click here for a large image]

Waterfall enthusiasts visiting the altar at Wahclella Falls last spring

I didn’t know the answer to that question until a week or two ago, when I came upon some aerial photos of the Gorge taken sometime this fall. My scientific acceptance — embrace, in fact — of fire in our forests aside, I was selfishly relieved to see that the deep gorge surrounding Wahclella Falls had somehow been missed by the fire. Or had simply resisted it.

This photo shows Wahclella Falls and its iconic grove of Western Red Cedar mostly intact, though much of the surrounding Tanner Creek canyon was severely burned:

Wahclella Falls after the fire

Wahclella Falls is at the bottom of the photo, and Tanner Creek’s lesser-known upper gorge and the string of waterfalls that continue above Wahclella Falls can also be seen in this view. This is a place where I hope to see a trail, someday. Maybe in the destruction of the forest we’ll see new trails to places like this, where we take in new sights while also watching our Gorge recover?

For the March image, I selected another Gorge waterfall. This is the last in a string of waterfalls on Moffett Creek, located immediately to the west of Tanner, Creek. This falls is generally known as Moffett Creek Falls or simply Moffett Falls:

Moffett Falls

[click here for a large image]

This waterfall is off-trail, and requires walking a mile or so up the streambed of Moffett Creek to reach it. I first visited this falls in the early 1980s, and have returned several times over the years. Sometime in the late 1980s or early 1990s, a massive rock fall occurred here, and completely changed the landscape below the falls and the canyon slopes to the west.

Before the fire, the scene was already one of recovering forests, with young groves of Red Alder flanking the falls and lining the rearranged creek for 100 yards downstream. The Eagle Creek fire was just the most recent calamity to sweep through this spot, and such is the dynamic, often cataclysmic nature of the Columbia River Gorge.

Snowdrifts on Moffett Creek in mid-April!

Our trip last April was complicated by an extremely late snowpack, following a very wet and snowy winter in the Gorge. The canyon, itself, was a tangle of downfall from the harsh winter, making it a rough trip compared to previous years.

How did the fire affect Moffett Falls? Much more significantly than Wahclella Falls, on nearby Tanner Creek. Like Tanner Creek, Moffett Creek is located just west of Eagle Creek and was in the direct path of the fire during its most explosive, early phase. As this aerial photo taken sometime this fall shows, the entire forest around Moffett Falls appears to have been killed by the flames:

04cMoffettFalls

Someday, I hope to see a trail to Moffett Creek’s waterfalls, too. Who knows, maybe the changes wrought by the fire will allow the Forest Service to consider that possibility? It turns out this idea isn’t new, at all. In fact, it was proposed in January 1916, when the brand new (now historic) Columbia River Highway was about to open:

Excerpt from The Oregonian (January 30, 1916)

Map excerpt from The Oregonian showing the proposed Moffett Creek Trail (January 30, 1916)

More about that trail concept, and the need for a long-term trail plan for the Gorge in a future article…!

Did you know that today’s Silver Creek State Park has been proposed to become a national monument or park at least a couple of times in the past? It makes sense, given the spectacular concentration of waterfalls within this beautiful preserve, and especially with the legacy of trails and lodges left by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during their 1930s heyday. Many believe it to be a national park or monument today!

With this in mind, I selected a scene from a May visit to Silver Creek’s North Fork as a reminder that there are more than simply the show-stopper waterfalls to this amazing place:

North Fork Silver Creek

[click here for a large image]

While our current regime in Washington D.C. is more focused on tearing away protections from our public in order to sell our resources off to corporate interests at bargain prices, it’s also true that the exploitation/conservation pendulum in our country swings both ways.

In some ways, the outrageous anti-environment, anti-science and anti-public lands extremism we’re seeing with the Trump administration has already kicked off a counter-movement. It can’t come soon enough, and hopefully you’ve joined in the opposition, too.

Misty Silver Creek Forest

Someday, when the pendulum does swing, Silver Creek would make an excellent unit of a future Mount Hood National Park. Why? Because the current park contains just a small slice of Silver Creek’s larger ecosystem, and today’s beautiful scenes of waterfalls and mossy glades are increasingly threatened by upstream development and industrial-scale logging. Watch for a future article on this topic, too!

While on the subject of threatened places, the June image in the 2018 calendar captures another such spot on the other side of Mount Hood: Bald Butte, located along the east wall of the Hood River Valley:

Mount Hood in late May from Bald Butte’s sprawling meadows

[click here for a large image]

This lovely butte rises directly above the Hood River Ranger Station, so close that Forest Service workers can enjoy the expansive wildflower spectacle from their offices, about a mile-and-a-half away as the crow flies, and some 2,200 vertical feet below.

You’d think being at the Forest Service’s front door would give pause to those who view our public lands as their personal playground to destroy. But Hood River County has a lot of off-highway vehicle (OHV) enthusiasts, and some in that community make a point of illegally driving their jeeps, quads and dirt bikes up the fragile slopes of Bald Butte — despite prominent signage prohibiting their use and periodic efforts to block them.

This is an ongoing battle with rogues that will someday be won, but it will take the OHV community policing itself to make the change happen. There will never be enough Forest Service crews to fill that void.

Growing OHV damage to Bald Butte

How bad it is? Well, the old lookout track that serves as the hikers trail to the summit has become deeply rutted by illegal jeep and motorcycle users, which in turn, has inspired them to form parallel tracks on the open wildflower slopes (above). It will take decades for the damage to recover, even if the law breakers were stopped today.

Meanwhile, dirt bikers have hauled in chainsaws in order to carve new trails through the forests on the east slopes of Bald Butte. It’s not a pretty picture, and so far, nobody in the OHV community seems to be stepping up to confront the lawlessness.

Dirt bike tracks don’t lie…

The Forest Service has indicated an interest to work with trail organizations (like TKO) to step up the efforts to keep OHV vandals out of Bald Butte, but in the meantime, they’re doing a lot of damage — which, in turn, is a black eye for anyone who enjoys using OHVs responsibly. Let’s hope they will join in the effort to protect Bald Butte, too.

For more about Bald Butte, and comparison photos that show the rapid progression of the OHV damage there, please see this earlier article on the blog – you can read it here.

For the July calendar image, I picked this 3-part composite of the Muddy Fork and Mount Hood. Look closely and you can see the series of towering waterfalls that drop from the hanging valleys on Yocum Ridge, in upper right. This is one of Mount Hood’s most rugged and untamed spots:

Mount Hood’s Muddy Fork canyon

[click here for a large image]

Though we had a decent snowpack in the Cascades in 2017, it melted fast when summer arrived, and many trails on Mount Hood’s west slopes were opening by late June. So, when college friends David and Robin, from Colorado, called to say they would be in Portland and wanted to spend a day on the mountain, the hike to the Muddy Fork Crossing was the perfect choice!

Old friends and The Mountain

It turned out to be a bluebird day, but what I found most interesting as we caught up on our parallel lives was their reaction to being in Pacific Northwest alpine country, again. Though David grew up here, he still marveled at the magnificence of our forests, especially the huge Noble fir groves we passed through, and Robin was especially taken with the amount of water, everywhere!

It was a timely reminder for me to never take our unique ecosystems for granted. Colorado has more big peaks than most any state of the country, but we are unique in our abundance or water and the verdant landscape it brings, from our rainforests, streams and lakes to the glaciers that hang from our peaks.

As we head into the uncertainty of climate change in coming decades, we’ll need to learn to view these seemingly abundant resources as precious and threatened, and no longer something to take for granted.

Finally!

Another surprise along the hike was a new sign — finally! — marking the well-trod “cut off” that shortcuts the Timberline Trail where Bald Mountain (not to be confused with Bald Butte) meets McGee Ridge. I’m sure there was some official slight-of-hand required for the Forest Service to post this junction, as it is simply a user trail, and thus unsanctioned. But it’s a good call that will help hikers better negotiate the maze of trails in this area.

For August, I selected a photo from a favorite meadow perched along a ridge I call the White River Rim. A fragile island of Whitebark Pine, Mountain Hemlock and Subalpine Fir groves grow here, hemmed in on both sides by deep, perpetually eroding canyons of loose sand and boulder.

Lupine fields on the White River Rim

[click here for a large image]

To the east of the rim is a maze of deep ravines that make up the White River Canyon. As the White River continues to cut into the loose volcanic slopes, here, whole sections of the ridge-top forests and wildflower meadows perched on the rim slide into the canyon.

The Salmon River is gradually eroding the rim from the west, as well, though less voraciously than the White River. In some spots, the flat ridge top is just a few feet wide, and losing ground fast. This is one of the most dynamic areas on the mountain.

The image below is also from along the rim above the White River, looking south and away from the mountain. This view captures the skeleton of a magnificent Mountain Hemlock and its still-surviving grove companions:

Sentinel Whitepark Pine on the White River Rim

[click here for a large image]

Mountain Hemlock often growth in tight, circular groves, and I suspect botanists will someday discover that these groves communicate in some way as part of their collective strategy for survival, just as Douglas Fir are now known to communicate. Forest ecologist Suzanne Simard summed it us this way:

“I wondered, could Douglas fir recognize its own kin, like mama grizzly and her cub? So we set about an experiment, and we grew mother trees with kin and stranger’s seedlings. And it turns out they do recognize their kin.

“Mother trees colonize their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. When mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages of wisdom on to the next generation of seedlings.

“So we’ve used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighboring seedlings, not only carbon but also defense signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those seedlings to future stresses. So trees talk.”

Botanists once viewed a dying or dead tree in a grove like this as one whose biomass had grown too large to support in drought periods, but could another explanation be that the larger tree simply opted to turn over the future of the grove to its younger siblings? We still have so much to learn from our forests…

The September image in the new calendar captures an intersection of three threads of good fortune: an afternoon away form work to visit the mountain, clear weather after an early autumn snowstorm and moonrise over Illumination Saddle, the narrow ridge that connect Illumination Rock to the main summit ridges of Mount Hood.

Moonrise over Illumination Saddle

[click here for a large image]

Time off from work on a clear autumn day was by design, but the moonrise was pure luck. While there are web tools for figuring out celestial paths from any point on the ground, I do confess that I’m not likely to use them. I simply sat at a favorite spot on the summit of Bald Mountain (not Bald Butte!) for an hour or so, waiting for the sunset, and was suddenly treated to the moon emerging over the saddle as an unexpected surprise!

So, why not use the modern tools? Partly, it just seems like a chore in what should be an enjoyable hobby. But I’d also be turning what was a wonderful surprise into one more thing to worry about — and that’s not why I head into the woods, after all. There’s something to be said for turning over the keys to Mother Nature, right?

And on that point, perhaps the best memory from that cold evening on Bald Mountain last fall was watching the sun set through the trees on the hike back down through the ancient Noble Fir forest.

Winter sunset in the Noble forest

This grove of 300-year old giants somehow escaped the chainsaws when the Clear Fork valley, below, was logged in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. It remains as a rare reminder of what used to be — and what will be again, if we allow it.

For the October image, fall colors were in order, and with the Gorge trails mostly closed by the Eagle Creek Fire, I headed south to Butte Creek, located just north of Silver Falls State Park in the Santiam State Forest. I picked a serene scene along the creek…

Butte Creek in autumn

[click here for a large image]

…though this peaceful spot is just 100 yards or so above Butte Creek Falls, which was raging that day, after a series of Pacific fronts had rolled through.

Butte Creek Falls is among my favorites, anywhere, and I’ve included it in past calendars. So, thus the quieter stream scene for 2018, but here’s a look at the high water at the falls that day:

Butte Creek Falls

[click here for a large image]

Even more than nearby Silver Falls State Park, the Butte Creek canyon (and its twin, Abiqua Creek, just over the ridge) is in desperate need of a better management vision, and would make for an excellent extension of a future Mount Hood National Park. More about that in a future article, as well..!

Though I’ve hiked the short loop trail at Butte Creek many times, the fire in the Gorge had forest ecology and the role of fire in my mind on this visit, and noticed a small army of “legacy trees” throughout the rainforest here.

The skeletons of Butte Creek’s “legacy trees” are hiding in plain sight

These ancient stumps and snags are from the last big fire to come through the area are called “legacy trees” for the benefits they bring from the old forest to the new. This area likely burned more than a century ago, yet the skeletons of the old forest still serve a crucial role in the health of the new forest.

As they slowly decay, old snags and stumps provide habitat for birds and other wildlife, and once fallen, they become “nurse logs”, upon which new trees grow. They also provide nutrients to the precious mountain soil as they decay — something a log hauled off to become lumber or cardboard can never do.

For November in the new calendar, I selected an image from the upper Hood River Valley, with Mount Hood rising above fields owned by a family that has continuously farmed the valley since the 1800s. On this day in late October, the Cottonwood grove at the center of the photo was in peak form, and the fresh coat of snow on the mountain was softened by a light haze in the air from farmers burning orchard trimmings.

Upper Hood River Valley in autumn

[click here for a large image]

But this wasn’t my first attempt at the photo! As shown below, I’d stopped here a couple of weeks earlier, after another early snowfall had blanketed the mountain. At that point, the Cottonwoods were still in their summer green, but what a different two weeks makes! I’ve cropped images from both visits identically for comparison:

Hood River Valley scene in mid-October…

…and two weeks later!

Notice how much sharper the mountain was on the earlier visit? It could have been wind conditions sweeping away smoke from orchard fires that day, or perhaps the burning season hadn’t begun, yet? Nonetheless, I liked the depth created by the haze in the second view, too.

For the December image, I picked this view of Tamanawas Falls on Cold Spring Creek, captured the same day as the opening photo of the creek in the January image. This is always a magical spot, but I’ll share a couple of details about the trip that made the day memorable.

Tamanawas Falls on Cold Spring Creek

[click here for a large image]

First, it’s always an icebox in Cold Spring Canyon in winter. Why? Because the low sun angle in winter months can’t reach the canyon floor due to the steep terrain in all directions. So, while the above image looks like it was taken on an overcast day, the view straight up was of a bright blue sky.

The image below shows the cliff section where the recent rock fall occurred, and you can see that the trees on the canyon rim are basking in sun and have shed much of their snow.

Sunshine above, icebox below…

For slow shutter speed waterfall photographers (like me), this icebox canyon effect means a perpetually cold canyon in winter, but also very good photo conditions. There is one exception to the shady icebox, and that’s when the sun very briefly finds its way through the upper canyon of Cold Spring Creek and lights up the top of the falls for a few minutes. Here’s what that looked like on a trip in 2015:

Patience pays if you want to catch the winter sunburst at Tamanawas Falls!

The other story behind this photo is found in the following image. The black metal wand is actually part of a tripod leg (and possibly a piece of my pride, too) that snapped off when I took a fairly long, unscheduled slide down the ice-covered slopes near the falls that day.

Winter gear, somewhat intact…

My mistake was trying to get a little too close for a different angle on the falls, and my humility was only magnified by the fact that a young snowshoeing family watched the whole thing unfold in front of them. As I pretended to calmly fold up my mangled tripod as if it were all a planned event, I overheard their young son say to his parents “Woah! Did you see that man crash and burn??” Yes, I’m afraid everyone did..!

The Zazzle calendar format I’ve been using for the past couple of years also offer a back page, so I’ve continued to use that for wildflower photos that otherwise wouldn’t make it into the calendar.

From the top left for the 2018 calendar, reading right, they are Arrowleaf Balsamroot, Mariposa Lily, Oregon Sunshine, Bicolor Triteleia, Paintbrush, Lupine, Tiger Lily, Larkspur and Bleeding Heart:

13BackCover2018

[click here for a large image]

That’s it for the 2018 calendar, but what about the photos I couldn’t fit in..?

One that didn’t make it…

Elk Cove on Mount Hood’s north side

[click here for a large image]

I’ve made at least one trip to Elk Cove every summer for as long as I can remember, and have a particular spot that I always shoot from (though I also try new spots each year, too!). It’s a favorite scene, but has also been in many calendars in past years, so Elk Cove is taking the year off from the 2018 calendar.

But worse, it seemed like bad luck to use this photo, given the somewhat scary tumble I took on the way back to the trailhead later that day.

It began with staying too late on the mountain for that gorgeous early evening light, then getting waylaid on the way down the Vista Ridge Trail trail by (more!) plump huckleberries. I filled another water bottle, then hoofed it at high speed in the growing darkness, hoping to avoid digging that annoying headlamp out of my pack.

That was my final error. Just 3/4 mile from the trailhead, where the Vista Ridge Trail crosses a rocky, dusty section in the Dollar Lake Burn, I tripped on a particularly sneaky rock and went airborne, crashing into the base of a bleached snag. Fortunately for my head, I had put my arm out ahead of me in the fall. Unfortunately for my arm, it took the brunt of the blow.

It hurt a LOT, and I just laid there for a moment, trying to figure out if I was seriously hurt. Nope, all parts seemed to be functioning… except better my better judgment, of course!

Ridiculous… but functional!

What followed was a frantic search, first for my tripod (which I had hurled into the ravine below the trail during the fall), then in my pack for my headlamp (where WAS it?) as my right forearm ballooned up to alarming dimensions. Then came a very long 3/4 mile down the trail to the car.

Once there, I was further chagrined to see that I was, in fact, the last person on the trail that day… more humble pie on the menu! Fortunately, I wasn’t more seriously injured in the fall, or worse, knocked unconscious. Gulp. I ran through a list of the emergency supplies I keep in my pack in my mind…

Meanwhile, my bloated arm was now turning purple, so I turned an extra boot sock into a makeshift wrap and packed a couple of ice bricks from the cooler. I feared a broken arm — after all, I’d broken this arm twice as a kid (don’t ask). The long drive down the mountain was “interesting” without the benefit of an opposing thumb on my sore arm, and I let out a big sigh of relief when I finally arrived at home later that night.

The radiologist remarked on my unusually curvy bones, courtesy a pair of childhood breaks… but no break this time!

X-rays a few days later confirmed that I just had a very deep bruise (to both forearm AND pride, it turns out), and several weeks of alternating hot and cold packs followed as things gradually got back to normal.

But MORE importantly, I was able to return to the scene of the crash a couple weeks after the event and recover my tripod — yes, the tripod I purchased to replace the one I smashed at Tamanawas Falls!

Here are a couple of schematics that tell the embarrassing story:

The scene of the crash…

…and my poor tripod!

The Elk Cove trip was my most painful fiasco of 2017, but not the only one over the past summer. The other would belong to…

…an epic eclipse fiasco!

Recon data for the eclipse!

You may have heard: we experience a total eclipse in WyEast Country last August! I thought long and hard about setting up camp somewhere south of Mount Hood, in the path of totality, but having taken just one day off work, decided to avoid the predicted crowds and traffic jams (which did happen!)

Instead, I set up at my beloved Owl Point, on the north edge of the Mount Hood wilderness, and just outside the path of totality (as shown in the map, above). I’m not sure what I expected, but I came prepared with two cameras and two tripods (below) to document the scene at five-minute intervals. I left home at 5 AM and was on the trail by 7:30, anticipating great things!

Dual camera setup, weird light underway

It did turn out to be a memorable experience, but certainly not the beautiful spectacle I had imagined.

First, the strange light during the eclipse was not really pleasant — more just weird and eerie. It made sense to me later, that simply blocking out the sun mid-day would create a cast more like what we see when there’s heavy forest fire smoke in the atmosphere — harsh reddish-yellow — as opposed to the soft colors we see at sunset, when the sun’s rays are filtered through a lot more atmosphere.

I also learned what the scientists had been telling us: that even with near totality, the sun is blindingly powerful, so from this point just outside the path of totality, it was more “dimmed” than “dark” outside. That said, the birds did go quiet, as advertised. That part was surprisingly creepy.

While I plunked away at intervals with my big cameras, I also captured a few with my phone — including this panorama as totality approached. An eerie scene, yes, but what really jumped out is that I also captured the image of the sun in the lens reflections. I’ve enlarged a section, below:

Just short of totality… note the blue dots!

Close-up of blue dots reveals the to be reflections of the eclipse in the camera lens!

The following views capture the scene just before and during totality from Owl Point:

The view from Owl Point just before totality… weird!

The view from Owl Point at totality… kinda creepy!

What I found most interesting (beyond the weird colors) is that I could see the far side of the path of totality over the west shoulder of the mountain during totality. That gave me the best sense of what the event was all about, and I was glad to have experienced it, though it was definitely not what I was expecting. Just a very interesting experience.

On the way out that day in August, I took the opportunity to pick a water bottle full of plump huckleberries, and also some time to reflect on my place in the universe. I had lost a close family member in July, and a day alone on the mountain was just what I needed to sort out my feelings and replay some good memories in my mind.

Tasty consolation prize!

The mountains are great for that sort of thing, and we’re so lucky to live in a place where we have that luxury right in our backyard.

And the huckleberries? They were converted into tasty muffins the next day!

Looking ahead to 2018

I’m looking forward to posting a few more articles in the coming year than has been my recent pace. There’s a lot to cover on the WyEast beat, and I’ll be refocusing my volunteer efforts a bit more on advocacy this year, including this blog.

The Eagle Creek recovery effort will be a recurring theme, of course. There is so much to learn from the fire, and there are many crucial choices ahead for land management, too. In particular, I’ll be weighing in on a few topics that I think our non-profit advocates have a blind spot for, or perhaps are shying away from.

The author at Abiqua Falls a week or so ago…

Most importantly, I’ll spend as much time as I can out in WyEast Country, exploring, documenting and celebrating our precious public lands. As always, thanks for reading the blog, and I hope to see you out there, too!

See you on the trail in 2018!

Tom Kloster

WyEast Blog