Continued...
With the eclipse over and Mom and Ryan at the airport for their flights home,
Jackie and I said goodbye to Portland and started our drive back to California.
When we'd discussed how long we should take beforehand, she was eager to extend
it as long as possible to get some hiking in with Dad, so we set a goal of five
days though we ended up getting back a day early. We would have lots of fun (and
some moments of not-so-fun) enroute, tagging a semi-random selection of peaks
that I would pick out each day. Much of today was spent in driving south across
Oregon to get us to the OR/CA border, though not without a few detours, of
course.
Marys Peak
At just over 4,000ft, this is the Benton County highpoint and the highest point
in Oregon's coast ranges. It also sports more than 3,000ft of prominence,
placing it at #11 in the Oregon prominence list. There is a paved road that
goes nearly to the summit, making for a rather tame outing. The peak is very
popular with hikers and picnickers alike, with probably 50-60 folks visiting
during our time there. we followed soon
opened to the more and eventually to the
telecom-crowned summit in less than 20 minutes. There is
found next to the barbed-wire enclosure that houses the summit's highest point.
I went over the fence to gain this additional six inches of elevation or so,
finding the a bit disappointing. Not to be left behind,
, causing me some measure of concern, but she managed it
quite well. The views are said to be some of the best in the state but today
they were marred by that would follow us down the coast for
the next several days. The main fire was burning on the east side of the Sisters
well to the east, but the vagaries of the winds meant that the smoke would be
nearly absent one moment but thick with no visibility an hour later. To
, coastal fog blocked views of the Pacific Ocean which lies only
25mi in that direction. After to the TH we had a
adjacent to the parking lot. There
was a row of pit toilets that seemed out of place until I read that the summit
had been the site of a special eclipse viewing since it was in the path of
totality. Special permits were required to join in the fun and the number of
toilets suggested they had quite a crowd.
Wolf BM
As we continued our drive south, I kept an eye out on the GPSr for other P1K
summits we might visit without much trouble or out-of-the-way driving. This is
where I was winging it while driving 70mph down I-5. Wolf BM had an entry by
Dennis Poulin on PB that mentioned using an ATV road from the southwest. Located
just off I-5 at Wolf Creek, it seemed like just the ticket - about 6mi roundtrip
and just over 2,000ft of gain. We weren't able to drive far up the road
as it quickly grew too rough for all but a good 4WD vehicle. We parked and
the road in smokey conditions around 4:30p with the outside
temp hovering at 92F. Far from ideal, but Jackie complained not a bit. The road
was wide but dusty and heavily rutted to start. It was steep in places and
sometimes slippery and I would take several falls over the course of the
afternoon, the last seeing me literally eat dust. We had a number of sights
along the way, some good, others not. The dusty road left some good
that we examined. Some had been dumped in
several places, leading Jackie to ask, "Why would someone do such a thing?" Good
question, but the most I could offer was "Some people are lazy." At one point,
Jackie paused, "Did you hear that?" I heard nothing and looked at her, helpless
to offer any support. She stopped only a few second later, "Surely you just
heard that?" I did not. I asked her to point where the noise was coming from
and almost instantly I spotted slithering through the
dry leaves.
"How could you not hear that?!" she asked, almost demandingly. My only defense
was to play the Old Guy card. We found the road about ten minutes
below the summit, signed as yet another mountaintop owned or controlled by
American Tower. The summit had set
among the trees that left no views at all. We found the
and under a small rock pile nearby. The few
we had on the way back were smokey at best. Our outing lasted
about two hours, leaving us a few hours of daylight remaining.
We continued south on I-5, driving to Grants Pass where we had dinner at the
Black Bear Diner, one of her mom's favorite places. Afterwards we visited a
Dutch Brothers for liquid dessert which we took for our continuing drive south,
now on SR199. We drove across the CA border before finding a place off the road
a few miles north of the town of Gasquet where we spent the night.
Continued...