Less than 20 feet under the trees before we start to notice beautiful magic. Just in through the trail, there’s a beautiful stone bench decorated by Faerie folk. Its covered in marbles and moss it makes the trail feel very inviting to start with. Start heading up the trail Atreyu is carrying his backpack, I’m trying out my brand new Osprey EXOS 48 for the first time. It fits like a dream and wearing it is so comfortable I barely even notice that it is stuffed to the gills. I've convinced myself I'm in training to do long a distance ultralight thru-hike next summer. I really like this bag but I’m not sure if I’m confident that its perfect for me for that purpose. I find that I generally carry a little too much stuff to be considered ultralight. I think I need to take it out on a two-night trip solo and see if I can manage with it like that because with carrying some stuff for both of us is too much. As we keep moving along down the trail on the river open beautiful dense forest on our side but there’s a road across the river. We can hear it, we can see it, but at least it’s over there. We’re going up and down, up and down when we had our first fright. The trail begins to climb not so much at first but then becoming steeper and steeper, going further up and up. Until we find ourselves several hundred feet above the river on a path no wider than 18 inches, staring straight down at the gully and the river below. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. Atreyu was also showing physical signs of being scared, little shaky little whiny and was asking how long it’s going to keep going and he asked for his mama. Poor little guy.
Rest of the next mile of trail is a little sketchy. It's tall and has sheer drops. It’s past and over waterfalls. At one point one cascading down the rock face and in one spot had actually washed away the trail so that it is almost nonexistent. At this point, we were holding onto the rock as we scrambled across the trail. As the trail descends back down closer to the river we come across a series of switchbacks down through a talus field. On the cruck of one of these switchbacks, Atreyu spotted something moving. It was a tiny little garter snake warming its self in the sun on the rocks. I don't know what kind of snake it was but it just a baby and we were well enough far away to not be frightened of something so small, but someone forgot to tell the little snake that as it clearly opened its mouth and lunged near me while I was trying to take its picture. It could have been a baby rattlesnake for it knew, the way it was clearly ready to defend himself from my iPhone. We stop for a quick albeit windy snack on a sandy spot by the river and then finish up the last bit of our walk to our camp.
Despite the trail being difficult, I hadn't been trying to make it such a difficult hike we make it unscathed. Having arrived at only around 1:30 we have plenty of daylight hours left. Our campsite is a small open area surrounded by some big trees and a mostly sandy area with a couple of campfire rings and some are already cut and dried firewood. We decide on one of the fire rings as it offers an area to set up a camp and we make some lunch. The spot is very near to the trail, which is a no-no technically but I'd much rather use this spot than go far off the trail and make another thusly doubling the impact on the environment. Seeing as it is so close and there are still people hiking we decided to wait a little while before actually setting up our overnight shelter. So we made lunch, ramen soup is Atreyus favorite, mine so only because it weighs next to nothing. After lunch, we use the new knife I bought to process firewood. There was plenty of cut lengths and so I didn't need to drag the piece of crap folding saw I have all the way out there. I bought a Bushcrafter from Benchmade. I LOVE this knife. I really had a sentimental attachment to the last one I had but I snapped the blade on the last trip. The knife was simply not strong enough to be abused the way I need to use a knife, but it was a great piece to begin learning the bushcrafter skills I hope to hone now that I have a real tool I can use.
Morning comes finding me unrested. Luna kept getting up and moving around and Atreyu kept scooting himself out from under our shelter and thusly I need to keep moving him back to his pad and under the illusion of safety under our tarp.
An hour of walking along the cold wild section of the Clackamas River brings us to a short side trail just 2/10ths of a
As we leave the serenity of the falls we have a choice to make. we can walk what looks to be about 2/3 miles extra today along a much easier trail or ... we can go back the way we came.
A few reflections on this trip. First, the campsite was way too close to the trail. Had I known about the others on the other side I would have walked on that day, saw the falls in the afternoon and still be able to be at camp with plenty of time. That would have made our walk out so much easier and our camp spot feel a little less intrusive to others.
Second, although I love my new knife, I hated the sheath that came with it. The sheath that came with the knife was poorly made of plastic and screws. I had already ordered a new one made of solid leather with a spot for a ferro rod. The cheaply made plastic one actually broke while I was on the walk out. If Atreyu had not been walking a few feet behind me I would have lost it. That would definitely have ruined my weekend.
Lastly, on this trip I learned the limitations of Atreyu's hiking skills. I would not push him this far or difficult had I known what the trail was like, I'll not do so again for some time.
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