When we reflected on the trip, it all seemed worth it. The struggles with a rental car that was unsuited to the terrain, the annoyance of finding out that we couldn’t hike at Crater Lake and had to ‘settle’ for Spence Mountain Loop, and that we mistimed our hike.
But there was a lot more that we got from it. The views were reverence inspiring. The hiking itself was just hard enough to feel substantial. And we got a few great tastes of great couple teamwork.
As Becca and I were planning our V-Day hiking trip to La Pine, Oregon, I had sent a few suggestions by email, including a strategically placed “moderate” level hike at Deschutes State Park. The aim for me was to get away from city life for a bit for a few days of zen. This required going to relatively isolated hikes as well. I was hoping that she’d choose the moderate option over the easy ones, and she did.
Nestled in the starkly beautiful grasslands near the confluence of the Little Deschutes river and the larger Deschutes River, La Pine is a 1,653 strong frontier community with a history that includes French fur trading. It’s also the youngest town in Oregon, incorporated in 2006. For us, it offered a reasonably priced AirBnB and easy access to the Cascades.
With all this in mind, we felt that hiking around La Pine would be amazing from the get go.
Day 1: The two-legged donkey
Our first day hiking was riddled with problems. The first issue was clear the moment we started to approach the trailhead: It had snowed the previous night, and the snow had fallen thickly near the trailhead. I love snow, but its unexpected arrival meant the hike would be harder than anticipated.
The second big issue was that the trailhead itself was not easily accessible by the car we had chosen: A front-wheel drive Ford Fusion sedan. Hybrid. I’ll call her “two-legged donkey,” because she was stubborn, ill suited for this climate and — being front wheel drive only — effectively two legged. And much like humanity’s favorite equine idiot, she was also oddly endearing. And yes, it was a stupid idea for us to not rent an SUV and have snow chains.
I turned on to a road that looked like packed gravel with patches of snow. But as we went towards the trailhead itself, the path became looser and more undulating. Snow and rain from early morning had compacted in places to ice, which my stubborn head interpreted as a challenge to my driving skills. Sigh, masculinity. But with some slipping and sliding, we made it to the trailhead and I… promptly beached donkey in a patch of snow.
See, we couldn’t find a place to park because the designated area was blanketed. I tried to turn donkey around and lodged the front wheels on a particularly grabby patch of powder. What followed was a worrisome hour of intensifying snow, and stressful but determined efforts by the two of us. We tried a few different things, like pushing the car while flooring the accelerator. That didn’t work. We then tried to place sticks behind the front wheels to provide a textured surface for the wheel to drive over, but that didn’t work either. Finally, we tried to call the towing services, only to realize that the bill could climb to as much as $1000.
I remembered an old episode of Top Gear, where the hosts used flat metal surfaces to drive out, in addition to the digging we were already doing. I jammed flat sticks behind the front wheel and pushed the front of the car as hard as I could, trying to rock it out of its icy trough. Simultaneously, Becca gave the engine the right amount of stick and with a satisfied bray from her engine, donkey moved 6 inches back, with the back wheels now firmly on crunchy gravel. Success!!
Just as we were celebrating our teamwork, I noticed two guys pull up in ATV’s 50 to 100 feet away. The car had moved, but we still had around two feet before the front wheels were safe. Ken and John provided us with the extra hands we needed to get donkey free. We expressed our eternal gratitude, and they politely escorted us back to the paved road.
Frustrated but still hungry for a proper hike, we ended up ‘hiking’ right in our backyard. Intrepid Becca had a measure of the opportunities around our AirBnB, and found that the Little Deschutes River was a couple of miles away from where we were living. After jumping a fence, almost slipping on ice, and crossing a gully, we made it to the Little Deschutes River, which looks more like a creek.
Of the 105 mile span of this tributary of the Deschutes River, we had stumbled on to a particularly picturesque bend. The grass was prairie-esque, and easy to lie down on. The water was calm with the occasional playful eddy inviting us to take a dip. The skies had eased up to show a lazy evening sun. And somewhere south of us, a skein of geese flew.
Despite a few distant gunshots (hello, rural America), the experience was entirely leisurely, and encouraged me to just be.
I was reminded of the work of Gordon Hempton, the great Pacific Northwestern acoustic ecologist. His work has been instrumental in raising awareness of the noisiness of urban environments and rediscovering the beauty of natural sounds. In his quest to protect the earth’s natural soundscapes, he placed a small stone on a log in the Hoh Rainforest in western Washington, calling it “one square inch of silence.” His hope is that if he can protect that one square inch free of human-made noises, silence will prevail for many miles around.
Noise is something I’ve been thinking about I recently, since I developed a mild case of tinnitus in my right ear. As a musician and listener of loud music and live music, I have become a lot more mindful about noise in my immediate environment. I find that in a city like Seattle, the assorted beeps, blares, bongs, screeches, squeaks, squawks, shouts, honks, hisses, wails, and whooshes produce a cacophony that’s unsettling if you pay attention to it. And now, I have an eerie buzz in my right ear to add another layer of treble gnawing away at my equilibrium.
But here by the Little Deschutes River, everything dissipated. The creek burbled with tiny whoops of joy. The wind swished gently on the grass and hummed comfortingly among the firs. The geese provided a distant choir of calls. And in the middle of it all, we lay on our backs, looked up at the sky, and wished things could be that way forever. We got our moment of zen after all.
Day 2: Oregon Nice and 2 Chainz
The following morning we felt better prepared for any change of plans that may have gotten in our way. Becca suggested we check out the hot springs in Paulina Lake. We had come prepared with swimming gear. However, the road would be inaccessible to donkey. Our back up plan was to visit Crater Lake, a famously beautiful volcanic lake formed by the collapse of Mount Mazama after a massive eruption 7,700 years ago. Google Maps said that the road leading up to it was accessible.
Satisfied with our plan, we turned our attention to breakfast. Up for grabs was breakfast at a rather quaint “mom and pop” local joint called Normas Red Rooster. The place is rooster themed to an absurd degree. The shelves are lined with rooster figurines. The fridge has rooster drawings by local children. The sugar canister is a rooster you have to split in half to get Stevia. And the pièce de résistance is a 10-foot tall red rooster standing guard at the entrance. There was an air of first-name familiarity with the nice local town folk joking with one another. The excellent rye bread was just a bonus.
Before leaving, we decided to fill up on gas. Oregon is in the process of lifting its decades old self-service ban on filling gas, but evidently that lift hasn’t yet reached La Pine. We were greeted by a large, bearded, gregarious, baseball-cap-and-denim-suspenders wearing fella we nicknamed “Squirrely Dan,” after the Letterkenny character who fits exactly that description. I handed him my card amid of blizzard of conversation.
The drive from there to Crater Lake was pretty magical. We had left early enough that the sun was still slanted. The Spotify playlist we had complied chose some bangers, and led to much joyful and tuneless yowling. But again, our plans were scuppered by our two-legged friend. While the road was technically accessible by car, it was iced up after a point, and a sign came into view. “Snow Zone: Chains required. Traction tires allowed on vehicles under 10,000 GVW,” it said, with ominous blinking orange lights for emphasis. We had neither tire chains nor traction tires. We knew what that meant.
I turned around, cursing loudly. Becca, ever intrepid, figured that we could go south to Klamath Falls to buy chains from a Walmart. She reasoned that the travel time from La Pine to our location was roughly equal to the travel time to Klamath Falls. That way, we could grab some chains and travel back to Crater Lake by 1.30 pm, and maybe catch some new scenery along the way.
And boy was the scenery worth it.
What we ended up witnessing were some of the best views of our trip. Arid mountains to the east reminiscent of Utah were offset by patches of green flatlands. Scenic barns dotted the landscape, dwarfed by the brown, rocky giants behind them. And to west lay the shallow expanse of Upper Klamath Lake, rendered deep blue in the crystal sunlight. I was shocked several times by the stark beauty of this landscape, driving as I was on a perfect strip of spaghetti-like tarmac draped on the coastline.
Entering a bustling Walmart was a decidedly anti-climactic experience after the high of the drive. But the people made up for it. We got our chains and as we checked out, the cashier brightly said she’d pray that we’d get a great hike out of the day. People in small-town Oregon are nice. Like really nice. Ken, John, Squirrely Dan, and cashier lady had all proved themselves to be faultlessly friendly, cheerful, and generous with their time. For a few moments, I mused on how cities — while vibrant and creative — also make us a little harder edged.
Our plan was to practice installing the chains on donkey in the Walmart parking lot so we would be ready to install them efficiently when faced with ice. But a few things became clear soon. Firstly, while we were following the instructions, we couldn’t wrap the chain around the front wheel because of a cross-beam preventing the full wrap. I confirmed this by lying down on my back and sticking my head under the car in an oily, smelly Walmart parking lot. The second, and more frustrating fact was revealed after some Googling: Ford recommends against putting snow chains on a Ford Fusion.
Again, the fault was ours for lacking the foresight and getting donkey instead of a draught horse.
Over lunch at an Asian restaurant, we came up with a Plan C, which was to tackled the Spence Mountain Loop, another moderate hike of 9.7 miles. The only tricky bit was timing. When we reached at 2 pm, the sky was baby blue and the sun was shining beatifically. I figured if we could make it halfway by 4, we could complete the loop right after sundown at 5.40, since the descent would be quicker anyway.
The climb up was fast and fun for the first two hours. The scenery of the valley below was stunning with lakes, mountains, and fields fading white into the distance. Despite the temperatures being below 5 degrees Celsius, we were warm enough to comfortably walk with only a couple of layers on. The trail was deserted and welcoming. We saw a few human footprints and even suspiciously large doglike paw prints that we speculated actually belonged to a wolf.
But soon, our progress slowed. We had a few cross roads where we made the wrong choice. One cost around 20 minutes because of thick snow. And the thick snow led to more problems. The last quarter of the first half of the loop took about as long as the other two thirds. Thicker snow, greater elevation, and poorly paved paths were to blame.
At the top, the view was spectacular. The mountains in the distance were sandwiched by the turquoise of Upper Klamath Lake and the indigo of the sky. The entire scene was framed by the pines and lit up by the reflected light from the fresh, crunchy powder beneath our feet.
However, we were ill-equipped for the journey at this altitude. With my heavier frame, I kept falling through the snow to the ground, leaving three foot deep divots in the powder. Intrepid Becca wanted to push on though. When asked why, she said “because I’m stubborn.” I identified a few problems that I thought made it imperative we turn back.
Firstly, we had reached near the ‘summit’ of the loop around 4.15 pm, slightly behind schedule. But the snow was getting deeper, meaning we would be even slower in reaching the top. If we continued and did the whole loop, we would go ‘behind’ the mountain, cutting off the warmth of the sun.
Secondly, the sun itself was going down rapidly. While the official sunset time on my weather app was 5.40 pm, it would be much earlier for us because the sun would set behind the mountains only a few hundred feet away from the foot of Spence Mountain.
After some convincing, Becca relented and we began our descent. The descent was mostly smooth except for a two problems: increasing darkness and blisters on Becca’s feet. Both of these slowed us down to the point that the final 20 minutes of our descent were spent navigating by the torchlight of my cellphone. All the while, we were dodging icy patches crackling menacingly under our feet and hoping those wolf paw prints were a few days old. A wrong step here could genuinely be catastrophic.
Slowly, we shuffled through shrubbery which suddenly felt stiflingly close. Finally, in complete darkness, my eyes discerned the gray shapes of man-made signs. When I entered the parking lot, I fished the car keys out of my pocket and pressed “unlock.”
Not 15 feet ahead of me in the deserted parking lot, donkey responded with glee, welcoming us with blinking indicators and the warm, well-lit glow of its cabin lights. Relieved, I took a breath and looked up at the sky. It was royal blue velvet, studded with stellar scintillae.
The perils of our hike forgotten, Becca drove us back to La Pine, mostly in pitch darkness. I couldn’t see outside very clearly because of the light of the instruments reflecting off of the glass. But I was curious to see what the sky looked like in genuine, high country darkness. Back when I was a kid, I was obsessed with astronomy, but the light pollution in New Delhi made it hard to see the stars. I had since then mostly lived in cities and forgotten to look up at the night sky.
It was pitch black outside. The road was a mathematician’s dream of two parallel lines intersecting at a vanishing point. The only lights were from the instrument cluster and occasional violence of oncoming high beams. Becca was still, almost yogi-like in her driving asana.
I pressed the button to open the sunroof. The mechanism whirred and the sssss of invading wind became an ooooh, and finally an aaaah. The sunroof clicked into place in its open position. Framed above me was the most perfect sky I have ever seen. City skies are boring, dulled by human conceit. Here was a dizzying display of depth, size, brightness, and shape rendered in HD. A two foot by one foot tapestry of endless fascination. I vaguely remember letting out a few gasps and assorted animal noises. But the next 10 minutes were spent with me generally blathering on about the amazingness of it all, while the Becca chuckled.
Later on, when we parked at our AirBnB, and donkey ticked away quietly in the background, we decided to take one last look at the sky. We stood in a dark place that the porch light couldn’t reach. And we looked up, our staring interrupted only by the scratch of Gore-Tex and our own breathing. Becca said she saw shooting star. We gazed for 5 minutes in near silence. Then, with a reverent sigh, I broke the spell and looked at Becca. We walked indoors, mute.
Day 3: An arid drive
Our final day’s only plan was to travel back to Seattle via Vancouver, WA to meet Becca’s mother. After monopolizing the wheel for the first half of the trip, I gave up the status of donkey herder. Intrepid Becca decided to ignore I-5 and take the longer scenic route instead. Her plan was to go north-east through the camel-colored landscape of the Oregon high desert, travel west hugging the Columbia River, and cross over to Washington through the Bridge of the Gods.
I was in a hurry to get home and swore some more, but was quickly rendered speechless by the sights. The route consisted of stark desert steppes slowly morphing into foothills, which gave way to the imperious peaks of the Cascades. The road seemed like an incredibly fun drive as well, playfully cutting through swathes of desert hills with a combination of long, sweeping turns, tight switchbacks, and the occasional camber. When we reached the Columbia River Basin, I saw the mighty The Dalles Dam which powers much of the surrounding area. Crossing over into Washington state coincided with us entering Western Washington. The switch from wheatish brown to lush green was rapid, and Vancouver approached quickly.
Postscript
My plan to drive through Mt. Rainier National Park back to Seattle proved impractical, so the final trip back to Seattle consisted mostly of rain and traffic along the I-5. Around 8:30, we reached the car rental return. I parked donkey and dropped the keys in the designated slot. For all its inadequacies, it proved faultlessly reliable, welcoming, comfortable, and undramatic.
Many lessons were learned during our trip. But I can summarize it in one phrase: Plan more carefully. For all our organization, we should’ve booked the right car, investigated weather conditions more thoroughly, and generally been more experienced.
However, we are now more educated and a better team equipped to handle the challenges that may come ahead. I plan to write more of these if we travel some more.
As I said, it was all worth it in the end.
