You are always in Clehatchie

I may be feeling discouraged about certain parts of my creative and professional life, but in addition to the France trip one thing I'm undeniably psyched about is the beginning of hiking season. David and I got out a few times for preliminary hikes in February and March, but this Friday we picked up our Northwest Forest Pass (an annual pass that allows you to park at any of the trailheads in Oregon and Washington), which officially signals the opening of our personal Hiking Season 2011. When I'm feeling down I tend to get (metaphorically) itchy feet, and do battle with the urge to go adventuring. I'm so lucky to live in a region with hundreds of possibilities for beautiful outdoor exploring within a few hours' drive of my home. Even if those "few hours" turn out, like yesterday, to be a few MORE than anticipated.

We were headed to Siouxon Creek (pronounced "Susan"), in Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Here is how our formerly-trusty guide book directs you to get there:

From Vancouver, drive north on I-5 to Highway 503 (Woodland, exit 21). Drive east 45 miles to Pine Creek Information Center. Turn right and continue on Forest Service Road 90 to Northeast Healy Road in the town of Clehatchie. Turn right and drive 10 miles to Forest Service Road 57. Turn left and drive 1.5 miles to Forest Service Road 5701. Turn left and drive 4 miles to the trailhead at road's end.

My first clue as to what a completely nonsensical pile of rubbish this is, should have been when I tried to Google-map Portland to Clehatchie, and Google told me that they "could not understand this location." Let me explain.

Very approximately, we were trying to get to Point D. If you attempt to follow the instructions, though, they will take you along the orange route instead. That's what happens if you "drive 45 miles to Pine Creek Information Center," represented by the blue circle. It's confusing because you actually CAN drive 45 miles and you actually WILL arrive at Pine Creek Information Center, at which point you actually can turn right and continue on 90. The only problem is, you will be NOWHERE NEAR the trailhead you are looking for, and you will be driving farther away all the time. You can drive as long as you want on 90 and you will never be able to turn right on "Northeast Healy Road in the town of Clehatchie," for three reasons:

1. The turnoff to Northeast Healy Road is all the way back at Point B, and
2. The town in which it's located is called CHELATCHIE, and finally
3. The turn you need to make when you get there is actually a T-bone left.

What's more, because everything to the east of Pine Creek is tiny dead-ending Forest Service Roads, you really can't get from there to Siouxon Creek without back-tracking almost the entire way back to Point A. Which we did. And, in a perfect storm of hilarity, the area around Chelatchie is covered on our map by handy informational boxes about mountain safety, so we pretty much had to figure it out on our own. It took about five hours of driving in total, which, to put it in perspective, would have taken us almost to the Canadian border if we had just stayed on I-5.

It was actually fun. We were laughing the whole time. I kind of enjoy getting lost and figuring out where I am again; it's that sense of hysterical adventure. Luckily, also, we got going quite early in the day, so after we finally got to Siouxon Creek, flushed and exultant with our navigational ingenuity, we still had time to do it justice. And what a gorgeous hike it was! Meandering along by the side of the river as the clear, blue-green water rippled along pebble beds...

...dripped off moss- and fern-covered rock walls...

...and thundered down waterfall, after waterfall...

...after waterfall.

Seriously, I lost count of the waterfalls. I didn't even get photos of the flashiest ones, because they were too big. This trail is quite a study in the different characters of waterfalls: you see falls that are tall trickles, misting down the mossy sides of rocks, and falls that crash down two hundred feet into deep blue roiling cauldrons below. Some zigzag this way and that; some walk the line between "falls" and mere "rapids"; some have multiple landing-points and changes of direction before they even out into river again. There are hanging walls of moss and ferns that take a minimalist approach to the idea of "waterfalls": if you stop and remain silent you can hear the musical patter as the soaked moss drips onto the packed dirt below. At other points in the trail this kind of quiet is totally impossible, and you can't even hear another person shouting right next to you over the noise of the falls.

I'm still waiting to get my own camera back, so I was experimenting with David's little Canon point and shoot, which is such a different experience from my DSLR. One thing it did remind me of, is that I really need to get a wide-angle lens for my camera. The one I have is just the kit lens, and not very good. I usually use a macro/telephoto lens I inherited from my dad, which I adore for many things but which takes a very narrow-angle picture.

All in all, a beautiful kick-off to the 2011 hiking season. We estimated as we arrived back at our car that we'd done about eight miles, but when David mapped our route against the photos he took with his iPhone (which automatically geo-tags all photos and can then plot them against a detailed topographical map of the area), we realized that we'd actually walked five miles in and five out, for a total of ten. Which is the longest hike we've ever taken Mr. Bingley on, but he didn't complain once!