Fuji

Fuji
On December 29, 1999:
Jenny and I made a trip up to the Salt Creek Falls Trailhead. We were not, however, headed to the falls... Second largest in Oregon. Nope. We were headed to a Lake. Birthday Lake. You see, I usually pour over topographic maps (now I also use Google Earth as well) and look for areas on the maps that would: 1) Look interesting and 2) are remote enough to have no people. Some times this works and sometimes it doesn't. An example of it not working is this one place that I found on a Topo looked so promising. The spot was very, very secluded and was a huge meadow on a river. So, we hicked for 5 hours, mostly in the river till we came to the meadow. The meadow was all I had hoped for until... Until I saw cow poop. It turns out we hiked so far that we hiked back into civilization. This was a farmers field. This story is in the yet to be re-produced, "Crawfish Creek".

Back to our story...

So, We had to park at the falls parking lot because the snow was to deep to park where we wanted. We had to cross highway 58 as well with all our gear, two dogs, and two goats. This was a very risky endeavor. We made it though and started our climb. We had to hike in the snow, without snow shoes for probably 2 hours. It was tough but well worth it.

I mentioned goats... Yes that is right, goats. We purchased two baby goats as part of the purchase of our first peice of land in the woods. The goats were being trained to become packgoats. Our plan was to hook the sled with our gear to the bigger goat, "Buster". Unfortunately, this worked for about 1/4 mile and I had the privilege to tow the gear. Not what I had planned and quite upsetting to be frank. Nonetheless we were going to continue.

We hiked and hiked, as I said, but when we got to the top we were quite surprised. We were very surprised to find a nice log cabin shelter. This was very unexpected. The shelter was very nice on the top of the hill overlooking Diamond Peak, all 2,665 m (8,744 ft) of it. We obviously decided to camp there. There were a few supplies, an entire wall of wood and a wood stove. You climbed a ladder and slept in a loft over head. The cabin had an "A"-frame build except one side of the "A" was open and looked out over the peak. This was a premium spot for packers who had unexpectedly stumbled upon this place.

We pretty much forgot about our destination of Birthday Lake. We hung out and sledded most of the days. We did, however, hike to birthday lake. This was a tough task as the snow was a lot softer and deep with no sign of the trail except an occasional tree blaze. We did finally find the lake and it was a frozen wonderland. It was very beautiful and like a fairy tale. I went for the camera and found that I forgot it. Can you believe that? What a couple of idiots. We hung out there for some time. I wished I had ice skates as they would have been perfect for this frozen lake. Eventually we meandered back to camp and had a great diner.

One more thing I remember about the trip... I remember waking in the night and was thirsty. I sat up, grabbed my water bottle and took a drink. Actually, I thought I was going to take a drink. Nothing came out and I realized... My water bottle was frozen solid! I guess it was cold out side the Bags, even with the Wood stove blasting away.

All and all, it was a very memorable trip. It is very unfortunate that we didn't have a digital camera back then. If we did I would be able to pull my photos up on iPhoto and have some posted here.

Enjoy,
Heath

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• bac
• backpacking
• backpacks
• camping
• cascades
• diamond
• heath
• hiking
• mcconnell
• oregon
• peak
• snowshoeing
• winter

[mydeardiaries]

sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee­T!