As you may have noticed from my general absence on the internet, our adventures have been a bit more few and far between than they once were. I’ve been reminiscing about Eric’s grad school days when we would have a mini-adventure every weekend (you can check out a particularly good “Ally Day” here, if you’d like). These days, my job(s) take up a lot of night and weekend action, while Eric works a normal human’s schedule during weekdays. This makes it a bit more difficult to head to the mountains for a weekend. So when we happened to both have a little availability over the 4th of July, we snatched it right up and went on our first backpacking adventure of the year.
Knowing that everywhere on earth would likely be crowded on a holiday, we opted for a trip to the Mount Jefferson Wilderness, located just far enough away from Portland to be somewhat inconvenient for a day trip (and pretty empty on a holiday!). We hiked around 12 miles on the first day to see a few different lakes from multiple angles (pro tip: skip the detour to the lower lakes and just view them from the trail that goes above), before settling into our campsite at Coyote Lake. Luckily, we didn’t see any coyotes, or any other wildlife, other than approximately 1,000 butterflies and 1 million mosquitoes.
One of my favorite features of the Pacific Northwest is the lack of bugs. Well, folks. We found all of them. Right here. Mosquitoes that will find the section of your shirt that you didn’t douse in bug spray and bite you through your clothes.
It’s always fun to find a good bit of snow in July, even though it makes hiking a bit more frustrating, thanks to the slipping and sinking and general lack of stability (remember the epic post-holing of this adventure?).
We’ve camped in some pretty scenic spots over the years, and I’d like to add this to the list of impressive places.
We were lucky enough to hit the very limited window in the the season where campfires are still allowed, as peak summer in the Pacific Northwest becomes scary wildfire season. If only we’d thought to bring s’mores supplies!
I thought we might be preparing for the most comfortable night of camping of our lives (although can anything really compare to our post-triathlon camping trip on Vancouver Island?). The temperature was really nice and there was NO wind. But literally the moment we got into our tent to go to sleep, the wind started whipping like crazy! And as we know from previous camping trips, I do not sleep with wind. Somehow, the wind was coming from every single direction and pummeled against the sides of our tent like a train. Needless to say, it was a short night of sleep for both of us.
But the wind stopped as soon as the sun rose, so all was well in the morning.
After a leisurely breakfast and coffee (is there anything more delightful than warm coffee enjoyed outdoors on a cool morning?), we continued the rest of the loop (7-8 miles of mostly gently downhill) back down to the car, only getting attacked by 500,000 or so more mosquitoes.
Here’s to you, Mount Jefferson! We’ll be seeing you again!
-Ally
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