Mt. Adams - 9/26/10

I figure we'll start off with a little background. You know, the me before the bird obsessed me. I've always been a bit on the weird side; outgoing, friendly, easily amused, and like I said weird. I was also always an animal lover, though I can honestly say that a year ago I would have never guessed at the bond I'd soon create with them. I like to think that most of my aversion stemmed from lack of experience with them in any case, before I launch into my bird filled exploits nowadays, I figured I'd offer a glimpse at what was perhaps my first experience with really getting into nature - My first camping trip to Mt. Adams in Oregon.

The trip started off relatively well. I rode with my friend Kate, and her then boyfriend, and we stayed over at a mutual friends house in Oregon before making the trek out to the campsite the next day.

Here i am the morning after we arrived at our friends house, after sleeping fully clothed in my work clothes from the day before. (I left straight from work for the trip.)

We said our goodbyes the next morning, and hit the road, planning to spend around ten days at the campsite. Oregon is an incredibly scenic place, and even having lived in western Washington most of my life, I was still able to enjoy the scenery as we drove. I honestly can't remember how long the trip to the campsite took, other then that it was dark by the time we arrived, and setting up camp was interesting to say the least.





  

Here, I can be seen howling out the window, mid-way through the trip. I mentioned I was odd didn't I?

Upon reaching Mt. Adams it was already growing dark, and the shadows were amplified by the growth of trees pressing in on us from above. At about that point the GPS started to spaz out, and after a short argument on whether to attempt to navigate the map in the dark, or trust the GPS to get us to the campground, we made the ill-informed decision to go with the GPS; most likely because it was easier to see in the dark.

What followed was about an hour of us navigating the truck through a narrow fire trail; Either we were forcing our way through brush so thick it scraped paint off the sides of the truck, or easing ourselves a long the ascending back with a sheer drop no more then a foot to our right - so deep that in the invading darkness we couldn't make out the bottom. On top of all this the path was riddled with deep, jarring pot holes, and potentially tire-flattening rocks. I imagine this narrow path would probably be the worst place to change a tire.

Somehow, despite the mind-crippling ascent, we made our way through. It was fine, just a dented bumper, a lot of missing paint, and a license plate hanging by one screw. Somewhere along the way we'd lost the jack-ball off of our antenna, and we figured we'd sacrifice it for our safe passage. We found out later from our  fourth person, who traveled separately, that if we had stayed on the main rode we would have found a perfectly accessible, and rather more safe, path to the camp site. I guess the GPS decided we needed to be more adventurous. After we arrived, and set up camp in the dark we pretty much all collapsed into sleep for the night.

The next morning gave us a chance to survey our camp ground. The first thing I noticed was that the trees were literally infest with hanging, light green moss. It was actually very pretty, and lent a nice ambiance to the site. It had been sprinkling off and on through the night, so in the interest of keep the insides of our shoes dry we put a tarp up over the tent.

The trip itself was great really. We had a lot of fun exploring, and hiking around. Encountered a ton of interesting animals, and enjoyed the awesome scenery.

The animals:


We had food around, so of course we attracted all sorts of wildlife. This little guy visited us several times over the week with his buddy.

We also met several birds along the way. For one there was a gaggle of ducks that seemed to find us just about everywhere around the lake we decided to go. There was one duck that would even come swimming when my friend John would call for her.

   Ducks in pretty scenery.


 

We were also visited by a huge flock of Canada Jays who were honestly way too friendly, and had a tendency to land on us without provocation simply because we happened to be eating something. I admit at the time, being ignorant, and not knowing much of the consequences of meddling with wildlife, succumb to feeding them, and thus adding to the problem. That being said, it made for some awesome pictures. They were honestly very cool little birds, despite being what I believe to be dangerously over-socialized as far as humans are concerned. I also imagine that goldfish crackers aren't the best additive to their diet.



We decided to hike back to the fire trail that we had driven up to see what it looked like during the day, and prove to our latecomer friend John just how rough the road had been. It was actually quite a long walk back to it, and it took us around an hour to reach it. along the way I made friends with a small frog, (as I have been known to do since then.)

It was actually really warm out that day, and although the walk was nice it was long, and we were running out of water by the time we reached the fire trail. We ended up opting not to hike too far down it considering the situation, but even in the maybe 20 yards we did go, it was already easy to tell just how treacherous the trail had been. At about this point we realized that this particular path up the mountain had probably been abandoned long ago.



Believe it or not this was actually one of the tamest portions of the road. There were points where we were lucky to have a foot on either side of the truck, and some of the ditches were so deep that we bottomed out, going over them.

Having relived the horror of the night before we all decided it was time to head back to the camp site, and started on our way back up the road. It was mostly uphill this way, which didn't exactly make for happy campers. We were nearly back when one of the boys suddenly exclaimed, and withdrew his foot from something that was emitting a high-pitched trilling click. Upon further inspection it turned out to be a bug. A rather large bug at that. It would take me a year before I was able to identify it as a Cyphoderris Monstrosa, or the Great Grig. It was a cricket. And we got to see some really cool behavior out of it.

When it felt threatened it would roll over onto it's back, and emit that high pitched ringing click, that had stopped us in our tracks. Once the bug had some time to realize we didn't intend to eat it, it was actually quite friendly, and it let me scoop it up and hold it. This bug was one of the driving forces behind my interest in entomology.



Here are some close ups the friendly little guy as well as a size comparison, since hands aren't always a good judge of size.

  

 
All in all the trip was a success, and mounds of fun. We were all done earlier then we planned. I, myself, was terribly homesick, and we were all dirty, cold and exhausted. Even so we had an awesome time. We got to see a bunch of wildlife, hike around and look at the beautiful scenery, and stare of at a vast starscape, unpolluted by light and noise. After a fulfilling week, we all loaded back up in the car, and headed home.Here are some additional pictures of the area just to show how gorgeous it was there, all the time.