Hell's Canyon adventure

Ticks.

Heat.

Terrain.

Lightning.

Poison ivy.

Rattlesnakes.

These are some of the words to describe a place from which we just returned.

It was a four day backpack trip into the Hell’s Canyon National Recreation Area, and it maybe should have been a six day trip.

We left the house on a Friday, and took three hours to reach the trailhead at Freezeout.  The parking area was packed with about 10 pick-ups with horse trailers, and 5 or 6 cars/suv’s.  We were hiking by 10:30 and the first 5 kilometers were uphill, past open pine forests and vast open grassy hillsides.

Freezeout Saddle was the site for lunch, and then the 15 kilometers of downhill along Saddle Creek started.  There are a few places where the trail is difficult to find; this is when you need to use your route finding skills.  The trail crosses the creek to the south side for about a half a kilometer, and the vegetation gets very dense.  A hiker wades through two meter tall poison ivy, along with other plants such as thimbleberry, alder, serviceberry.

The first camp of the trip was at the mouth of Saddle Creek along the mighty Snake River.  That night was an long duration lightning storm, with considerable rainfall.  We didn’t know it at the time, only after we returned, that the Joseph-Imnaha Highway that we used to access this area, had been washed out and was impassible.  We weathered the weather, and in the morning everything seemed clean and new.

The shortest hiking day was day  two, where we strolled north for 8 kilometers, along the Snake to Rush Creek, and found a smooth, grassy area next to the rushing creek.  The afternoon was spent lounging, napping, and casual birding, as well as watching jet boats and rafts negotiate the rapids.

Then the arduous part of the trip commenced.  The map and guide book indicated that the trail was on the south side of Sluice Creek.  We hefted our packs onto our back and started up the trail.  It immediately became clear that the trail wasn’t.  There were brambles of blackberry growing 2 and 3 meters tall on the trail.

We veered further south, hiking along the steep north aspect until it became too steep and we dropped down to the floodplain.  Then we hiked along the gravelly shore of the creek, until that became impassible.  We crossed the creek to the north side and stayed along the riparian area.  After three hours we had made about 1.5 kilometes, and looking back could see a new, improved trail higher up on the north side.  Had we taken it we would have saved 2.5 hours of frustrating bushwhacking.  Now we know.

The next five kilometers of the Sluice Creek Trail were rather pleasant.  The trail slowly climbed through a twenty year old burn that had some snags, some live ponderosa pine, but was mostly open grassland with a heavy shrub component.

It was along this segment that I puzzled about some biology.  In the fall and winter different species of birds will congregate in mixed flocks.  You might have seen a flock of birds with a woodpecker, chickadees, juncos, creepers, and kinglets, all hanging out in the same general area.  While we were marching up the Sluice Creek Trail I thought I was observing a mixed nesting flock.  Spotted towhees were squawking, at the same time there appeared a Nashville warbler, with food in it’s beak, and a calliope hummingbird was pearched, watching the entire show of us walking by.  Could it be that different species of birds nest close together as a defense mechanism?  More eyes and ears could help to alert a nesting bird of predators or other hazards.  It’s an untested theory.  Or maybe it has been tested and I just haven’t heard of the research.

The end of the Sluice Creek Trail is at the junction of the High Trail.  This should have been where we camped for there was a very nice campsite amoungst the large pines, but like a knucklehead, I pushed on, thinking that the more distance we do this day would lessen the distance on our last day.  What a knucklehead.

The High Trail winds among the drainages along a bench between 4000 and 4500 feet elevation.  It’s fairly mellow, but after the arduousness of Sluice Creek, it still wasn’t very welcoming.  And there were very few places to camp.  Another five kilometers brought us to a relatively flat area near Log Creek.  Other members of the party had been dead tired for several kilometers, so any campsite would have been a welcoming sight.

The final day was a casual stroll for five kilometers back to the Saddle Creek Trail, then 3 kilometers over Freezeout Saddle, 5 kilometers downhill, and back to the car.  A seemingly tame dusky grouse posed for images in full display, although he refused to allow us an unobstructed view of him.

Weather during the extended weekend was very good for hiking.  The first three days were overcast, with temperatures between 15 and 20.  Friday night got hot and humid until the downpour and lightning, when it cooled off and made for good sleeping.

The most numerous bird could be a toss-up between lazuli buntings, yellow-breasted chats, and yellow warblers.  It seemed those three species were everywhere.

Humans did not seem as plentiful as the parking lot indicated.  We saw 2 backpackers and a horseman the first day,  about ten students and advisor from Western Connecticut University the second day, two backpackers from Boise the third, and two backpackers from Portland the final day.  A few mule deer were seen, and two mountain goats spotted with binoculars below Hat Point.  Fence lizards, two rattlesnakes and one gopher snake were also seen during the stroll.