2nd Backpack Trip

As part of my resolute era, I embarked on the second backpacking trip of my life. Some of this was written in first-person and some of it in past-tense, so please ignore my poor grammar =)

Well my trip started off with getting injured before the it even started. I was out late and biking on a Biketown bike on Saturday. The street was too dangerous to ride on so I had to ride on the sidewalk. I hit a sidewalk that wasn’t flush with the street sending me flying. Luckily nothing was broken, but I did land on my hip pretty hard and scraped up my shoulder. I had to postpone my trip as I couldn’t walk very well the next day. Got it checked out and it was most likely a contusion of the bursa, so I got lucky.

Earlier on Saturday I had picked up my rental car, gone grocery shopping and shopping at REI for some things before my trip. I spent Sunday resting, totaling up the weights of all my gear, watching reruns of shows, and chatting with friends.

I started Monday morning late. Got to sleep in a bit. Got up around 9 o’clock and then got some coffee and some food.

My right hip is still pretty painful when I’m walking but I haven’t had my meds yet this morning so I’m gonna get those on board after I eat and we’ll see. Walking is fine actually. It’s just a tiny bit painful.

It’s 0900 and it’s already really hot out here.

I painted my nails on Sunday night

I left home around noon after doing some chores. And then did my drive, stopped at Burgerville in Salem, and then continued on my way.

Got to the trailhead around 1600 and started hiking. Started getting a couple pictures. And then I was attacked by vicious fucking mosquitoes.

If I hadn’t brought DEET, I seriously would have turned around. I couldn’t even get the DEET out of my pack without being swarmed by like 50 to 100 of them. It was the worst mosquitoes that I’ve ever seen. But I put the DEET on and now they’re fucking leaving me alone for the most part.

There’s been some snow that I’ve scrambled over and I post-holed pretty bad in and then there’s been a couple of creeks I’ve crossed as well.

Alright, it’s Tuesday, June 10th, and yesterday I spent some time hiking up to this viewpoint of three finger jack. And once I got up here, I couldn’t decide if I was going to set up camp or not. I ultimately decided to set up camp because it was getting later, it was close to eight o’clock.

I had two guys pass me while I was trying to decide what to do. And they were planning to hike up all the way somewhere. Don’t know where. And then hike down once the moon came out. Yeah, that was interesting.

I’m dictating this at 0530 in the morning and I had a problem with my sleeping pad last night and there’s a hole somewhere so I had to inflate it several times in the night but I was warm. I slept well considering.

So my plan from here is to see how the mosquitoes are out there because they were fucking insane all day yesterday and if they’re not too bad maybe I’ll eat outside but if they are bad I might make my breakfast and then come back inside the tent to eat and then get down the hill. (I ended up eating in the tent lol).

It took me a while to get down the hill from that point, due to the snow and completing the loop on the other side. At one point I thought I would have to turn around d/t the terrain but I made it through!! Sometimes I had to cross creeks/streams that were seemingly coming out of the snow.

I made it to the car, and actually saw a bear on the drive down the forest road! This was my first bear sighting in Oregon as an Oregon native! At first I thought it was a person at a glance and then I saw it as it started trotting away into the woods. Really cool!

Here is the review I left on AllTrails:

lots of snow still making this trail hard to navigate at times with snow melt creating lots of streams and creeks and billlliions of mosquitoes (bring DEET), but otherwise beautiful views

What I learned this time:

1. Keep the DEET accessible!!! I kept it buried in my pack, in my bear can, which was dumb
2. Don’t go out the day before you’re supposed to go backpacking
3. Start the day earlier if possible
4. There are bears in Oregon