Today was the day, and despite constant rain all night, the early morning hours were dry, and when I unzipped the tent, I could finally see an emerging land below.

Stunning!

It had gotten cold overnight. Nothing had frozen, but I could see fresh snow on the far peaks.

I was up and walking by 7am, which has been my usual this trip. The objective was to walk the rim, 4-5ish miles to the very top of the mountain at 4,694′ and then drop over the top for a smattering of cross country hiking and some roads all the way into Mitchell and my shower. Ok!

This type of hiking is strange. It feels like you are making no progress at all on the large flat expanse of earth, but then you look back and see how far you have come. I stopped periodically to gaze around, down, up, and everywhere. It was a brilliant morning, and I felt so lucky to be up here.

Sutton Mountain is a Wilderness Study Area, and you might remember a hike I took up here last year from the Black Canyon side. As I mentioned in that blog post, this is an area that is being considered as a national monument. As a place to recreate, it was ideal… several trailheads to the top, rugged, yet approachable hiking, incredible terrain, lots of wildlife, and…it’s relatively safe. What do I mean by that? Sutton Mountain is surrounded on all sides by roads or the John Day River. Certainly, one could get lost in the almost 30,000 acres, but hike in any direction long enough, and you will make it to a road. The good thing about national monuments is that the management can be fairly flexible. The county and nearby communities like Mitchell and Twickenham can be involved, conservation groups like ONDA can be involved, and ranchers and recreators can be involved too when deciding how this area should be managed. The Painted Hills across the street is already a National Monument, and so are the Fossils Beds that I hiked by when I restarted my hike at Clarno. It will be exciting to see what happens!

I hiked and hiked and finally made it to the top. I really couldn’t have planned a better morning.

Then over and down. It’s all downhill from here!

I took a break by some springs and took off my soaking wet shoes and socks. The grasses had soon soaked my feet this morning, making for an unpleasant squishy feeling. I put on my chacos for the next few miles of a closed dirt road within the Wilderness Study Area, but the recent rain combined with the soil to make a nasty slurry that quickly got between my toes and straps and was just not going to work. I transitioned back to shoes.

Soon, I was in an area I recognized! Last fall, after a trip to the Greater Hells Canyon Gala, I had stopped at Sutton Mountain and climbed up from Meyers Canyon for a night. I was disappointed, though, to see tire tracks on the road. This was a closed road, and someone had ignored the signage and deterrents and had driven up here anyway. 😖 not ok.

I continued on to cross Meyers Canyon itself, a deep dry ravine, to the other side and one last cross country climb up to another road. On this road, I walked through a trashed campsite. Large piles of trash were scattered about. I took a few photos to share with the BLM. Who does that? Why? The disrespect was sad.

Then walk, walk, walk, and I popped out near an old abandoned ranch (I later learned it was the Owens place) framed by the most stunning butte I had ever seen: Bailey Butte. The highway goes right by Bailey Butte, but I had never seen it from this angle. Incredible!

Once I made it to the highway, I had about a mile left to go, and it started raining so hard that I had to pull out my umbrella. Then…town.

I made a straight line for the Tiger Town Brewery for lunch. In the seven hours I had been walking (with one sit-down break), I had eaten one granola bar and a few almonds. This hunger was hungry.

Soon, I was devouring a ruben sandwich, curly fries, washed down by a tasty amber beer. Soooooooooo delicious. My next order of business was heading next door to the general store for snacks and to see if they had any clothing that I could wear after taking a shower. I bought a Mitchell sweatshirt and some long john bottoms. Perfect! Then to the hostel. Sure, I could have had someone meet me this afternoon, I was only two hours from home, but I love trail towns, and Mitchell looked to have everything a hiker could need or want after a hike, and I wanted the full experience!

The Spoke’n Hostel is a hot spot for bicycle tourists. In addition to being on one of the cross-country bike routes, it was on several smaller road ride routes, too. Hosts Jalet and Patrick have renovated an old church into a beautiful and relaxing spot for travelers. Now, my experience was complete!

I got that shower, had clean clothes to put on, and the rest of the day, I truly reveled in not walking.

A great end to a challenging adventure!

By the end of the day, I am peak disgusting. The rain means mud, and in addition to my dried sweat-covered mud gear and body, the last few days, I’ve discovered a few patches of poison oak on my legs. I saw a smidgen of poison oak on a river-side bushwack day 2, and here it is popping up now. Perhaps something I’m wearing has some of that poison oil on it? It’s kind of not even worth wondering about it. There’s nothing I can do now. I’ll keep touching that poison (or not… depending on where it’s coming from) until I take these foul clothes off, shower, and have something else to wear. Might as well embrace the disgusting.

The funk doesn’t take away from the hiking, though…in some ways you become fully committed to the experience when it doesn’t matter anymore whether you are sitting on the ground or on your tyvek. The mud has already touched everything. Is this what Pig Pen from Charlie Brown feels like?

Thoughts of that shower, though, and clean dry clothes… When it gets to this point in the hike, a break better be coming up soon, and mine is tomorrow! And by break, I mean the end 😑. For now. There will be more hiking this year, oh yes! But this chapter has come to a close. The chapter where I am handily ego-checked and roughned up a bit, but have the start to powerful legs and the ability to grind for an hour or so (walk up hill without stopping, no matter how steep and long).

I had a successful grind this morning, first thing out of the wet tent. Up 1,000′ in 0.84 miles. Ah yes, just in time to go home and not hike like this again for a month or two.

The views were amazing, and the clouds were thick overhead again. I made it off the rocky peak and into the trees of Pat’s Cabin WSA for a morning break. I would have a mellow 4-mile hike down an old road for the next stretch….that kind of hiking is almost a rest itself!

Soon I after I started down the road I saw that this is a big drainage. The road/trail disappeared under flood debris in some areas, and the size of the side canyons ripping out was impressive.

I hunted for the trail when it got washed out, over and over, but it didn’t really matter. The only place to go was downhill, and the flood walking (no water to be seen BTW) was easy, too.

At the bottom, I am faced with yet another obstacle to cross if I am to go forward.

This time, a swollen Bridge Creek. Either moving fast, deep, and narrow, or wide, meandering, and marshy. Neither looked good as I hunted for the place Scott said has boards that cross the creek for “dry feet,” but as you’d expect, those boards are long gone.

I decided I have to do it one more time: inflate the packraft.

This time in the all-day drizzle. I transition to boat phase for the quick, narrow crossing… and am easily across.

I packed up in the rain and started walking along the paved road to my trailhead that climbed 2,000′ up to the flatish expanse of Sutton Mountain.

My secret hope was that someone would pass me on the road walk and ask what I was doing, and then I might have the opportunity to ask if they had any extra snacks. I was just about out of snacks and will be finishing the hike with an empty food bag. I wasn’t starving by any means, but I was interested in any road trip snacks that might be in one of those cars checking out the Painted Hills a short distance away.

Alas, no cars passing meant no snacks, and it was too chilly to doddle today anyway… I had to keep moving to stay warm thanks to the constant wet. I went into a reallll slow grind up the mountain, so slow I didn’t break a sweat.

There is legit trail here with footprints and recent trail work and all! It’s a most excellent hike with running springs on the way up!

At the top, I was in trees, and it took me a while to make it up to the rim of this large fault block mountain. It wasn’t quite as big as the top iconic fault block mountains of the Oregon Desert Trail (Abert Rim at 30 miles long and Steens Mountain at 50 miles long), but Sutton is dramatic. I’d be walking near the rim for about 7 miles to the very top where I’d drop over the edge for my 9-mile walk down to my shower, I mean Mitchell.

But first, I stopped for camp a few miles in on the rim. If I hadn’t been in a cloud, I would have seen the Painted Hills and mountains that stretched on into the horizon to the west.

I was protected from the wind (but there really wasn’t any) by a few juniper trees and spent the next while enjoying the feeling of dry for the first time in hours.

800′ more to the top in the morning.

It was a full day.

I had it all: incredible views, easy walking, cliffed out river-side navigating, three packraft ferry trips, and thousands of feet cross country hiking to my next Wilderness Study Area: Pat’s Cabin…a little known piece of land just down the road from the Painted Hills and across the street from Sutton Mountain (last big climb of the trip).

The weather held off for the morning, and luckily enough, I was ridgewalking on top of the world.

Epic.

But by early afternoon, the heavy clouds that were sitting just over my head let loose with a little rain, then some thunder. It made the walking a gooey mess of 10 pound mud boots, but the rain felt good. I ducked down under my umbrella for one particularly heavy shower.

So, we covered the weather…lets talk about the river.

It was lovely to walk down to the water again. These are long dry spells without reliable water sources! And it would be again after this next stretch. After my last crossing today, I wouldn’t meet the John Day River again, only Bridge Creek, an important tributary, and – you guessed it – beaver habitat.

Today, my river adventure looked like a three-mile walk along the north shore, then a ferry across to Burnt Ranch boat launch. The dry-land portion of the day involved a 2,400′ climb and another afternoon of heavy hiking with a dry camp.

Ok, the river.

I started my walk and soon came to the first of the cliffed-out-puzzle sections. I followed game trails with success…I’m getting better at these, I thought.

The next one was not so easy. I made it halfway through and looked at the next bend in the river with dismay. It looked daunting. I looked at my map. I knew exactly where I was. I have camped on the other side of the bend many times…it’s only 2ish miles from the Burnt Ranch boat launch, and is a good first camp on the water if you make it out for a quick weekend float of the Wild and Scenic section.

So, I decided in the spirit of a route, that I would go my own way again, and packraft across the river to a nice calm eddy and exit, walk across a flat along the public/private fenceline, and launch on the other side for said camp I had just mentioned. From there, I would cut across the flat to my last launch of the trip and across to the boat launch.

The river was fast and flowing. And wide!!! Oh, so wide now. I had no idea about the cfs, but the rain certainly had it going up.

I launched all three times, and even with an upcurrent bit of eddy, it still deposited me about 200 yards downriver despite my best paddling efforts. My breakdown whitewater paddle is so much more efficient but heavy.

So it was: inflate boat, float, pack up, walk, inflate boat, float, pack up, walk, inflate boat, float, packup, walk, lunch.

I took advantage of the picnic table at the deserted boat launch to recoup and try out the skippy squeeze tube of peanut butter I had been carrying. Not bad! Of course, I’m a week into an arduous hiking adventure, and I can feel the generator of my body buzzing and burning off some of my extra “fuel.”

Then hiking uphill in the rain with mud boots. It’s all good though, the landscape seems incredibly healthy…after the mud section, the ground was covered in microscopic succulent plant life, the bunch grass was very bunchie, and the big picture was one of life and growth…the mud boots were short lived, thank goodness… the ground was too rocky for mud in many places.

I stopped short of the last big climb, another 1,000′ up in less than a mile. I’ll save that for the morning when I have used up more of my water and the food bag weighs a bit less…

Day 6, alright!

I’m just now feeling like I’m getting into the flow of this trip. The hiking today exemplifies my happy place: open terrain, tons of views, a bit of a bushwack challenge, lots of old roads in various states, and epic geology. Wow. This day.

The first order of the day was to trace a ridgeline that bordered the eastern edge of the Spring Basin Wilderness up to Sheep Mountain. Since I was now a bit ahead of schedule, I had plenty of time on my hands to lollygag and wander through the incredible day.

The weather was sunny and clear, but a storm was due to move in later, (rain and lightening, oh my!) so the air was warm, thick, and humid….for the desert (for dessert?) Later in the afternoon I would call it molasses air. I’ll let you imagine what it felt like to push my way through that air, uphill on a never-ending old road. The incredible canyon made up for it, though…

I ended up climbing an unnamed rocky summit a short distance away from Sheep Mountain that was actually 200′ higher. When looking at the scramble it would take me to get to the top of Sheep Mountain, I decided to pass, and instead wrapped around the western side of the peak to catch up with the ridgeline route on the other side. On a route, there are no rules, so do what you want!

Then I followed a stunning Rhodes Canyon down (shout out to my girl Melissa Rhodes in Illinois!) and contemplated one of two route options that skirt some private land. I followed a pretty little drainage up (it would have waterfalls and pools when there was acutally water). The saddle I was aiming for wasn’t too far away, and soon I was up and over and back to the John Day River in about a mile.

Then shade and lunch. I don’t see any boaters, but then again, I’m only by the water for half a mile today before I start hiking up the next canyon. And I’ve wondered about this canyon the many times I’ve passed it from a boat. The rock pillars guarding the entrance to Rattlesnake Canyon are imposing, and I don’t have to wonder how it got its name. As I walked up the drainage, I could see this would be the perfect road for an ambush. Rocky outcroppings and dramatic pillars rose up on either side of the old grade, and for sure there were bandits lurking behind the next bend.

How did this road get here in the first place? What was up here? My maps show miles of road that spider web out through the canyons and ridges of this area…but than again there are a maze of old roads almost everywhere in every desert. Humans have been everywhere. Today my road would circle the dramatic Amine Peak, was there a mine to find?

The upper reaches of the canyon had running water, running water! I have been regularly lugging 4-5 liters of water around with me because of my dry camps and one water source a day….this water was a welcome sight, but alas, I didn’t need any.

The clouds that were bringing the storm were gathering by mid afternoon and I wanted to make camp before the rain, so I pressed on, looking for a nice camp spot near the top of the canyon with some tree cover. I kept going thinking my options would be better, and oops, now I was walking on the eastern shoulder of Amine Peak closer to the clouds than ever, with no tree cover. But the storm was holding off, and the patchwork blue and thunderhead sky looked like it could go either way….sunny or stormy. So I motored on (its sooooo beautiful up here) and soon spied a little skid road that dropped a few switchbacks to some trees that would be well protected.

Whew!

I’m sleepy and horizontal well before dark, my body has never felt this good lying down.

My plan is working.

By late morning I was back on “trail” and digging through the resupply box I had packed myself the week before. My wonderful ONDA coworker Beth had dropped it off at the Clarno Nursery last week, and will be back in a few days. That means I can leave things like the borrowed life jacket and the extra food I don’t need anymore after my stint in Condon. Beth even left a cooler with some cold drinks (Rootbeer!!!) and a water jug. Magic. Beth is a backpacker. She knows.

But I didn’t make a wish and suddenly appear on the flooding banks of the John Day River, 45 miles upstream from where I turned around a few days ago, I was dropped off by my new and very interesting acquaintance, Max.

K’Lynn from the chamber connected us. It has been a trail magic kind of morning, and I was able to christen two more trail angels.

First, K’Lynn. It was her birthday today! She paused a meeting to say hello, welcomed some other visitors, sold me some new locally made earrings, and arranged a ride for me to Clarno with Max. Thank you SO MUCH K’Lynn!

Then Max. Max drives up in an old Ford pickup the most beautiful color of blue. He retired to Condon a few years ago from bigger cities, and we had lots to talk about on the hour drive to Clarno. We talked books – he knew all the backpacking greats (A Walk in the Woods, Wild), and was a student of regional history, so he will going to email me with a list of suggestions about the area. We talked about the Rashnish (their compound bordered the banks of the river across the way from Spring Basin Wilderness where I will hike today. If you are not sure what I’m referring to, watch Wild Wild West on Netflix.), and other such topics like the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Alaska, and fossils.

I’m so glad I went into Condon. It was such an unexpected perk to the trip. The lesson of a thru-hike is that it sometimes happens to you. You can assert your will about how the trip will go, but ultimately you are not in charge. You have to go with the flow…there are always obstacles: fires, too much snow, injuries, weather…expect change!

After packing up at the nursery (five more days of food, ooofta), I tottled along a short pavement section for a few miles, passing the permit box for Pine Creek Conservation Area, and saying hello to a family from BC who had pulled over to stretch their legs and pick up cool rocks.

I filled up my water at a bridge over Pine Creek and kept thinking about the Ren and Stimpy cartoon I watched in high school. One memorable line goes: “Don’t drink that, you’ll get beaver fever! Beavers do their business in that water!” Beavers do, in fact, do their business in this water… another of my ONDA coworkers for over seven years is JJ, who has been planning and implementing years of restoration work on this very creek. Well, he has been developing projects that would restore the beaver habitat and encourage them to move back into the creek. It was the beavers who would restore the creek. Their dams hold back the water, that water spreads out in the drainage, and it becomes more surface area for trees and vegetation to grow. The pools of water as a result of the dams get deep and remain cool – the kind of coolness that fish need to live. Beaver are indicators of a more resilient landcape ….resilient to drought and fire, those kind of things.

So yes, there might be beaver fever in that water (I believe they mean gardia), but I’ll filter it out. 😉

Ok, my break was also across the way from the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument (This section of the route is GREAT!)

From there, I was on an old road grade that climbed at a very chill level up into Spring Basin Wilderness. I took a break with an incredible view and soaked in this very welcome section of the trip. I’ve hiked and camped in Spring Basin about five times before and was excited for the terrain, views, and spring wildflowers. The air smelled sweet with all the blossoms about, and bird song was the soundtrack to the afternoon.

I made an early camp. I didn’t need to go far today, so did some more of that reading and relaxing that I love so much. I guess my style of hiking has mellowed over the years, and I’m here for it.