{"id":256,"date":"2008-09-21T23:33:53","date_gmt":"2008-09-22T06:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/?p=256"},"modified":"2008-09-25T21:17:42","modified_gmt":"2008-09-26T04:17:42","slug":"wallowa-mountains-oregon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wallowa-mountains-oregon\/","title":{"rendered":"Wallowa Mountains, Oregon"},"content":{"rendered":"

9\/25 Update: <\/strong>I’ve added Allen & Ian’s photo’s to my Picasa album.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Wallowa Mountains<\/a> are apparently one of the Pacific North West’s best kept secrets.\u00a0 The trails are listed in the standard Oregon backpacking guide books, but everyone I’ve talked to has never heard of them despite being some hiker’s all-time favorite treks.\u00a0 It’s a tough comparison, but I think this hike might just replace the hike I did last summer<\/a> in the Olympic National Park as my all time favorite trip.\u00a0 It definitely was the hardest and most rewarding hike I’ve been on yet.<\/p>\n

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Ian, Steve, Allen & I set out on our 36 mile hike through the fantastic Lakes Basin of the Wallowa Mountains on Thursday morning.\u00a0 Our intent was to be out for a total of four days, traveling around 6-10 miles a day.\u00a0 We ended up doing the whole thing in three days because the weather got pretty crappy on the second night and kept on being nasty through the third day.\u00a0 Despite that, it was still a beautiful trip.<\/p>\n

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Day 1: <\/strong>On our first day we set out from the Wallowa Lake trailhead toward our campground at Aneroid Lake.\u00a0 It was a relaxing 6.3 miles covering around 3200 feet of positive elevation.\u00a0 The trails were nice, it was a beautiful day, and we made it to camp right at lunch time.\u00a0 Perfect.\u00a0 After fueling up, we explored a bit and hiked around the lake.\u00a0 Steve and I were brave enough to take a swim in the frigid Aneroid Lake.\u00a0 It was so cold that I (quite literally) could not breath when the water hit my chest.\u00a0 Talk about refreshing!\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The night was gorgeous, with a wonderful full moon and packed with stars making the view from my tent sans rain-fly superb.\u00a0 It made not being able to sleep well worth it.<\/p>\n

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Day 2: <\/strong>The plan on the second day was to cover the 11.9 miles from Aneroid Lake to Frazier Lake over Polaris Pass at 8800 feet, the highest point in our trip.\u00a0 We covered a pretty decent amount of up and down, going up a total of around 2200 feet over the course of the day.\u00a0 The view from the top of the pass was amazing.\u00a0 The hiking was definitely tougher on the second day for me.\u00a0 The hardest part of the hike was making our way down the scree at the top of the pass<\/a>; it was precarious at best.\u00a0 But the flowers and the fields that we passed through made it a beautiful day.\u00a0 We got in, set up camp, and had a trail-sauce enhanced meal that wrapped up just as the first rain drops started to fall…<\/p>\n

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Day 3: <\/strong>The third day was the toughest hike I’ve ever done, hands down.\u00a0 But I had excellent<\/em> help and encouragement from Smokey, Asterisks, and Tuesday making it through the 17.7 mile march out of the woods.\u00a0 We had intended to only go around 8 miles or so, but the weather was so bad that we decided to press on and make it out versus camp in the miserable rain that had started the night before.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The rain let up long enough for us to break camp in the morning and get to Glacier Lake.\u00a0 The way up to the pass was the only real elevation of the day, taking us up about 1500 feet.\u00a0 From Glacier Pass, we made our way to Moccasin Lake where Ian and I met up with the trailblazers (Steve & Allen) who had intended to climb Eagle Cap.\u00a0 But the fog and the rain were so bad that they scratched that plan and we all decided to make our way out.\u00a0 This is where I learned some of the most important backpacking lessons of my life:<\/p>\n

(1) If you get wet, get dry as soon as possible.<\/span>\u00a0 If you know me you know I sweat.\u00a0 Hiking in the rain is a particular challenge for me, since I’m sweating on the inside and wet on the outside.\u00a0 When it started raining hard, I put my rain gear on over my sweat-wet cloths which kept getting wetter and wetter.\u00a0 Eventually I was so miserable-shivering cold that I had to change out.\u00a0 The lesson here is that I shouldn’t have waited; as soon as I changed I was a much happier hiker.<\/p>\n

(2) Eat if you’re hungry.<\/span>\u00a0 This one’s obvious, but because of the weather and the desire to push through we delayed lunch longer than we should have.\u00a0 As a result, our energy and moral dropped dramatically before lunch.\u00a0 We had set a goal, we were trying to hit it and thus ignored our bodies.\u00a0 Once we got some food in us, the rest of the day was actually a lot of fun even though the weather continued to be crap.<\/p>\n

(3) Ditch your pride at the trailhead.<\/span>\u00a0 I was having a hell of a time on Saturday’s hike towards the end of the day.\u00a0 I was wet, tired, and I had the worst foot pain I’ve ever had while hiking.\u00a0 The first 8 miles weren’t bad, but as I got wetter and traveled farther I was slowing to a shuffle and fighting shooting pain with each step.\u00a0 The guys offered to take some weight off my back but I wouldn’t let them.\u00a0 And I was resisting taking meds.\u00a0 However, once we stopped for lunch and I got dry, reason started to set in and I got over my pride.\u00a0 I popped some ibuprofen, let Steve and Allen take about 10lbs off my back, and Ian lent me his trekking poles for the remaining 10 miles.\u00a0 The combination of the above made the trip out both possible and enjoyable.\u00a0 I still owe those guys a beer for the help.<\/p>\n

(4) Being over-prepared can be the same as unprepared.<\/span> I over-packed by about 5-10lbs.\u00a0 No joke.\u00a0 Having that much extra weight made the trip much harder than it had to be.\u00a0 My pack, fully loaded with water & food, weighed in at 55lbs at the start.\u00a0 Part of the weight was extra food, the rest being miscellaneous this and that which can be trimmed.\u00a0 Add that weight to my bodyweight and I was putting about 280lbs total on my feet.\u00a0 That’s just too much; it’s no wonder my feet were giving me hell.\u00a0 I’m going to fix that for the next trip, for sure.<\/p>\n

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The Finish Line:<\/strong> We made it out, however, and with plenty of time to spare.\u00a0 We finished the rum\/whiskey, made our way to the hotel, ordered pizza and crashed.\u00a0 It was some of the best sleep of my life.\u00a0 The trip was so much fun despite the ‘learning experiences’.\u00a0 As always, it’s the company that makes it fun and this trip was no exception.\u00a0 My hat goes off to Ian for the excellent planning and execution on this hike.\u00a0 I’m looking forward to next year’s trek with the guys.<\/p>\n

All of my pictures from the trip are here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9\/25 Update: I’ve added Allen & Ian’s photo’s to my Picasa album. The Wallowa Mountains are apparently one of the Pacific North West’s best kept secrets.\u00a0 The trails are listed in the standard Oregon backpacking guide books, but everyone I’ve talked to has never heard of them despite being some hiker’s all-time favorite treks.\u00a0 It’s … Continue reading Wallowa Mountains, Oregon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[355,144,143],"class_list":["post-256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hiking","tag-hiking","tag-lessons-learned","tag-wallowa-mountains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":258,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256\/revisions\/258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmwoley.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}