Returning to Elk Lake

When I was 13, my stepdad and I made two trips to Elk Lake. This was the spring and summer of 1994, when Bill Clinton was in his first term and grunge and hip-hop reigned supreme, and I was 12 going on 13. Here’s one of my favorite songs from that time period, from my all-time favorite band:

It will not surprise you at all to learn that I am wearing a Soundgarden t-shirt while I type this.

ANYWAY: We tried to make it to Elk Lake in the spring, only to find six feet of wet snow that kept us from making it to the lake. We went back a couple months later to hike to the summit of Battle Ax. The road was terrible then as it is now, but we made it to the trailhead. It was cloudy and we did hike to the summit of Battle Ax, but my foremost memory of that day came later in the day, when my stepdad accidentally ran over my foot while I was trying to hold brush back so he could drive through a narrow section of road. The road was so muddy that my foot sunk into the ground, unhurt even though Ted’s truck weighed a ton. I’ve always led a somewhat charmed life.

Working on the second edition of 101 Hikes in the Majestic Mount Jefferson Region, I knew that there were some things I had to focus on more than others. For whatever reason, I never made it to Twin Lakes at any point while working on the first edition of the book. A lot of this has to do with the terrible road access; while working on the first edition, my two vehicles were our Subaru Impreza (which we still own now!) and our 1997 Nissan Sentra, which had the rare distinction of being the first car that both Wendy and I owned (she bought it for college, but I didn’t end up learning to drive until I was 29, so it was my first car too). Neither of these cars could have handled the bad road to Elk Lake, so we had to backpack into Elk Lake so I could do book research.

We bought the Outback in 2020 and I have since spent a lot of time driving roads I could not have driven before. I made two trips to Elk Lake during the first half of July, plus an additional trip to hike along Elk Lake Creek last week. And I finally made it to Twin Lakes!

The first trip to Elk Lake was supposed to be a full weekend of camping, but rain the last weekend of June and a full weekend schedule in July forced me to make two trips to Elk Lake during the work week. I can do this because I only teach one class per week, and it’s remote on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. As an adjunct professor, I have to work, or I don’t get paid. So teaching one class is better than teaching no classes.

I left for Elk Lake directly after my class on Tuesday afternoon, stopping at the South Breitenbush Trailhead along the way for the first time since the 2020 Fire. It was brutal - that trail isn’t opening for quite a while. But that’s a story for another day. This says it all:

I made it to Elk Lake and set up camp. It was still cold and wet from the previous weekend’s rains, so I was able to have fires both nights I was there. There’s nothing like a campfire on a cold evening!

The irony of course is that it’s four weeks later and half the state is on fire. Things can change quickly this time of year.

The hike to Twin Lakes went extremely well, at last. I started by hiking to the summit of Battle Ax, a hike that I first did with my stepdad way back in 1994, as mentioned at the beginning of this piece. The Battle Ax hike is fully unburned, one of the few hikes in this area which has yet to burn. May it stay forever that way!

The views on this hike are exceptional but the mountains were still in the clouds on this day:

The trails were in good shape other than a few huge downed trees on the Bagby Trail. It was immensely meaningful to finally make it to Twin Lakes, after nearly 20 years of trying.

To wit: back in 2007, I planned my first solo backpacking trip ever to the Bull of the Woods. I had never done any of the hikes there other than the aforementioned Battle Ax hike back in 1994. I was out of shape and had finished grad school only a few days before, and I was fully unprepared for the adventure. I also was reliant on rides from a fellow hiker, and from Wendy at the end of the adventure. The plan was to camp at Twin Lakes part of the time.

The trip ended up being a disaster. I had a severe panic attack the first night, and decided against my own better judgement to change my plan without any way of communicating that to anyone. The trip resulted in me hitchhiking out of the wilderness a day early. I was so much younger then. Here’s a photo:

ANYWAY: this time I made it to Twin Lakes without any problems, thanks to good trail conditions and much better physical fitness. Here’s a photo:

It was a great day, and I can finally knock this one off the list, and add it to the second edition of 101 Hikes. Yay!

I went back two weeks later to tackle both Mount Beachie and Battle Ax Creek, who share a trailhead with the trek to Battle Ax and Twin Lakes. I figured that I could probably do both in one long day, as I have gotten into better and better shape as the summer goes along. I figured wrong, but not for the reasons you might think.

The trip up to Mount Beachie was an exercise in losing patience, and it was ultimately futile. The trail is in absolutely horrible shape. I tried my best to cut out some of the brush, but I reached my limit at about halfway to the summit of Mount Beachie, when I saw this:

The trail goes directly through that. Yikes!

I gave up on trying to punch my way through to the summit of Mount Beachie and set about hiking downhill into the canyon of Battle Ax Creek. This turned out to be a much longer hike than anticipated, but it was also an experience I won’t soon forget.

I have been very open about how much the Beachie Fire has affected me, and how I have been struggling with my grief at seeing some of my favorite places effectively burned to the ground, forever changed (at least in human terms). I am immensely grateful that I got to spend so much time in these places, and also very sad to see how they have changed.

Hiking into the Battle Ax Creek was like visiting a long-lost friend. This is one of the very few places in this area that did not burn in 2020, a pocket of what used to be in an area that has been decimated by fire over the past decade or so. While the old growth forest for most of the hike does not compare to what used to stand at nearby Opal Creek, but it is still quite nice. The Battle Ax Creek Trail is in fact an old road, a mining route to connect Elk Lake to Jawbone Flats.

Here’s what the Battle Ax Creek Trail mostly looks like:

The trail stays in the woods away from Battle Ax Creek for most of its 4.4 miles, occasionally offering views of the canyon around. There are occasional crossings of creeks, most of which have washed out their wooden culverts, creating obstacles when the trail is wet. The forest gets nicer and nicer as you descend, becoming more and more reminiscent of the Opal Creek valley (which is in fact only a few miles away). When you reach the Whetstone Mountain Trail, turn right and hike downhill to the crossing of Battle Ax Creek, where you’ll find a most beautiful scene:

Before the fires, there were so many places that looked like this - and this spot is one of the very few (at least, on trail) that have not yet burned. It is a very special place. I could have stayed here for hours, even days. I will be very happy to write about this spot in my book, as I only mentioned it in passing in the first edition.

On the way back, it got very dark and humid, it got very dark and very humid, and storms threatened. I managed to avoid the worst of the storms, but in the end those storms passed over some different areas not too far away, sparking all sorts of wildfires.

And now, as mentioned, it feels like half the state of Oregon is on fire. It is hard to watch, knowing that these fires are burning up more areas I love - and it’s only the end of July. Sometimes it feels like the end times. It is hard to control my grief and anger at how the climate crisis has been and continues to be sidelined so the rich can make more money at the expense of everyone and everything else. We are where we are because our leaders refused to take any action to prevent climate change, and because the fossil fuel, car, and agriculture industries refused to acknowlege the severity of climate change when they could still do something about it. I could go on and on.

Wendy and I drove through the edge of the Bench Fire last weekend on our way back from the Three Sisters, and this is what it looked like:

I am still dealing with grief from the 2020 fires, and every year the climate crisis gets worse. On that note, this is why I am more motivated than ever to visit every place in this area that I have ever wanted to visit, before they catch on fire, before the glaciers melt, and before torrential rains wash out more roads and trails. If you think I’m exagerrated, I can assure that I am not.

On that note, stay tuned here for some ambitious plans I have for this year and next. Some of these plans involve finishing the second edition of 101 Hikes in style, and some of them involve knocking a few items off my bucket list (and perhaps yours!) before it’s too late.

This is the world we live in now. We have to find the beauty we can and embrace it while it’s still here. It is vital.

Thank you for reading, as always.