Klickitat River Rendezvous

Lowell camped along the Klickitat River

Maria and I met friends from Olympia along the Klicktat River this past weekend.  It was a beautiful, though cool and breezy weekend.  With the river flowing high there was no fishing to be had, which meant no crowds.  A great getaway three hours from Bend.  We will need to get up here more often.

Spring high flows

Pine Creek Progress

Beaver Dam Analog we installed in 2015

It has been very wet in the John Day Basin in early spring of 2019. In fact, the John Day River hit it's third highest recorded flow volume this month. Pine Creek has also surged so I was very curious to see how it is doing and find out how our work over the years has held up. Happily, it has held up amazingly well. Pine Creek will take years to return to a healthy, functioning stream, but it is on it's way. We installed a number of beaver dam analogs a few years ago as part of an ONDA effort.  These are basically fake beaver dams.  Fun to build, and very effective. Actual beavers have reoccupied the stream and are doing amazing things in short order. Base level is already rising, though with the depth of incised channel to be found here it will be a while before the stream retakes its floodplain.   I am now a beaver believer!

The Hancock Lady Pictograph

Escape the Rain in Badlands

Ancient Juniper

It was a wet Sunday in Bend . Too warm and wet for skiing at Bachelor so Maria and I headed for the Badlands Wilderness. We were rewarded with a dry hike, no crowds, and flocks of bluebirds. Not a bad Plan B, I suppose .

Road Trip

Abert Lake and Rim

It was time for a road trip!  A friend from Seattle came down to Bend in his pickup on Thursday night, we loaded up my stuff, and headed east.  This was a classic road trip of yore.  Lots of driving, no itinerary, just a few days away and a desire to see something new.  It is getting hard for me to achieve that last goal these days.  The back roads were wet, limiting the options, but we still managed to check out the Black Hills near Christmas Valley and hit a back road into Abert Lake that I had not yet traveled. Spent a night in the cold and snow near Cabin Lake, a second might on a beautiful ridge top in Diamond Craters, and the final night at Chukar Park near Juntura.  Some observations:

* Leslie Gulch was crowded, as it has been in the last few years.  There are almost a million people in the greater Boise - Treasure Valley area. This is no longer a remote area.
* Succor Creek is beautiful, but too close to the Boise sprawl.
* Those large side-by-side off road vehicles are everywhere.  It was sobering to see the amount of damage caused by them, particularly near Succor Creek SP.
* Diamond Craters is fantastic.
* This should be a great wildflower season in Oregon's High Desert with all of the moisture we have had.

Pete French's Round Barn

Heading down into Leslie Gulch