Mobilization: The Dalles and Taylor Creek Wildfires in Oregon

This summer in the Pacific Northwest was especially bad for wildfires.  We had a very dry summer and we were paying for it in July and August.

Just after the 4th of July is when some of the worst ones started.  Typically, they happen in the central and east part of the states and in Oregon parts of the southern border.  In British Columbia, a lot of the eastern part of the providence was on fire.  Most of them were caused by severe thunderstorms and others were accidental and or man made.

Ben missed the first call at the beginning of July on our way to watch fireworks in Fife with Walter and Wendy.  He told them he would be ready for the next one whenever that was going to be.

We had been getting ready for Lindsay and Justin's wedding when all of a sudden the night of July 19th, we got the call Ben has been waiting for and of course it would be the weekend in which we had plans.  He was super bummed that it conflicted with their wedding but he was glad because it would be a little extra money.  I texted Lindsay and Nicole that night and told her Ben wasn't coming.  They were both sad but they understood the circumstance.  I was riding solo that weekend.

Ben got together the rest of his stuff for his red bag and headed to the fire station with his crew.  He didn't know how long he would be gone but up to two weeks and he also had no idea if he would have cell phone service but when he did he would check in.

This would be the first time since 2012 he has been on a MOBE.

His first assignment was just south of The Dalles in Oregon on the Substation Fire.  The Substation Fire started on July 17 on private land.  The strong winds spread the fire over 18 miles in just a few short days.  A lot of agriculture, which was very important for the livelihoods of farmers, burned up quickly.  The governor of Oregon declared a state of emergency and the National Guard was called in among several fire departments from all over the Pacific Northwest to come fight the fire.  The three communities closest were evacuated.

Ben was only there for about four days.  There, he met a fellow firefighter named Ricky, he was from Yelm and was with the SE Thurston County fire station (Ricky is not pictured in blog).  He would be spending the remaining time in Oregon with him.  Their job was spent driving around looking for hot spots in the fields.

They got the call from their unit lead and found out they were needed down by Grants Pass/Medford, which was about a 300 mile drive, for the Taylor Creek Fire.

This fire was started on July 15th due to lightening.  The fire burned approximately 52,839 acres in about three months.

Ben and his unit got down there and settled into a building that was part of the North Valley High School campus.  They called it the "Kingdom".  It was air conditioned, which was absolutely necessary, they worked the night shift because it was so hot during the day.  It was super smoky the entire time he was there.

During this time I only got to talk to Ben during a very small window of time.  Usually the cell phone service was so terrible I didn't hear from him until they got back into town.  He shared several stories of his adventures in the wilderness which included burnt rattlesnakes, a very weird mural inside a drug lord's house, ass bats and a resort in which the patrons applauded the firefighters.

The night shift consisted of burning acreage (which helped contain the fire, fighting fire with fire), hiking, saving structures and warning people who have not evacuated yet to prepare for the possibility.

He said it was very hot and sweaty work.  The food was appreciated but it soon got old.  My friend Jessie who married Mike a few years ago, moved to Medford to pursue his aviation career.  She asked me if bringing Ben and his unit some extra food (muffins, jerky) from Costco would be plausible.  I said it probably was but she would have to get a hold of him because his schedule was pretty erratic.  I gave her his phone number and they did cross paths one afternoon while in Grants Pass.  I got a text message from Jessie telling me that after five years she finally got to meet Ben.

Ben and his unit came home the afternoon of August 2.  He and all of his belongings smelled like smoke.  I told him to leave them out on the back porch or in the garage and to take a shower.  They really didn't have time to do much grooming except for showers while he was down there so he came home with a gross beard.  He shaved, cut his hair and showered.

Over the next few days he went through his red bag.  A lot of the stuff was washed, re-packed and ready for the next call.  Those calls can happen at a moments notice and you'd better be ready to go.

**His next call was in mid-September when he went over to Yakima county for a fire near Mabton called Glade Creek.  It was also started by lightening and burned about 13,000 acres before it was contained.  He was gone for about four days.**

Next Adventure:  Erika Moved in Again

Silver Falls State Park Hike, Witch's Castle and Papa Pete's

Mom and I got up around 6:30, went downstairs for our free continental breakfast, packed up our stuff and took it down to the tank.  We checked out and wanted to be at the state park before everyone and their dog came out since it was Memorial Day weekend and going to be a really warm day.

We plugged the address into Nuvi and followed the meandering road to the state park.  The lot was empty when we arrived except for the three other cars in the parking lot.  I walked up to the kiosk, paid our $5 and grabbed a map.  We got our hiking shoes on, put our water an snacks in our back packs, made sure mom had her camera and lenses and finally grabbed our hiking poles.  We locked the tank and headed to the stone circle trail head.  We parked in the west side of the park entrance so we had to orient our map and find the Rim Rail on the south side of the Trail of Ten Falls.  We were told to start here and this trail and then take the Canyon Trail on the way back to the parking lot.  It would be about a moderate 8 miles total.

I brought the GoPro with me to document some of the trail, the waterfalls and the experience for Ben since he couldn't make it this weekend because of work.  We started walking.  The path was paved for a while and then it turned into a gravel/dirt mixture.  It was dry so we never really encountered any muddy spots unless we were next to one of the waterfalls so that made the hike easier.  This side of the trail was more trail than waterfalls.  This side only featured two while the other side featured the other eight.  There were some steep parts and a few switchbacks...nothing we couldn't handle.

While hiking, we talked about a bunch of random stuff.  We talked about how work was going and the fact that I had one more week at L&I before I had to go to WSDOT.  Mom talked about some of the stuff happening with her office.  She shared more stories about Ecuador and I told her at the end of June Ben and I would be going to the TriCities again for the geocoin challenge.  We talked briefly about Grammie being in rehab for her stroke, the things that mom and dad were helping Grandpa with and the next steps in this new process we were experiencing.  It was very hard to talk about without crying.

We got to our first waterfall after about a mile of walking.  Winter Falls which was 134 feet from the top to the bottom.  It's probably more active in the late winter/early spring months when the rain it more plentiful.  We took a couple of photos and then trudged on.

After the first falls we started seeing people because we were getting closer to another trailhead.  A little bit more than a mile and a small spur, we found ourselves at our second falls, Upper North Falls.  This was near the North Falls trailhead with a small parking lot, picnic tables and some outdoor bathrooms!   We enjoyed the Upper North Falls.  You could actually walk out to this one and stand underneath the falls if you wanted to.

We took the short spur back to the junction and decided to use the bathroom since we probably would not see one until we got back to the south side.  For some reason, we must have that "I look friendly and know stuff" face. A college student from some Asian country asked us about the trail.  One, this was the first time we came here, two, we aren't from Oregon and three, I'm going to do the best I could to answer her questions.  First off, she had very good English which would have been my first hurdle if she didn't and secondly, I could answer her question thankfully.  She basically asked about the trail.  Where they should start, where the waterfalls were, etc.  I told her we were doing the "8" mile loop and that we parked at the south trailhead.  As far as the waterfalls, I told her where we came from there was only one and forward were the ones she and her friends probably wanted to see.  She thanked me and met up with her friends.

We headed to the next one, North Falls just down the first set of stairs.  This was the first falls we encountered that we could walk behind.  It was 136 feet waterfall that plunged over a lip giving it its distinctive look.  This is one of the several waterfalls people came to look at because you could walk behind it.  We enjoyed it for a while since there wasn't that many people on the trail.  It was pretty awesome.

Now came the longest gap between waterfalls, a 1.1 mile stretch to our fourth waterfall, Twin Falls.  This is where we started seeing more and more hikers, families and little kids...plus it was getting later in the morning and more people showed up to the park.

This falls really wasn't all that spectacular...in fact, it was really hard to see it from the trail.  Even one of the hikers that walked past us said it was really hard to see and photograph.  We took one shot of it and moved on to the next one which was a little over a quarter of a mile up the trail.

We approached Middle North Falls, which is a 106 foot waterfall, and you could hear it before you saw it.  During certain times of the year it is much wider in size however, today it was not as wide but still pretty cool because you could walk behind this one too.

We walked a little less than a half a mile to the next one.  The trail was getting busier and busier as we got closer to the end of the loop.

Drake Falls was another little obscure falls that we really couldn't see very well from the trail.  There was a small platform with handrails so you could see the falls from a better angle than from just the trail.  This one was only 27 feet.  We didn't take very long to check this one out.  Mom got a picture and we hiked to the next one, which was about a quarter of a mile away.

Double Falls was a pretty cool waterfall.  The picture doesn't really give it justice because you couldn't see the falls at the top of the canyon.  At this point we were running into people who were slower than us and lots of places we had to maneuver ourselves around them.  I couldn't believe how many bad-behaved kids were on the trail and their parents let them be rude to people.  Mom was getting tired of it and I told her to trip a few of them to see if their attitude changes.

Just up the trail, not even 500 feet was the Lower North Falls.  This one was actually a really pretty one with the sun hitting it.  I hated that there was a fallen tree in the lower left had corner of it.  We found a place to rest and had some snacks while we enjoyed the view.

Lower South Falls was another waterfall you could walk under.  This one was really muddy and very narrow.  There were several people who weren't patient to wait long enough for their turn.  One bad step or one accidental shove from a kid and your shoes are muddy and wet.  I got through pretty quickly but mom got stuck behind two families with kids and the parents did not have a hold on any of them.  Her and another woman chatted about how rude the parents were not grabbing their kids out of other people's ways.  I took pictures as I waited for her.

We went around the corner and made our way to the stairs.  There were warnings about how steep some of the sets were and to be careful.  Mom and I had no trouble with them but some of the more elderly people struggled and moved off to the side so we could pass.

The final part of the trail lead us over a foot bridge on to our tenth and final waterfall, South Falls.  This was the only waterfall in the park that seemed to have the most notoriety amongst the park's ten waterfalls (even though none of them were named Silver Falls).  Mom and I were very impressed with its size since many of the ones we just saw really weren't that spectacular in size.  South Falls has a direct plunge of 177 feet dropping over an over hanging edge to give it its classical skinny curtain shape.  While we were here, we stood on the foot bridge and did the Basalt Erosion at Silver Falls State Park (GC17JE8) earthcache.  This waterfall was the busiest one because of its proximity to the south end parking lot.  It took us a while to get around underneath the falls.

Once we got around the trail under the falls, we hiked back towards the tank.  When we walked through there that morning the little gift shop was closed.  When we walked by the second time it was open so we went in there to see what they had.  Of course I bought a few postcards.  When we got to the tank, I was amazed of how many vehicles were in the parking lot.  It was packed! We changed into some flip flops, dumped off our hiking stuff, grabbed the cooler and tried to find somewhere to eat some food.  It was hard to find an open picnic table but we managed to find one to share with a family who was enjoying the river rather than the picnic table at that moment.

We thought this was a great state park and a really nice hike.  You should definitely come early before it gets busy.  It's up to you which way you start and end up.  I highly recommend it if you want a somewhat easy 8ish mile hike.

We managed to get out of the insane parking lot. We left the park and headed back towards Salem.  I wanted to find a couple of caches while we were here so I checked the app.  I knew the 45th parallel was down here and wanted to find a cache at the line.  We drove out towards the northwest side of Salem to get a cache called Pinball Wizard (GC3R6V0).  We stopped here because it had over a 120 favorite points.  We pulled over on the side of the road directly across the road from the cache.  It was attached to a power pole.  I walked over while mom hung out in the tank.  I videoed the entire experience and took a photo as well.  It was just like the title said, pinball wizard.  You grabbed the knob at the bottom of the cache and let go and the cache came out of the top similar to a ball in the pinball machine.  It was pretty cool!

I put the next set of coords into the Nuvi and it took us to the other side of Salem.  I really wanted a cache on the 45th Parallel, halfway between the north pole and the equator.  We got to the cache site and parked at the bank.  We found the plaque and the cache very quickly.  Between Top and Middle (GC1GCYQ) was a container that was held together through friction.  I signed our names, took a quick picture and put it back before muggles showed up or walked by.  I found out later that we were the last cachers to find this cache.

From there, we got back onto I-5 and headed north towards home.  Just before we got to Portland, we got to talking about something I saw on the internet a while back.  It was called "The Witches Castle" and it was located on the western side of Portland.  She asked if we could go.  We put the address in and maneuvered our way through Portland via Hwy 26.  We found a place to park once we got there.  We had read a blog to park near the Audubon Society and walk down but turns out that was wrong.  We had a bunch of kids join us in the search for the trailhead.  We finally found it and made our way down the canyon.  For further reference, the trailhead is about 500 feet east from the Audubon Society.  You are looking for a sign that says Wildwood Trail which will take you down into Forest Park.  It was a short half a mile.  We walked past several people going to and from the castle.

When we got there there I expected the structure to be bigger.  It still was cool though.  Since we didn't have service I couldn't look at any of the information about the virtual on my phone.  I took pictures of everything to make sure I didn't miss anything for Witches Castle (GC7B679).  We were there for about a half hour and then walked back up the hill to the tank.  I was getting hungry.

We left the area and got back onto I-5 north.  I asked mom what she felt like and she said pizza.  I knew there was a Papa Pete's in Ridgefield.  The last one I had to visit to complete the quartet of Papa Pete locations.  It wasn't that busy so we got our food pretty quickly.  We shared a salad while we waited for the peperoni and black olives pizza.  We devoured it.

Before we left I grabbed the cache that was outside in the parking lot, Iron Horse (GCKQN6).  It was a very quick hide.

We got back onto I-5 and headed north towards exit 88.  I dropped mom off in Rainier around 8ish and got all of my stuff into my Escape.  I got home shortly after, unloaded my stuff into the house and took a much needed shower.  Overall, we saw some new places, found some geocaches, hiked around 11 miles all together and enjoyed some much needed sunshine.  Until the next mini adventure!

Next Adventure:  New Job and a Night Out with the Tacoma Rainiers