The cloaked inhabitants can’t be seen on Wizard Island under Watchman’s Overlook above, nor can the massive moss beds in our nation’s deepest lake. But there’s plenty of evidence of volcanic activity, including lava flows, cinder cones and the caldera itself. The lake is restricted, but there are a few summer boat tours from Cleetwood Cove. The rim road on the far left side is often under construction, but there are many trails and overlooks elsewhere including from the Rim Village off to the right. Due to snow, the Scenic Rim Drive is usually closed from November through June, if not longer. The outside of the mountain is also worth exploring, such as a one mile hike through Godfrey’s Glen in the south. Signs of 2017 wildfires are seen near the north entrance, and the forests of Oregon are getting hotter and drier due to carbon pollution.
I’m finally catching up on my summer travel backlog, just California national parks for the remaining Mondays of the year. Thursday posts will also continue eclectically.
Even though the Hoh Rain Forest is on the far side of the park from Seattle, it’s popular in July, so I watched an otter playing in the water for half an hour while waiting my turn to drive through the gate to look for parking. (A parking map at the gate would save everyone time). The Hall of Mosses Trail above is easily hiked from the visitor center, and it’s impressive and definitely worth the trip. Several of the trees appear to be 1000 years old, and the streams are clear from spring water, where I saw tiny salmon among the bright green watercress.
There are some signs that the increased heat from carbon pollution is damaging some of the mosses, and while the overall annual precipitation has remained the same, it’s more concentrated in heavy downpours and less in the misty fog-drip that these sensitive plants require. The glaciers are also disappearing rapidly and will disappear completely in a few decades or less, severely impacting all the downstream ecosystems.
Of course, Olympic also has mountains, including Hurricane Ridge and Mount Olympus, which feeds the Hoh and Queets Rivers. There’s a Hot Springs resort at Sol Duc and boating at Lake Crescent. The Olympic Peninsula also has Native American Reservations which help manage the coastal wilderness, wildlife refuge and marine sanctuary. For me, their crown jewel is their large temperate rainforest, but the other areas are also stunning. Some artists are painting the glaciers before they melt, but wouldn’t it be better if we all did our part to reduce our carbon footprints?
Panorama Point above is about 1,500’ above the Paradise parking lot, halfway along the 5 mile ‘strenuous’ Skyline loop trail, just under halfway up the mountain. In July, there were waterfalls, snow on sections of the trail, wildflowers and marmots. Mts St Helens, Adams & Hood all visible in the distance. The northwest and southeast corners of the park both have old growth forests, along the Carbon River Rainforest—which is open for bicycling on the first few miles—and the Ohanapecosh River Grove of the Patriarchs Trails respectively. I understand why Muir extolled Rainier as the best of the volcanic peaks in this area.
“Of all the fire mountains which like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest.
John Muir
For me, it’s another return trip after several decades since my brother and sister and I took a hike and a photo up here somewhere. I was pleased to see the forest looking healthy, the clear streams near the top, the glacial gray rivers on the way down and the blue glacial lakes below, as I remember. Of course, when the rapidly receding glaciers disappear, the whole ecology will be severely disrupted. But for now, I’m happy to visit a place like this when the rest of the country is under a carbon fueled heat dome.
This photo looks down from the High Bridge at the end of the road 11 miles from Stehekin (rent an e-bike) on Lake Chelan. Here the bridge connects to the Pacific Crest Trail which cuts northeast across the southern wilderness on the last leg to Canada. The northern wilderness section of the multi-park complex is across the Skagit River and west of Ross Lake up to the Canadian border.
Both the north and south roadless wilderness areas have many high peaks with receding glaciers, so the hiking isn’t easy. And the wildlife includes black bears, cougars, gray wolves and grizzly bears. Careless campers closed one campsite by leaving food for bears to find, and another was closed due to grizzlies fighting over a nearby carcass. Being long of tooth and short of courage, I just hiked the short Agnes Gorge Trail on the edge of the wilderness to catch some more glimpses of rushing Stehekin River.
Wilderness, of course, has now ended. Now that our carbon pollution is changing the climate globally, there is nowhere on earth unaffected by humans. With that change comes responsibility. Since we no longer allow nature to keep itself in equilibrium, we must act to restore balance. We broke it, so now we own it. The park has increasingly fierce wildfires, which we exacerbated. So the extra damage is our fault, and we must fix it.
Since the cave was discovered in 1874, explored and expanded early, humans caused very significant damage to geologic structures making it hard to find beautiful natural features. The ‘cave drapery’ above is at the top of two flights of metal steps up to the Paradise Lost high ceiling above the Ghost Room in the far back of the cave tour. The cave has a stream pouring out from the entrance, and there’s a pretty pool there in front of the Château, which is closed pending renovations. There are also several pretty hikes above ground, including one to a very large Douglas Fir. Easy to get tickets at rec.gov or at the visitor center in Cave Junction, before driving all the way up to the cave itself. Be sure to check in as soon as you arrive at the other visitor center next to the cave, as they often let folks take an earlier tour when space is available, especially in the morning.
John Day was merely an unfortunate trader who got robbed along the river here, but the event was noteworthy enough that this Columbia River tributary was named after him, then the whole region in Oregon. I first explored the area in 2017 when finding a campsite to observe a full solar eclipse, but I skipped the fossils. I really should have visited the museum earlier.
The John Day River flows through a huge volcanic landscape that contains the best Cenozoic fossils discovered in the country. Layers of forests and ash preserved some of the most important fossils used to understand evolution. The Cenozoic is the age of mammals, including the John Day Tiger above and the big entelodont (pig/hippo) behind it on the left. There is a camel skull, a gomphothere (elephant) jaw, mastodon teeth, horns of a giraffe-deer, bones of a short-faced bear previously thought to live only in Asia, rhinos, and some kind of giant dog-bear called a nimravid. There are also fossils of the Dawn Redwood, which still lives in China. The fossils I’ve seen at Fossil Butte, Florissant and Agate are all from periods covered here. If you have time, it’s possible to hike in the three separate remote park units, but the exhibits above are in the Condon Visitor Center in the Sheep Rock unit near the scenic Picture Gorge.
The replica of Fort Clatsop, winter camp 1805-6, above helps imagine the rough conditions for 32 men, a woman, her baby and one dog, when it rained or sleeted 94 days out of 105. Several visitors brought their Newfoundland dogs in a regular event to honor Seaman, the valued, four-legged expedition member.
Jaden and his friend—not yet park service employees—explained the story of the stolen canoe, the eating of dogs and how Sacagawea was purchased and impregnated around age 15 by her ‘husband’ who had other ‘wives’. These facts didn’t make my history book. Jaden’s canoe story was one of the best talks I’ve heard in any national park.
I missed the guided paddle trip, but I walked to Canoe Landing and saw most of the short Lewis & Clark ‘river’ from shore. The pilings in the water here and in much of the Pacific Northwest are old logging organizers.
The park also includes various nearby sites visited by the expedition, including Washington state’s Cape Disappointment—misnamed by someone who mistakenly thought the bay too large to be the mouth of the Columbia River. A Japanese sub briefly bombed Fort Stevens on the Oregon side. The charming seaside town of Astoria, once famous for furs, canneries and TheGoonies, makes a good base to explore with some good restaurants and reasonably priced hotels.
Portland Oregon has always confused me geographically. What kind of port is over 100 miles from the coast on a tributary of a major river? The history of this site explained it. George Vancouver, a British explorer who sailed with Captain Cook, explored the Pacific Northwest coast in the 1790s, and both the both the huge natural harbor in British Columbia to the north and this deep water site to the south on the Columbia River were named after him. Vancouver Washington was perfectly located at the confluence of the Willamette River to be an inland trading post still reachable by ocean vessels. The Chinook have long lived here and traded with other tribes, regularly traveling hundreds of miles by canoe. When the Pacific Northwest was British, this was all one territory from Sitka Alaska to San Francisco. Portland was built later as Vancouver’s port. When it became US territory, Oregon and Washington states split the growing city here on the Columbia. As the Willamette (Wil-AM-it) Valley developed in Oregon, Portland became the city and Vancouver became the tax-dodging suburb (lower income taxes in Washington within easy bridge distance to lower sales taxes across the river in Portland).
The British Hudson Bay Company built its corporate territorial headquarters here in 1825 to capitalize on the fur trade with tens of thousands of local Native Americans and a great many more via their ancient trade routes along the coast, up the rivers and deep into the mountains. The British contracted with many French fur traders who typically married natives. British ships brought workers from Hawaii after rounding Cape Horn. The fort (reconstructed on location above) was the center of a thriving cultural melting pot that developed its own language and challenges. Unfortunately, many natives died of disease, particularly malaria, which the ‘gentlemen’ who lived in the fort knew could be treated with Quinine, which they had in limited quantities. The company man in charge, Dr McLoughlin, was married to a biracial woman, and he was violently furious when newly arrived missionaries spoke derogatorily of her.
McLoughlin nevertheless extended credit to the many destitute white settlers who arrived on the Oregon Trail. He lost money, was forced to retire, became a US citizen and is now considered the ‘father of Oregon’. His house is part of the site south of Portland. White settlers took over and made the state ‘whites only’ by law until 1926, prohibiting others from property ownership etc. It’s worth reflecting honestly on this history when considering the recent Supreme Court decision against affirmative action: white ‘pioneers’ gave themselves every legal and economic advantage possible, from slavery, to the Rogue River Wars against natives, to ‘whites only’, to the Chinese exclusion act, and to taking property during the Japanese internment. It’s shameful that the Court ignored the long history unfair privileges given to white people—many whose families benefited over two hundred years from stolen land, labor and opportunity from so many people of color—and decided against providing a few seats in college in order to enrich the diversity of education for all students.
The visitor center in Idaho is on a hill above where the Lapwai Creek flows into the Clearwater River, which joins the Snake River a few miles downstream in Lewiston. The river banks were an excellent place for salmon, berries, edible flowers, and game, and the Nimiipuu used to arrive in the fall and stay through winter. By summer, they would be hunting up in the hills, forests & mountains. French trappers called the tribe Nez Perce or ‘Pierced Nose’, although that wasn’t a traditional tribal practice. When Lewis & Clark passed through, the Nimiipuu assisted the expedition and helped them make canoes. When the missionaries and other settlers arrived, they were forced to change. Many tried desperately to compromise and adapt. After the nearby Whitman mission ended in a massacre, racist demagoguery fueled far more excessive violence across the west, bringing the US military, war, exile and restricted reservation life, including here around the Spaulding mission, pictured circa 1900.
The affiliated Nez Perce National Historic Trail, which marks the flight of the tribe from the US Army, is now part of the broad official Nez Perce NHP, including Big Hole in Montana, a refuge near Lake Roosevelt, the White Bird & Clearwater Battlefields, through Lolo Pass, Yellowstone, Billings and up to Bear Paw Battlefield. Over the years, I’ve visited these places on roadtrips, read several of the books, from I Will Fight No More Forever to Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce and pondered the mistakes and tragedy. There is simply no excuse for breaking treaties, stealing land, or killing defenseless people, including women, children, the elderly and infants. When leaders take advantage of popular anger to focus attacks against a community, the result is often far more evil than any original sins. I encourage you to learn more, since the problem of demagoguery is still with us.
But the Nez Perce tribe is still here with us, like the flowers they used to cultivate here. They are re-learning the language that they used to be punished for speaking. They self-govern, petition the US government, sing songs, dance, teach their kids to gather plants, hunt, fish and carry on their cultural traditions and exercise their treaty rights. The lessons of their forefathers and their oral traditions continue to be remembered, spoken aloud and passed down to future generations. The park preserves petroglyphs, artifacts and sites of mythology. Their culture is vibrant and contributes a valuable perspective to all of us. They are not doomed to be permanent prisoners of tragedy, and the park film here is a refreshing reminder of the resilience and life of their culture and of the human spirit.
The Cayuse had heard from the east about what happened to natives after settlers arrived, so they predicted death, loss and suffering were on their way. The Whitman missionaries left in 1836, five years before others started arriving overland in Oregon. They were allowed to start a farm here, and with the fervor of the second awakening, they preached that the Cayuse were going to hell after death unless they adopted Christianity. As it turned out, gathering newly arrived settlers and native converts in church weekly to break bread and sing songs together, helped spread diseases like measles that killed most of the native population. So the Whitmans were sort of correct, except for the order: first they adopted Christianity, then they went through hell before finally dying.
Unfortunately for the missionaries, the natives had a tradition of killing bad medicine men. Now, much has been written of the Whitman massacre (especially by the other missionary Spaulding who settled nearby with the Nez Perce), but imagine if immigrants come to your town and demand that you copy their strange new ways and beliefs, with threats if you did not. Many more immigrants arrive each year, talk with the missionary doctor, take over and spread disease. When the doctor treats his own people, they usually survive, but when he treats yours, they die. How many of your friends and relatives would die before some angry grieving parent would try to kill the doctor? I’m not excusing criminal behavior based in ignorance, but similar senseless vengeful murders still occur today.
When half of the Cayuse had died of disease, a group of natives killed Doctor Whitman, his wife and 11 other men. There’s a memorial on the hill in the photo above. 5 natives were later found guilty and hung. The mass murder was a terrible crime, but the response was just short of genocide. For the next 12 years, the Cayuse and many other natives in the territories were hunted down by militias and by the military, driven from their lands, harassed and in many cases slaughtered, including women, children and the elderly. When the dust settled, most of the remaining natives were on small reservations with a few escaped to Canada. For every white person killed, hundreds or likely 1000s of natives died. More lost everything they owned, including their freedom, despite not having anything to do with the original conflict or the Cayuse.
Zero Carbon Travel 