Eagle Creek Trail, Feb. 8th, 2017
Posted: February 8th, 2017, 4:02 pm
I haven't been out on the trails in a over a week so was jonesing for an outing and the forecast of ice and freezing rain got my attention! Nothing like a day out in the gorge at its best. The freezing rain could be seen forming a couple of hundred feet higher as I passed by Crown Point on the freeway below and by Multnomah falls, the road was icy. By Eagle creek, it was very slippery!
The plan was to go as far as I could and I did that, but didn't get nearly as far as I'd hoped. Nevertheless, the difficulty of chopping and kicking steps in the ice made for a great workout and I'm very happy with my pitiful 2.3 mile hike today.
Arriving at the TH just before the cable bridge I donned the proper gear: crampons, ice axe, camera, etc. and headed in. The road is taped off at that point but the folks at the hatchery are plowing it so when it eventually does re-open, they won't have a major job clearing things away.
No one had been up the trail in long enough for the previous tracks to have disappeared so I was starting anew. I had to chop steps or kick steps the whole way due to the deluge of ice pellets that have repeatedly deluged the gorge.
No real melting since I took this photo on the 30th:
Here it is as of this morning:
The little bridge at the start is starting to show some strain due to the tons of ice and few big rocks weighing it down:
Looking upstream from the previous:
A few more shots:
I'd never noticed this triple falls before!
Here is where I chickened out. I could see a massive delta of ice pellets in the distance and beyond that are even higher cliffs so that was it for today.
All the pics are here as well as a few comparison shots:
http://www.fototime.com/users/donnelsen ... r%20trips.
BTW, I know videos of this have been posted before but here is another. This was taken on Jan. 8th showing the "waterfall" of ice pellets that form these huge formations over the roads and trails in the gorge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-pQB8-OS_E
dn
The plan was to go as far as I could and I did that, but didn't get nearly as far as I'd hoped. Nevertheless, the difficulty of chopping and kicking steps in the ice made for a great workout and I'm very happy with my pitiful 2.3 mile hike today.
Arriving at the TH just before the cable bridge I donned the proper gear: crampons, ice axe, camera, etc. and headed in. The road is taped off at that point but the folks at the hatchery are plowing it so when it eventually does re-open, they won't have a major job clearing things away.
No one had been up the trail in long enough for the previous tracks to have disappeared so I was starting anew. I had to chop steps or kick steps the whole way due to the deluge of ice pellets that have repeatedly deluged the gorge.
No real melting since I took this photo on the 30th:
Here it is as of this morning:
The little bridge at the start is starting to show some strain due to the tons of ice and few big rocks weighing it down:
Looking upstream from the previous:
A few more shots:
I'd never noticed this triple falls before!
Here is where I chickened out. I could see a massive delta of ice pellets in the distance and beyond that are even higher cliffs so that was it for today.
All the pics are here as well as a few comparison shots:
http://www.fototime.com/users/donnelsen ... r%20trips.
BTW, I know videos of this have been posted before but here is another. This was taken on Jan. 8th showing the "waterfall" of ice pellets that form these huge formations over the roads and trails in the gorge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-pQB8-OS_E
dn