Oregon Hikers

My annual trip up the Deschutes. Spent several nights.

Rainy in Portland, just a bit rainy on the Deschutes. This is a reason to go there, much less rain than in Portland.

The area is recovering well from the fire a couple years ago, you can hardly tell there was a fire.

The "trail" is a gravel road with locked gate. You can see that the trees along the river have been pretty much unaffected by the fire: There are places that were burned, plants are growing back, but you can tell that it burned recently: All those buildings at the Harris Homestead are burned up with some residual burned lumber: One could argue those old dilapidated buildings are better off burned.

Great place for a winter hike when it's raining on the west side. If the gorge isn't so icy as to be impassable.

Sorry to see the homestead and water tower gone.

not sorry to see homestead gone, it was dilapidated. Although it was sort of cool. Okay, maybe a little bit sorry

sorry to see water tower gone, they had restored it a while ago

a couple of those other buildings were still being used to store stuff

My husband and I did the long walk out to the Harris water tower and back on Sunday. It was a nice escape from the rain, but quite breezy. It really has come back quickly since the fire.

We saw a few tents and wondered how it was going for the campers. Very cool that you were out there. It is so nice and quiet there, especially in this season. I have yet to see any sheep, though we look every time.

I hardly ever see any other tents

Occasionally I see big horn sheep on other side, once there were three groups of about 150 total in my path, I was a bit concerned

I'm planning on doing a quick overnight out there this coming weekend. The sounds of the wind, the rapids, and the occasional train are very relaxing. And being a flat hike I can pack a few more pounds of life's comforts with me.

retired jerry wrote: ↑

February 5th, 2020, 12:15 pm

not sorry to see homestead gone, it was dilapidated. Although it was sort of cool. Okay, maybe a little bit sorry

sorry to see water tower gone, they had restored it a while ago

I still need to explore beyond the water tower (site)... How far did you go?

Thought that old homestead was kinda cool, too, yeah...


Photo credit: mountainkat (album)

Its days were likely numbered, though.

You are a brave person Karl I have stuck my head inside a bit checking out what's inside.

I went another couple mile further, then I heard gunshots so I turned around. Then there were gunshots the other direction - it was from a boat going down the river, I think they were shooting birds. I assume everything was legal, I didn't feel too much in danger.

Of course, I've been all 23 miles many times. A couple months ago I started from the other end but didn't feel like hiking very far down. Good way to escape the rain.