Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

This forum is used to share your experiences out on the trails.
User avatar
BaileyBoy
Posts: 336
Joined: March 25th, 2009, 12:15 pm

Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by BaileyBoy » January 24th, 2022, 6:38 pm

My friend and I arrived at the road to the TH and saw our first obstacle - a 5' high snow bank from the road plowing. We decided to forge ahead without snow shoes or skis to see how far we could go. The snow was almost totally frozen but we had occassional post holing. It was very cold but so long as were in the sun we felt plenty warm.
On the walk to the TH we followed what was either ski or a snowmobile tracks quite a way past the kiosk - Important notice DFW deputy was ticketing cars parked along the main road since a Snow Park pass is required for this area, even on the road. First thing we saw after crossing over the snow bank was 3 pieces of an elk's leg, pretty much picked clean. Not sure if someone had killed an elk nearby and threw these pieces over the bank or ???
Hugh number of elk tracks as we got on further along on the Dry Creek trail, very difficult to follow the trail since my memory of the route doesn't work well with tracks going every which way and elk tracks mixed in plus occasional ski tracks.
We walked in about 1.5 miles with lots of wandering (which isn't too bad on such a beautiful day) and occasionally checking AllTrails route I had downloaded.
We saw no one of trail but there were 6 cars parked along road.
For out late lunch went to my favorite place in Carson, Skamania Lodge. James had a great burger and I had the pork barbecue sandwich, also excellent with my Boneyard IPA.
Going to have to wait a few months before heading over here again, especially after reading Dean's Falls Creek report.
The stump photo had to go in since it reminded me of a shaggy critter of some sort, really colorful. And I've always loved the moss on the maples when the bright sun hits them.
Attachments
IMG_7339.jpeg
IMG_7337.jpeg
IMG_7334.jpeg
IMG_7325.jpeg
IMG_7330.jpeg
IMG_7314.jpeg
IMG_7310.jpeg

User avatar
drm
Posts: 6133
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:03 pm
Location: The Dalles, OR
Contact:

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by drm » January 25th, 2022, 8:17 am

Probably some large truck will punch a hole through that berm, allowing us to drive off the main road, as long as we don't get another low altitude winter blast in February. Not clear to me where you parked since there didn't appear to be any place except the sno-park.

johnspeth
Posts: 346
Joined: July 30th, 2013, 8:33 am

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by johnspeth » January 25th, 2022, 10:18 am

drm wrote:
January 25th, 2022, 8:17 am
Probably some large truck will punch a hole through that berm, allowing us to drive off the main road, as long as we don't get another low altitude winter blast in February. Not clear to me where you parked since there didn't appear to be any place except the sno-park.
That Gov Mineral Springs sno-park is good winter access to Trapper Creek and Soda Peaks Lake.

It's also too creepy for me. The trailhead is decommissioned yet there's an actual sno-park in an area that doesn't get reliable snow (1200 ft). There's a perfectly fine and well functioning bridge that is signed "Danger!". The cabin village has numerous moss-tinged cabins that all look haunted. The Bubbling Mike Spring looks like it's in under a small metal box, not sure why. And that's all in one place!

User avatar
Charley
Posts: 1834
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:03 pm
Location: Milwaukie

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by Charley » January 25th, 2022, 12:52 pm

johnspeth wrote:
January 25th, 2022, 10:18 am
That Gov Mineral Springs sno-park is good winter access to Trapper Creek and Soda Peaks Lake.

It's also too creepy for me. The trailhead is decommissioned yet there's an actual sno-park in an area that doesn't get reliable snow (1200 ft). There's a perfectly fine and well functioning bridge that is signed "Danger!". The cabin village has numerous moss-tinged cabins that all look haunted. The Bubbling Mike Spring looks like it's in under a small metal box, not sure why. And that's all in one place!

I've been skiing a lot up the Wind River and in Trout Lake the last few years and my buddy and I often think of this case:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... try-skier/

I've got nothing against Skamania County, but it does seem creepy. I think there's a little bit of "you-can't-get-there-from-here" going on: since the nearest towns are in Oregon(Hood River is larger than Stevenson, Carson, etc; Portland is larger than Vancouver), Skamania seems like a forgotten corner of Washington. I think that's kind of true of the Treasure Valley parts of Oregon (Idaho) or far southeast Oregon (Nevada), too, and I've got friends who are creeped out by those places. There's a reason "borderlands" and "frontiers" have such a mystique.
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

User avatar
drm
Posts: 6133
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:03 pm
Location: The Dalles, OR
Contact:

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by drm » January 26th, 2022, 8:28 am

Creepy again, I still don't get it. There was a thread a long time ago about Benson Plateau being spooky. I didn't get that either. The moss-tinged cabins are either quaint or decrepit. There is a Forest Service rentable cabin in there too. The stinky Iron Mike Spring was the site of a huge resort a century ago back when such things were the treatment for TB, until it burned. The trailhead just beyond it was a temporary bypass when when the lower bridge on the 133 trail was declared dangerous (it actually was dangerous) until it was replaced.

The low altitude trailhead gets a lot more snow than you would expect because it is surrounded by high ridges. Very little sun shines down there and the thick healthy forests keep the sun out too. Snow melt eventually happens due to a very lot of rain.

I may not get it, but it is a cultural tradition. Deep dark forests were always seen by "western" culture as places of magic and sorcery. And the clearing of such forests was always seen as a sign of "progress" and civilization.

querulous
Posts: 39
Joined: October 7th, 2020, 3:11 pm

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by querulous » January 27th, 2022, 2:36 pm

Charley wrote:
January 25th, 2022, 12:52 pm

I've been skiing a lot up the Wind River and in Trout Lake the last few years and my buddy and I often think of this case:
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... try-skier/

I've got nothing against Skamania County, but it does seem creepy. I think there's a little bit of "you-can't-get-there-from-here" going on: since the nearest towns are in Oregon(Hood River is larger than Stevenson, Carson, etc; Portland is larger than Vancouver), Skamania seems like a forgotten corner of Washington. I think that's kind of true of the Treasure Valley parts of Oregon (Idaho) or far southeast Oregon (Nevada), too, and I've got friends who are creeped out by those places. There's a reason "borderlands" and "frontiers" have such a mystique.
Skamania is an interesting case. I spend a lot of my rec time out there and generally prefer it to most Oregon-side destinations. It (Gifford PInchot and some WA DNR lands) feels wilder and less populated than the Mt Hood and there's more undocumented stuff to discover and explore.

Skamania is mostly public land: if you've driven to Wind river destinations through Carson and Stevenson you have seen the two population centers (unless you want to count S Bonneville). The county has like 12 cops. It has no hospital. One supermarket, which you pass by on the way to the Wind River valley.

At the same time it's basically an economic appendage of Clark and Multnomah counties, and I think it's part of the Portlan d SMSA. Like other such places (I am thinking of e.g. Darrington and Granite Falls on the eastern, unpopulated end of Snohomish county in Puget Sound) there is a lot of nostalgia for the good old days when public land was being strip-mined of its trees and people worked in the woods. Nowdays the economy is effectively commuting into more urban counties or tourism-related services. But they don't want to acknowledge or admit that. Remember that in the early days of the pandemic Skamania banned all hiking in the entire county, something which they probably didn't have the authority to do on public land, and which, with their twelve cops, they didn't have the muscle to enforce. But it's indicative of an attitude: the contagion flows from Portland and the outsiders should go away.

johnspeth
Posts: 346
Joined: July 30th, 2013, 8:33 am

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by johnspeth » January 28th, 2022, 5:12 am

drm wrote:
January 26th, 2022, 8:28 am
Creepy again, I still don't get it.
I used the word "creepy" first in this thread. On its surface, it's an irrational feeling probably based on one's prior life experiences. You have the advantage of knowing the history of the area which helps dispel the unknowns that contribute to the creepy feeling. It's certainly not a traditional snow park and it reminds me of an abandoned shanty town when I visited, which has been in the fall/winter/spring on imperfect weather days.

User avatar
Charley
Posts: 1834
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:03 pm
Location: Milwaukie

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by Charley » January 29th, 2022, 1:05 pm

johnspeth wrote:
January 25th, 2022, 10:18 am
It's also too creepy for me. The trailhead is decommissioned yet there's an actual sno-park in an area that doesn't get reliable snow (1200 ft). There's a perfectly fine and well functioning bridge that is signed "Danger!". The cabin village has numerous moss-tinged cabins that all look haunted. The Bubbling Mike Spring looks like it's in under a small metal box, not sure why. And that's all in one place!
I like how you've pointed out these oddities, and especially the logical non-sequiturs. All of these oddities have rational explanations, but can add up to the uncanny sensation.

It's also true that the big, tall trees, while a beautiful attraction, can have an alienating effect, whether due to European culture (as drm points out), or to an inheritance of our species's evolution in the savanna.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... andscape.

When skiing up in the Trout Lake area, my buddy and I kept remarking on how beautiful the valley is (it's open fields with riparian trees, oaks, etc. Neither of us would ever want to have a cabin up in the treed hills. . . but those farms down in the valley are highly enticing.
Believe it or not, I barely ever ride a mountain bike.

Webfoot
Posts: 1759
Joined: November 25th, 2015, 11:06 am
Location: Troutdale

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by Webfoot » January 31st, 2022, 7:15 am

Charley wrote:
January 29th, 2022, 1:05 pm
It's also true that the big, tall trees, while a beautiful attraction, can have an alienating effect, whether due to European culture (as drm points out), or to an inheritance of our species's evolution in the savanna.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10 ... andscape.
Alienating effect of tall trees? Your reference concludes the opposite.
The image of landscapes that most elicited positive emotional responses, separated by category of feeling, were the rainforest and conifer forest. These results did not corroborate hypotheses H3 and H4 because these landscapes are not familiar to the participants in any of the contexts studied.

This study consisted of a careful comparison that rejected the evolutionary psychology hypothesis on a universal preference for savanna landscape due to the evolutionary past of humans. The savanna was not the most preferred landscape, but rather the rainforest, a similar result found by Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ibáñez (2010, 2013). Our findings conclusively show that there is no evolutionary preference for this type of landscape. New studies should investigate the reasons for the preference for rainforests, since our experimental design does not allow us to infer about it.

*H3: The images of savanna landscapes provoke positive emotional responses in people. Thus, more positive feelings will be evoked for images of savanna landscapes than for any other kind of landscape.

*H4: The images of landscapes similar to those in which people live activate positive emotional responses. Thus, more positive feelings will be evoked for landscapes that are similar to the environmental context that people live in than for other types of landscapes.

Aimless
Posts: 1922
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:02 pm
Location: Lake Oswego

Re: Dry Creek, Trapper Creek Wilderness

Post by Aimless » January 31st, 2022, 11:28 am

All that study can reasonably address is how people respond to photographs, not environments. I'm not so sure that people's responses to being shown two-dimensional imagery should be considered as a sufficient analog to being inserted into and surrounded by a complex, immersive reality. But transporting a large number of experimental subjects from a savannah to a rainforest is impractical and most likely will never be done. :cry:

Post Reply