Up until July fifth twenty fifteen I considered myself largely invincible. I regularly did things with little to no preparation, or in questionable conditions just so I could live through it and have a story to tell afterwards. I would play basketball when it was one hundred degrees out when the sun was beating down in its prime at 2:00 pm. I would not read a textbook all semester, and then read the whole thing the night before the test. I would get up super early in the morning, or super late at night to start an hours long drive. I would show up to a hike rated as difficult with a single bottle of water, and old running shoes with worn down soles. In all the situations I always came out unscathed. I never really even had any negative consequences. After basketball I was very sweaty, but otherwise felt great. I got through high school near the top of my class, and graduated college cum laude. I made it to many shows, hikes, and adventures tired but with no other scars. Had many amazing hikes. Then I made a visit to Dog Mountain.
Dog Mountain is located along the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. The hike was recommended to my partner and I by some friends who lived in Oregon as a "great hike where you can see lots of wildflowers." Since we had this recommendation I didn't really do too much additional research. We had a fun road trip planned where we were going from Seattle, down to the Redwoods in California and back. This Dog Mountain Hike fit perfectly into our packed itinerary.
Before we talk about July fifth, let's talk about July fourth. We arrived in Seattle, and pretty much immediately started drinking and having a good time. My special lady friend is from the Seattle area, and this was my first time meeting most of her friends. They were not putting on a show to impress me, but impress me they did with their ability to partay. I'm no stranger to it, but I was about five years older than most of the crew so I had to get back into the mode quickly. Nothing too crazy went down, but drinking through most of the day, not enough eating, watching fireworks, jumping in Lake Union, and did I mention the heat? The high was somewhere in the mid nineties, but since Seattle is so moderate most of the time most people do not have air conditioners. The place we were staying had no air conditioning. It was also a small apartment, and I believe we either "slept" on the couch or on the floor.
Back to July fifth...we leave Seattle at seven in the morning to start the great west coast road trip of twenty fifteen. Immediately got coffee, and evaluated our situation. Drank all day yesterday in the heat, slept very little if at all, did not have time to get any supplies beyond the few things we got upon our arrival to the west coast, but spirits were still high! The smart thing to do now would be to get a healthy, protein packed, power fuel of a breakfast to power us through our first big day of the trip. Another option would be to drive to Portland, Oregon to wait in line at Pine State Biscuits and gorge ones self on mass quantities of biscuits, gravy, bacon, fried chicken, hash browns, and most likely some sort of sweet treat.
Our spirits were still very high. We were a little behind on our itinerary as we had a hike, and a few stops for the day before we would end up at the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. Unsurprisingly it was also very hot that day in Oregon. It was in the high nineties. Someone who wasn't me at the time might have said "we probably overdid it a little yesterday, it is very hot and I usually like to start hikes early in the day to avoid the extreme heat, and we don't have the typical supplies we would normally bring on a hike so maybe we skip the hike and leisurely make our way through some of these sites along the Columbia Gorge and arrive to the Timberline Lodge relaxed and refreshed." Unfortunately since I was myself at the time we pulled up to the trailhead for Dog Mountain sometime in the mid afternoon at around ninety seven degrees with one small water bottle a piece.
According to the description on AllTrails: "The Dog Mountain Trail is one of the most challenging hikes within the Portland Metro area or Columbia River Gorge area." Coming in at 6.5 miles long and an elevation gain of 2,988 feet I present the Dog Mountain Trail. That elevation gain is more than some 14er hikes in Colorado.
It was clear early on that there were going to be problems. It started out with some very steep switchbacks. The shade was almost instantly gone which left us in full sun for the majority of our initial climb up the mountain. Since we didn't really know what we had in store for us we were drinking water rather liberally at the beginning. It was uber hot, we were going straight up, and we were in the blazing sun. At some point we did enter an area that had some tree coverage, which was great, but it was still going up and up.
At that point we entered the part of the hike that was supposed to be one of the big payoffs: the wildflowers. I'm not sure if it was the extreme heat or the time of the year, but all the wildflowers were all brown and burnt to a crisp. That was deflating, but it was a beautiful view so we carried on even though our water supply was still dwindling. We thought we reached the summit of the hike at least three times, but most of them were false summits. When we finally made it to the top we again loved the view and had a brief celebration, but had less that one bottle of water for the way down.
Even though I've done a million hikes, at the top of every single one I say to myself "Well the hard part is over, going down is easy." About seventy five percent of the time I am wrong. I was also wrong this time. The way down was still in full sun, still scorching hot, our tired legs were really feeling the downward path, and we were only taking small sips of water. We would sometimes run down the mountain to attempt to get down faster. We were starting to get delirious. At one point I believe we saw a white tailed deer with three eyes near the path, but can't be totally sure due to our state of mind.
We were still moving down the mountain, it seemed like it would never end, and we drank the last of our water. We were no longer feeling upbeat. We were worried, and almost non-verbal due to the exhaustion and dehydration. My shirt went from being soaked with sweat to being bone dry with crystallized salt on it. Nonetheless we trudged on forward.
After what seemed like the length of the entire director's cut of Battlefield Earth passed we finally made it back to the car. We were jubilant for a moment until we remembered that we prepared poorly and still had no water or drinks of any kind in the car. We drove twenty minutes in silence until we got to the nearest gas station. We went to our respective restrooms, guzzled gas station sink water, washed our faces, and bought as many bottles of water and Gatorade as we could find.
It seems like it took about another hour or so until we could speak or think straight. We ordered a beer and food at Double Mountain brewery in Hood River, Oregon, but really struggled to get through them even though they were so delicious. That evening as we drove to the Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood (one of the more magnificent drives) we swore to always have way too much water on every future hike.
I may continue to do stupid things & take risks, but you can rest easy that I will have 128 extra ounces of water on me while I do them.
