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The North Umpqua Trail It is quiet, so quiet it startles dreams. It rings ears and wrestles sleepers awake with a deafening absence. It hangs over snow-draped peaks, beneath a wide, crisp sky, all around this placid lake, all through this forest of stillness. Nothing moves, nothing breathes, no whisper of wind, no footsteps. Quiet. Pure quiet. Maidu Lake shimmers like silent diamonds; like the lifeless teardrop it looks on a map of the North Umpqua Forest. But at its northern edge, a life begins. A tiny creek with grasses feathering through its tiny flow. Tiny bugs mating and darting across its breadth. And tiny minnows flitting through sunlight flecks. Those things grow, in depth and girth and value, the farther west they go. Farther west, where water gushes over boulders, and 15-pound salmon face the river’s rapids head-on, leaping over falls. But here, a small wooden bridge spans the water, lined with hoof-marked hummocks. Here, the North Umpqua River starts as a silent trickle. Maidu Lake, source of the North Umpqua and start of this 79-mile trail, sits 3 miles up and over a hill from Miller Lake, just west of Chemult. It’s the shortest access to the river’s mouth. Old footsteps lead through the season’s last snow, succumbing quickly to an insistent sun. Boots sink, socks go soggy, calves chafe against cold crystals. Somewhere through this mess, where hilltop pines sprout from snow, this path bisects the Pacific Crest Trail, buried still. Turn right and go to Canada; head left toward Mexico’s sun. But straight ahead, the lake spreads wide, with Tipsoo peaking 8,000 feet to the southwest. Avalanches scar its sides, like claw marks ripping through snow. The quiet grows as daylight wanes. A mosquito’s hum, a fly’s zoom, the calls and answers of two frogs — that’s all. Jets stream high over craggy rocks, streaking sky with pinstripes fading into furry tails. A bird chortles to the east, in a picture of a North Woods winter minus mountains, where stark snow slaps deep blue lake and cobalt sky, and evergreen flanks the scene. At 4 a.m., a shuffling ruptures the night. Krinkle, krinkle, krinkle. A raccoon absconds with a Woodsy Owl bag and Ramen wrapper. The intrepid husband responds, chasing the young beast up a limb, beating bark with a stick, urinating around the tree’s base. “I’m glad to know I frightened something, even if it is only a raccoon,” he says. “Why?” “It’s important for a man’s self-image, to be respected.” The disturbance alerts the weary campers to Mars plopped over the mountain, as light first wakes into day. Color dons the world — pink, gold, blue, white. So many colors from a frigid night. It is the last shiver of this journey, before summer’s heat strikes hard. DAY 2 A party of mergansers sprints across the lake, east to west, flying low, tumbling on the landing. Again and again, like children. They greet morning with a ruckus, practicing what they are born to do, with streamlined bodies built for diving and pursuing aquatic prey. Their razor teeth are made for fetching slippery fish. Whooot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-toot-SPLASH. Then two humans shatter the solitude. They carry poles and loud voices, skirting the lake, coming near. “It’s shallow all the way around this son of a [bad word]” one complains. The man nearly tumbles from a log into turquoise water. “This sure is a shallow [very, very bad word]. I can see the bottom half-way across. There’s gotta be a deep hole somewhere.” “If we could just find a [very bad word] hole, we could find some fish.” The two approach, ask if there’s fishing here. They work at Miller lake, but their inspector won’t arrive for a while, so they hoped to snag some fish. “It was worth the walk, though.... It was really pretty.” They round the lake, cursing and searching for a hole. The North Umpqua’s mouth spits through a channel of brown grass. It starts 2 feet wide, 6 inches deep. It begins with little splotches of pollen and lichens, twisting and turning, digging beneath earthen ledges, starting its mission to be big river. And here begins trail, increment one: the Maidu Segment, 9 miles long, named for an Indian tribe in California’s Sierra Nevadas. The forest lives and dies at once: A mump of jade green moss beside bone-white sticks. An elk skull in green grass. Furry dung between hikers’ footsteps. Life stems from death. Death and breath in the same swallow of air. It’s the forest’s nature, like fire that kills and renews with seed. Like fire that has swept through this land for millennia, burning 18,000 acres of this forest in 1996 alone — just 200 acres shy of the previous 57-year total. The trail veers far from water, high on a ridge between Maidu and Lake Lucille, meandering through living and dying forest, through an old blowdown that has left silvery snags parched in sun and wind. One stump stands 20 feet tall, top whacked off and leaning against a live conifer. The trees clear, an outcropping appears and Mule Peak? looms ahead. The blowdowns of 1996, that same year of eruptive fire, knocked millions of trees to the ground, blasting them from their roots and splitting them through the middle. Their remnants clutter the trail like a quiet battlefield, post horror. Near Lake Lucille, a bridge crosses clear water rushing over mossy boulders — sharp contrasts to dry, gray snags poking from lumpy earth. Look on a map and you’ll see the eastern reaches of the North Umpqua River splitting into spidery veins. This is one of those veins, much wider, much quicker, much more potent than an hour east at Maidu. After the bridge, the ground turns dry again. Snarls of silver bark sparkle on a hot hillside, in swirls and tangles like thick undulating ropes of pahoehoe lava. Snags creak in a slight breeze; orange lichens emblazon a stump. The trail rounds a ridge and heads down, down, down, past rhododendrons still waking from winter’s sleep, through scars of an old fire, past whistling quail and hardened dung. Some call such dollops harbingers — nearby hills are graced with wild animals not seen in a long, long time. The lynx, long thought extinct in Oregon, is making a Cascades comeback. The wolverine paws through Mount Bailey and Mount Thielsen terrain. The forest changes many times a day. Near river again, we find cottonwoods perfume the air beside bubbling water, now five times wider, five times faster, grazing softball-sized rocks. It is not the same. The river has gained speed and depth. Iridescent green bogs, lined with flowers, so many flowers, small strawberries yet unborn, little yellow-and-white blooms, purple and pink and white trillium, tiny pink buds on whispy grasses, powder-blue butterflies attracted to boots and sticky skin. From now on, the river speaks its presence. It talks in muffled drones, like a conversation overheard by hidden ears, parents calling children, families skipping down the trail, dogs barking, friends chuckling. But it’s just the river, burbling through boulders, hissing through grass. The wind responds, whistling through trees. And still, all alone. The Maidu segment ends through Kelsay Valley, where aspens grow in a scene reminiscent of the Rockies. A wooden sign tacked to a tree points to Maidu 8 1/2 miles behind. A few yards up, another sign says Maidu 8 miles away. Trail crosses river, soon connecting with Forest Service Road 60, with yet another sign: Maidu 11 miles. They’re just numbers. “It’s a beautiful hike,” the husband says. “I wish my feet had eyes so they’d appreciate it more.” The segment ends at pavement. Half a mile uproad and down another, backtracking, is Kelsay Valley Campground. Tent is pitched in a mosquito plume; baths are braved in icy water, for all the world to see. But no one is here. Just dive-bombing bats and blood-sucking insects, ushering in the night. DAY 3 The river babbles steadily at 7 a.m. Mosquitoes suck the tent screen, hungry for more. Breakfast is inside, a disaster of pasty oatmeal, dried milk, yellow raisins and not nearly enough sugar. “Eat your oatmeal. You’ll need the energy,” the husband directs. “Don’t sound like my mother.” “Well, then don’t cook like mine,” he jokes. The Lemolo segment parallels Forest Road 2612, the route to Lemolo Resort. Its name means wild or untamed in Chinook. The entire segment parallels that road. Shiny cars buzz below; feet amble 100 yards above. Bailey and Thielsen poke from trees in a dark, scrubby forest cluttered with downed branches and needles and death. It reeks of death; that sickly stench of a dirty kitchen rag or moldy bread. A prescribed fire area shows hikers how reintroduced fire looks after 100 years of suppression. Charred trunks, blooming flowers. Strawberries emerging where poison oak does not. Sun sprinkles through sparse bows, flickering on the floor. The difference is dramatic. In other spots, needles blanket the ground, 6 inches deep, where sun doesn’t reach. Trees fall and rot and litter the hillside in detritus that fire would naturally clear. But here, the path is clean. Mt. Bailey rises through openings in the trees. It was once called Mt. Baldy and probably mistakenly written as Bailey. Klamath Indians called it Youxlokes, meaning “Medicine Mountain.” Legend says Indian priests gathered at mountaintop to commune with the sprits. A little road. It is time to veer from trail, in search of spoons, forgotten in a Roseburg kitchen. Whittled chopsticks can only do so much. So packs are stashed behind a tree with a note — “back in a minute.” Sandals donned for a hobble along scorched pavement. A quarter-mile, a half-mile, the road expands beneath aching feet. Finally a sign, destination to the right, a mile off course. There’s a bridge at Lemolo Dam, beside a little green Pacific Power & Light hut eternally lit by one large bulb. PP&L posts a detailed map of its dams, and lights the bridge with more big bulbs, gleaming brightly at high noon. This is the Federal Power Commission’s Licensed Project #1927. Once again, Thielsen shows its face, rising from deep shadows over the lake. Swallows swoop around; an affectionate couple smooches on rocks facing the dam (not the mountain). On the other side, river is channeled through an S-shaped concrete trench, like a log ride at Great America. The store sign says, “Press side button and say, ‘I need service at the store.’” So husband presses button and says, “I need service at the store.” A pleasant man soon comes with key, unleashing a torrent of air conditioning upon weary bodies. He donates four plastic spoons to the cause, added to two cold sodas, a box of 30 much-needed bandages and bug spray. About $7, purchased on credit. PART 2
Dread and Terror; the name inspires no confidence, but such is the next blister in fate. Early firefighters hated working in this region, thick in thorny thickets and heavy brush. They named it accordingly.
A sign notes Lemolo Falls 1 1/2 miles ahead; pistachio shells dot the trail, the first bike tracks emerge. Human precedence.
But before Lemolo Falls is a little cascade, about 12 feet high, where a log came rumbling down the river and shot itself over the edge. Now it stands, dead and dry, at bottom. A mossy cave creeps behind whitewater shooting overboard. Logs teeter on the edge, in a natural purgatory before the slide. Here, the river’s voice drowns all else, rushing and charging with the flow.
The trail flanks a steep descent to the bottom. A ponderosa snag stands like a totem, with slit eyes and gaping mouth in a chiseled face. It sprouts fingers, jabbing at air. Its torso is rotting and falling away; someday it, too, will tumble to the river, like its brethren.
Everywhere now, it’s green, replete with mosses, grasses, lichens, ferns. Needled trees reach for white puffy clouds. This looks more like the North Umpqua farther west, where fishers hug its shores. But no one here. The trail’s beauty is its breadth. Eleven segments linking ecosystems, on the dangle of a river. It is one thing to see a stretch of old-growth or low-level vegetation; it’s something else entirely to follow a river from high to low, linking one world to the next, beyond the confines of human borders.
A symphony plays. Last night: voices. But now, it’s like a summer band at an outdoor festival, tunes drowned in crowds. Or a radio in the park on a warm day, playing among the static of life. Farther down, this river shoves 2,060 cubic feet of water per second. There is music in that force.
Nature’s wield, its power, is amazing, big and small. Tiny ferns poke 2 inches from ground, just beginning to unfurl their leaves, beneath a drizzle from rocks above. So very small. Farther up, a log blocks the trail, fallen across the river, shattered in eight sections up the hillside. It cracked and split, cracked and split, again and again. The trunk shattered at its base, into millions of slivers. Collapsed. Boom. Imagine the thunder through the forest, down the valley. So very big. Then, shortly, Lemolo Falls dumps down a U of moss, wide and green, cascading in a torrent 170 feet tall. So very big again.
This evening’s camp sits on a basalt pillar overlooking river far below, just around the bend from Baughman Bluff. Miniscule flowers hug the ground, like a soft shag rug. Smoke puffs in the west, filling canyon after canyon. Probably a slash burn.
That night, stars flood a tent with no fly. With nose against the screen, a cosmic swirl envelops the world like an IMAX movie all around. The heavens creep in their nightly caravan across the sky . DAY 4
From there, trail ribbons in and out along the mountain’s backbone — in to dried up streams, out to ridges high above river, in again, out again. A spur trail leads to an outcropping, where the view spans the canyon. Across the gap stand craggy walls with caves — little nooks that haven’t seen light in eons. All night, the river was heard. Here, it is seen, three forces coursing around mini-cliffs, running rampant over boulders and dead trees, converging powers.
And then, farther down trail, the hum. A constant hum. A power plant generating its tune. It competes with cackling birds and chattering squirrels. Three transmission lines span the trail, across the gulch, to a road on the other sid.e, where a concrete sluice sits high upon the mountain, parallel to the journey.
About five miles down trail, there is a man.
The first man.
The only man .
He comes from Tahoe. He’s been hiking through Mexico, Canada and Alaska for two years. Fourteen days on this trail, and he’s seen no other humans. He started on the Pacific Crest Trail in California, lost it, and wound up on the Rogue. He is eager to converse.
Have you been on it? Oh, it’s beautiful... Have you been on this before? Oh, it’s great. Do you have a map, a good topo map? The next section doesn’t follow the map at all. You’re gonna climb and you’re gonna go WAY up. The trail goes way back in, 9 miles, it doesn’t follow the highway. The trail doesn’t make any sense. Seriously, it makes no sense at all. You’re gonna climb, so rest up at the reservoir because right after that you’re gonna go up and up.
He gesticulates. A lot. Standing on a log 50 feet from trail, shouting from his camp on a sandy riverbed. His pack weighs 100 pounds, he says, “the most stupid thing” he’s done.
Got food in Roseburg. Thought I could make this trail in a few days. I’ve been on it 14 DAYS.... Is there a store at Diamond Lake? I don’t wanna go all the way to Crater Lake. Do they take food stamps? You guys don’t have to use ‘em, huh?
He can’t BELIEVE the salmon they’re pulling out of the river near Glide. He stretches his arms; that’s $40, $50 worth of fish.
Do you guys fish? Do you want some line?... Do you have a water filter? I read in Newsweek that parasites can get into your heart, they’ll get in there and live forever, not like a virus. So always boil your water. Or use a filter. I was up in Washington state and I got some water and I looked and there was a big cyst in it and I thought, ooh, grody man. So I always boil my water now.
Then he tells us about the bear.
I was in Alaska, I woke up one morning to a grizzly in my camp. It chased me up a tree. Then I came down and his mom came back and chased me up a tree AGAIN.
Then he asks:
You guys smoke weed? Oh, sorry about asking you for that. The trek continues, five miles through a fairytale paradise of boardwalks over blue-green water, weeping walls, slick black rock, rainbows in the sun. And still, no people. Just more of the same wondrous landscape. Jagged teeth jutting from moss-covered cliffs, icy water cascading through iridescent green, tiny white flowers drinking the springs. Nature repeats itself, beauty after beauty after beauty. The words repeat in description. No language conveys the majesty.
The Umpqua Hot Springs parking lot if full — a red Isuzu Trooper, blue Pontiac Grand Am, purple truck, white pick-up, red-and-white pick-up, red van, bus. A shirtless, tattooed man with a gold chain grabs a cooler from the Isuzu. His friend beckons: “It’s really nice, especially for aching bones.... You know about these, right? Umpqua Hot Springs?”
Three-tenths of a mile off-course, water bubbles at 115 degrees in a tub 3 feet by 5 feet by 3 feet deep. It’s an old, old bath, still cooling from volcanic eruptions some 2 million years ago. Magma below the surface is still active, still edgy, still hot under the collar. It heats water that seeping through cracks and fissures in the rock. That water returns as a therapeutic bath.
But instead the trail crosses river, through a 200-acre fire, started Oct. 1, 2000, by a human. Logs, rocks, chunks of bark, refuse tumbling downhill, landing on the trail. A swath 50 yards wide, full of charred sticks and stumps, still breathing the smells of an extinguished fire.
And the rest is a blur. Four miles past rhododendrons bursting from their buds, through corridors of white lilies. The trail hits road again, over a small bridge with a pedestrian aisle, then continues flat and straight for half a mile beside red columbine lining the rushing river, so loud it makes ears ring when it disappears.
But the hum returns; another PP&L project, the Toketee Power Plant, vibrating the forest, jarring approaching twilight. It resonates toward Toketee Camp, from whence fried onions scent the trail, and campers hunker beneath rugged cliffs forever cloaked in that hum. DAY 5: The Deer Leap segment zigzags away from river, far north, around Deer Rock Leap, creating a bulge between trail and water on the map. This is where Mr. Tahoe insists it goes way up, WAY up, making no sense. But the rise never comes. He was, after all, going the other way.
So much lives in the forest, beyond notice. Tiny pink and white and purple flowers crumple beneath feet. Can’t avoid them. With every break in motion, flies and butterflies and bumblebees emerge to say hello.
For a short distance, the trail rises above Toketee Lake and the hubbub of life below follows. Then trail turns north, veering from the river, edging a steep ridge. The trees clear every now and then, sucking in a cool breeze and revealing a hot canyon to the west. And occasionally, a grassy knoll opens the hillside, leaving trees behind and shooting hikers through a wave of wildflowers. The trail is dry, cracked in the sun. From a point facing east, Dear Rock Leap juts from the hills at 3,479 feet. Turkey vultures circle overhead, as if waiting, just waiting for new carrion to peck.
This is not the North Umpqua Trail at its eastern reaches. It stays dry and dusty until trail descends to Slide Creek, where the world changes yet again. Lush and alive, the clean, clear creek feeds a giant forest that dies and grows again from decay. Old cedars tumble in water; others rot on water’s edge while lichens and flowers and moss take over. Water has wiped boulders smooth and wavy, through eons of wear, forming chaise lounges with lumbar ridges, perfect for contemplating the current.
The water so loud, the trees so tall, the forest so dense — it feels like someone is watching.
The only camp is a spot uphill from here, on a bed of needles and rotting logs. It is soft and full of spiders, with sounds of the road carrying through night air. A dog barks for hours, somewhere down there. DAY 6: Slide Creek dons a new face in morning. The light shifts, more abrupt and it no longer feeling like Yoda’s dark forest. Beautiful for us but ugly for pictures — too many F-stop differences between the light glinting through trees and the shade those trees create. But the waters still beckon for breakfast and morning baths. It is hard to leave.
The trail winds up through forested hillsides, down to little creeks, then up again, with the highway humming constantly in the background. It’s a constant companion now. The vehicles miss so much down there, streaming by, so close but so far from the elegant cat’s ears and ground irises at trail’s edge. When a truck comes, the valley knows it. Its noise rumbles the forest, bouncing off rock, grazing through trees. They can’t hear the trail, but the trail can hear them. All the forest’s critters live with that din, day in and day out, like a power plant’s hum.
On the ground sits a Spalding Range golf ball with a red stripe. Human precedence again.
Not far off is Medicine Creek, the love falls, with two cascades of white streaming into one united flow around rocks. Beside the bridge, whitewater bubbles like bath foam. This stream is more dense; its vegetation reaching into, over, around, tightening its clench on life waters.
The section ends at Soda Springs Dam, on the edge of a 1996 fire that whipped through Boulder Creek Wilderness area. The dam is clear from the trail, with orange buoys bobbing in the reservoir behind it. A big, black pipeline parallels the trail, 37 sections as far as the eye can see. The trail heads under the pipe that vibrates to the touch — 5 years ago it dribbled — toward a gravel road and parking lot and picnic spot at the entrance to Boulder Creek. PP&L Licensed Project 1927. Another map shows details at the Boulder Creek trailhead. There sits a metal boat minus motor, white styrofoam cooler, vacant green-and-white lawn chair. Twenty yards up the road is an outhouse with a light that won’t turn off.
The Jessie Wright section starts up that road, Forest Service Road 4775-011, a hot gravel drive, for about a mile west of Soda Springs, beside the pipe, which spills into turbines that sound like a washing machine stuck on spin.
Jessie Wright was an Umpqua pioneer who moved to Dry Creek in 1915 as a 16-year-old bride. She got her first telephone in 1971, and electricity just a few years earlier. Before that, she hunted bobcat for bounty and kept a wilderness home with her husband. In 1970, at 70-plus years old, she shot a bull elk, netting 354 pounds of meat. “I go hunting every year,” she told the Roseburg Review. “If I didn’t, I’d figure I was getting ruined.”
The Jessie Wright trail heads into forest for a short hop to the Boulder Creek Bridge, new since the 1996 floods made mud pie of Douglas County.
It’s Friday of Memorial Day weekend, and traffic is constant across the river, along Highway 138. Glinting SUVs,vans, boats, trailers, campers, dogs, lawn chairs, off-road vehicles, mountain bikes, canoes, paddles, coolers, a UPS truck. And snakes.
The snakes are on the trail. Short ones, long ones, quick ones, slow ones, brown and speckled, nearly squooshed under foot. And one rattler, just past Eagle Creek, about 3 feet long, sitting comfortably until it sees sticks at its head. It slithers into the sidelines.
Poison oak picks up here, more lush, more abundant, reaching oiled tentacles onto the path. And ticks join the party, burrowing into soft thigh flesh. There will be two more in the trip, in an arm and an unmentionable place. Each is burned and kept for future reference, should the need arise.
The segment ends at the highway. Zooming traffic, no pedestrian walk. This is particularly ominous if a hiker chooses here to camp, for Eagle Rock Campground is a quarter-mile up the road, backtracking, along a curvy highway.
It’s even more ominous if this is Memorial Day weekend and said hikers choose camp site #1 just after 5 p.m., just before neighbors arrive in site #2, with a passel of kids, abundant beer guts, truck tethered to boat and what looks to be all but the proverbial kitchen sink inside. Such does not bode well for hikers, when said neighbors discover the wonders of fire early on — and the wonders of an axe at 2 a.m. PART 3 Ten thousand eggs. A hundred hellacious miles upriver. All in the name of life and death, in nature’s cyclical flow.
The Marsters segment starts on the other side of Highway 138, along Forest Service Road 4770. Just east of here, chinook salmon make their beds. In fall, the females return from the Pacific on an arduous journey. They dig 2 feet into the riverbottom and leave their legacy to grow.
A sign warns of disaster ahead. The trail rises and overlooks the river, where a fly fisherman snakes his yellow line through the sun, as the current sweeps it back and he starts again. Flick, flick, flick. About a mile on: destruction.
The Deception Creek bridge caved beneath a single tree. A big, old Douglas fir sliced through the 60-foot bridge, once noted for its spectacular views of the creek spilling into the North Umpqua. One tree. One bridge. Nature’s force shows its fury.
Across the creek, is a simple wooden sign, screwed into bark: “Toby. R.I.P.”
From there, trail climbs and winds around ridges, gazing down upon bright red, yellow and blue splotches against aqua water. In those splotches sit all sorts and sizes of pink-faced people, hooting and laughing as they hit little rapids and someone splashes the adjacent raft. They’ll hit Class II rapids at Weeper and Lunch Counter, Class III at Dog Wave, Weird Weir and Toilet Bowl. If they go far enough, just past Apple Creek, they’ll rumble through Class IV at Pinball. Last year, 719 rafts faced the raging Umpqua.
The trail ends quickly at Forest Service Road 4750, just 3.6 miles from its start. But before it does, it abuts an old-growth grove, with trees 7 feet wide in the belly. They’ve been around a long time, eight centuries or more, far beyond human memory. The Calf Creek Trail rises quickly to a ridge gazing down upon Horseshoe Bend Campground across the river, which meanders around sturdy bedrock that has shaped the North Umpqua’s course for thousands of years. Long before today’s tents, trucks, trailers and SUVs, Native Americans camped at this propitious knob. Today, it’s the river’s second most popular launch site, with 1,051 put-ins last year, behind only Boulder Flats with 2,369.
The trail passes through burnt snags and charred stumps of the Apple Creek Fire. It started by lightning Sept. 1, 1987, in a severe drought and 100-degree heat. Fire swept from west to east, burning fast upslope and slow near the river, where water stopped it in its tracks. Today, black and silver remnants gleam in the sun. Downed logs snag passersby with sharp slivers. Needles shower the ground, like pollen wafting on a breeze. The sky is open, raining sun upon silver whorls in knots and roots. Small green trees sprout in emerging undergrowth.
Farther up the trail, a fisherwoman in white shorts and yellow hat yelps at her trials and errors. “Ahhhh, I think I caught a fish.” A man on shore leaps from a blue chair. “Ahhh, there’s a fish right there.” But no luck. She hurls the line like a bowling ball, directing the show. “C’mon fishy.” But no answer.
That night, Apple Creek Campground has but one spot left, next to highway.
A green Ford Escort sits at the parking lot between Calf and Panther, the next segment. Two dayhikers come out of Panther wearing shorts and carrying nothing. Besides Mr. Tahoe, they’re the only other human feet so far on the trail.
Night falls over dark hills, viewed from the bridge on Forest Service Road 4714. Bats swoop overhead, charging for mosquitoes. Starlight flickers on the river, as vehicles shine intermittent lights across the road. Just east of here, Apple Creek spills into the river for a drowning rush of sound. That creek is not named for abundant trees nearby. It is, instead, named for a mishap. Once upon a time, an inexperienced cook prepared dried apples for a work crew. He had no idea they would swell and swell, until he could use those apples no more. He dumped them in the river. DAY 8 At 6:40 a.m., birds at river’s edge greet an overcast morning. Air is choked with smoke that scratches throats. The 5-mile Panther segment begins and solitude ends. Three bikers heading west pass on rocky bluffs overhanging river and highway. Farther up, a brown lab charges and barks; two bikers soon follow, assuring the pooch is friendly.
And the trail continues in normal fashion, beneath fallen trees, past flowers and rocks and snails, more flowers, more rocks, more snails, until it meets the naked slip-n-slide.
Naked slip-n-slide.
Not far from Steamboat Bridge, near the Mott trailhead at Forest Service Road 4711, voices whoop through the forest. A little trail south leads to a clearing of 200 people in tents of all colors, shapes and sizes. And there, in the field’s center, is a crowd of naked people, awaiting their turn on the slip-n-slide in a revealing contest to see who can glide farthest.
A young man in an orange jacket approaches and offers an explanation. They call it ODE: an Out of Door Experience, an annual “art festival” of sorts. They come from all over the West Coast. It started as a family gathering that grew and grew among folks who like to camp and like to share the arts. They don’t spend the entire time naked on plastic; but they do spend the weekend being creative. Most participants are techies and designers blowing off steam.
A young man who works for the Forest Service walks up. He and a friend drove up to Eugene the night before and flew to San Francisco for a wedding, then came back that night. He just couldn’t miss the rest of ODE.
Another man in the buff does a little dance and dives beneath the hose.
The Mott segment starts at a parking lot with restrooms, a pay phone, historical signboards and a couple of lamas. Their guardians guide them by leash to the trail. They’re just getting used to the hike, they say.
Not far along, a couple on bikes approach from behind and stop to take pictures. They talk of the ODE festival’s thumping, jumping music last night, pumping techno beats deep into the forest.
Zane Grey’s Fishing Camp soon appears, beside a two-plank bridge at Fisher Creek. Not much remains of the old author’s hangout; just a few rusty metal bits and a sign noting the spot. There, someone left two books, “Twin Sombreros” and “Lone Star Ranger,” in a Ziploc bag named “The Zane Grey Library. Take one, Bring one back, partner.”
Grey loved the waters near Steamboat. The best-selling Western author of all time was also an avid fisherman who set catch records around the world, from a 1,036-pound tiger shark in Australia to a 758-pound bluefin tuna in Nova Scotia. He wrote nearly 90 books; nine dedicated to fishing.
Two young women heading east pedal furiously and sweat over rocky terrain. Kayakers dot the river; a family of four hikes near the end. Forest Service Road 4711 appears at 3:22 p.m. A bright orange sign on the eastern edge of the Tioga segment warns of a landslide six miles ahead; trail closed. The journey meets a brief hiatus.
While awaiting a ride to town, two boys carry a Forest Service trail sign toward the bridge, intending to throw it over. They laugh, insisting they’re just playing. The adults around scold them for such lack of respect — for the Forest Service, the land, the river, the trail. They have no idea what’s out there. DAY 9
The trail delights with deep purple ground irises and blazing orange paintbrush, with just the tips of these plants turning orange and red. An outcropping leads to a ledge overlooking the highway. Dried ice flowers cover the ground, and madrone leaves sway in a strong breeze. The bark looks copper in bright sun.
The slide six miles in took a good slice of earth and shot it downhill, through trees to river. It left crumbling dirt, passable by feet but not easily by hoof or tire.
Farther on, hundreds of newly hatched pin-sized spiders speckle a vast fern. Their tiny yellow bodies and black legs creep around a shared web, barely visible to the human eye.
For about a mile, the trail follows an old road, still used as a mid-point access to the trail. Lots of litter on the trail: cans of Pepsi, Coke and Bush, shot to smithereens. Fifty yards up, spent shells scattered by the hundreds.
The trail hikes up and around Bob Butte, winding through a flowered clearing with views farther up the river corridor. It sinks through Allilo Creek Canyon and crosses Fern Falls at a wooden bridge.
At Deadline Falls, just 1300 feet from the trailhead, there is a park bench. Use it. Wait a few moments. And the fish will come. They fly. They dart. They soar through the air, trying with all their might to beat the falls, facing them head-on. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they hit rock. Sometimes they get lost in the current’s wicked swirl. But they try again, popping suddenly from hidden depths, evidence of this river’s persistent cycle. Some visitors never get beyond Deadline Falls. Many never reach Dread and Terror or Maidu. And that is unfortunate. The North Umpqua’s beauty is two-fold. It’s a gift to see giant fish catapulting through mid-air just a short gravel jaunt from parking lot. It’s a privilege for hikers, bikers, equestrians, fishers and paddlers alike to have 11 segments, easy on and easy off, points tailored to so many needs.
But something happens when you begin to follow the river from its start, 79 miles into its course, through high altitude and low altitude and all ecosystems between. Something clicks when you see the North Umpqua in Dread and Terror, minus a highway, gushing beside the trail, no one else to witness.
The trial is divided for convenience. It bisects roads and bridges. It splits among three regulatory branches — the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Douglas County Park Department.
But the river knows no boundaries. It knows fire, over the course of millennia. It knows the pumice flows of Mount Mazama, when she blew her top 7,000 years ago. It knows life and death, perpetuated in cycles that far outlast our own. Beyond highways, clearcuts, politics, mining and management, the river flows on, as it has for eons. And the trail: Young on her heels but bold in spirit, it follows the course of a legend still gushing with life.
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