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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (July 11, 2020)
2B Saturday, July 11, 2020 The Observer & Baker City Herald EAGLE CAP WILDERNESS AREA MASSIVE Rescuers aid hurt hiker Continued from Page 1B By Ellen Morris Bishop Wallowa County Chieftain ENTERPRISE — Heather Pearson knew she was in trouble when she lost her footing and slid off a wet log. Her ankle snapped — maybe it was just sprained, she thought. But she couldn’t walk on it. She was 8 miles up the trail from the Hurricane Creek trailhead. Getting out seemed almost impossible. Her partner, Caloum John- son, made her comfortable, and then set off down the trail to summon help. He reached the Hurricane Creek Grange at a little after 6 p.m. on July 3 and called 911. Although the sheriff alerted search and rescue equine coordinator Holly Akenson quickly, it was too late in the evening to get a mounted search and rescue underway. Johnson returned to stay overnight with Pearson. Because they had been backpacking, they had a tent, sleeping bags and food. Johnson had mentioned that there were a number of large trees down across the trail. So Akenson also invited several members of the Wallowa Mountains Hells Canyon Trails Association (WMHCTA) to accompany the SAR team and help clear the trail for horses and mules. A group of nine rescuers started up the Hurricane Creek trail at 6:30 a.m. July 4. “There were several big avalanches that we had to cross,” Akenson said. “And there were places where the snow was pretty deep. We were worried about the safety of horses and mules because you don’t really know what’s under the snow that they are ‘postholing’ through.” Getting the horses, mules and people safely up the trail required clearing a path Ellen Morris Bishop / Wallowa County Chieftain Search and rescue team members help Heather Pearson along the Hurricane Creek trail on July 4. through multiple fallen trees, some that Akenson estimated were 20 inches in diameter. The SAR members carried not only their usual wilder- ness fi rst-aid supplies, but also a COVID-19 kit that included masks, face shields, gloves and even a protective Tyvek suit. They reached Pearson at 10:30 a.m. After the team had splinted and wrapped her ankle, Akenson helped her onto a 20-year-old, calm, expe- rienced mule named Bat. Progress back to the trail- head was slow, with Akenson leading the mule, and the trail crew opening more of the trail. They reached the trailhead at 6:15 p.m. Johnson had planned to drive Pearson to the hospital for treatment. But, as luck would have it, his car had a fl at tire. So a SAR team member took her to the hospital, while oth- ers helped change the tire and direct Johnson to Les Schwab. “We were glad to be able to help, and really happy that the weather was almost perfect,” Akenson said. Pearson, 25, said that she and Johnson, both from Portland, would be back sometime soon to fi nish their original planned trip. Mom’s Home And Dinner Is Ready In any case it seems to me unlikely that the camp would bear that name and not be associated with Ben Harrison, who is the namesake of an abandoned gold mine only a mile or so to the west. The camp, whatever its etymology, has clearly been used for that purpose for many decades. The fi re ring rocks are blackened by the soot of untold numbers of blazes, and the places where tents have been Lisa Britton / For the EO Media Group pitched are nearly as fl at as A columbine blooming along Clear Creek in the what you’d fi nd in a groomed North Fork John Day Wilderness Area. campground. I would like to know how many elk have hung from the trees, the carcasses cooling to high altitudes, this is not always so. in the chilly autumn nights at 6,000 feet. Indeed, the defi ning characteristic of the I muttered quite a few invectives at the North Fork John Day Wilderness is neither sniping arthropod pests — some of these rock nor ice, but rather its dense forests. epithets quite inventive, if I may be so That’s particularly true of two of the bold — but they couldn’t actually ruin an three units that comprise the wilderness otherwise quintessential summer morning — the largest, covering about 86,000 acres, in the mountains with its brilliant light and including a long reach of its namesake river, the scent of conifers heavy on the air. and the 14,000-acre Greenhorn unit that Lisa and I hiked this route about a de- includes Clear Creek, the site of our hike on cade ago and although I had a vague recol- June 27. lection of the general scene I was surprised, Neither unit has any imposing peaks and delighted, by how many massive tama- such as those that distinguish the Eagle racks and ponderosa pines we passed. Cap Wilderness, although Vinegar Hill, the Some of the tamaracks had such girths apex of the Greenhorn Mountains, at 8,131 that I suspect all four of us would have had feet, is just outside the wilderness boundary to link hands to encircle the trunk. and about 2 miles south of Ben Camp. (We ought to have tried this, but the ex- (The North Fork’s third unit, the upper periment didn’t occur to me until later. Lisa or Baldy unit, does include a portion of the did take photographs of Max and Olivia granitic crest of the Elkhorn Mountains standing in front of one tamarack, to lend west of Baker City.) scale to the ancient tree.) But each of the two other units has As we hiked, I mentioned to Lisa that swathes of timber, including some of the although the forest seemed primeval, as a more impressive groves of old growth trees federal wilderness — an area off limits to in Eastern Oregon. logging and motor vehicles and bicycles, Lacking both a core sampler and the abil- among other things — the North Fork John ity to use one, I can only guess at the age Day is barely beyond its adolescence. of the thickest of the tamaracks (tamarack I recalled that the North Fork, at being a colloquialism for what botanists call 121,400 acres, was the biggest chunk of the western larch tree). wilderness included in the 1984 Oregon But I suspect some might well have been Wilderness Bill in Congress. seedlings when the Declaration of Indepen- That legislation was the largest addition dence was signed. of wilderness ever in the state, a total of A book I consider essential reading for 859,000 acres that included several new anyone intrigued by the fl ora of Northeast areas, including the North Fork John Day, Oregon — “Alpine and Subalpine Vegeta- as well as expansions of existing wilder- tion of the Wallowa, Seven Devils and Blue ness areas, including the Eagle Cap, which Mountains,” by the late Charles Grier John- added 66,500 acres, and the Hells Canyon, son Jr., a longtime Forest Service ecologist which grew by 22,700 acres. — notes that the biggest tamarack found What I didn’t know then is that we were in Oregon grows on the Wallowa-Whitman hiking just one day after the 36th birthday National Forest. That tree stands 103 feet of the North Fork John Day Wilderness. high and has a circumference of 269 inches. President Ronald Reagan signed the I briefl y lamented that we weren’t hiking Oregon Wilderness Bill on June 26, 1984. in the fall. The tamarack, alone among our Coincidental timing aside, I was re- local conifers, sheds its needles as though minded, as we walked past those soaring it forgets every year that it is not a maple tamaracks and ponderosas, that although or an ash. But before the needles fl utter a popular conception of a wilderness area is down they turn a brilliant yellow-orange, a an alpine setting where precipitous peaks memorable sight, and one of great beauty. and glaciers and glittering tarns are the There is, of course, another advantage to dominant features, and the trees, if any are autumn hiking. present, are of the stunted variety common The mosquitoes are dead. Bank of Eastern Oregon. We’re here for you. 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