Outdoors
Rec
B
Saturday, January 8, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Dunes outside
the desert
Wind sculpts snow into fanciful
features — and slashes at exposed skin
JAYSON
JACOBY
ON THE TRAIL
I
felt almost as though I
were struggling through
the sands of the Sahara,
my lungs and legs straining
against the implacable,
shifting surface.
But the illusion wouldn’t
hold.
The “sand” was the
wrong color.
And the wrong
temperature.
It was white and it was
cold — adjectives not typ-
ically associated with the
great African desert.
The wind, at least, was
appropriate to my Saharan
daydream in one sense.
Some of the gusts were
strong enough to make me
pause in mid-stride, halted
by the invisible but formi-
dable wall of air molecules.
But the wind was also
too cold.
People plodding across
the Sahara are supposed to
swelter in the terrible heat,
their lives trickling away
in beads of sweat, their
final moments plagued by
visions of pools of cool
water that don’t exist out-
side their fevered minds.
I was shivering, not
sweltering.
But the scenery all
around, at my feet and
extending clear to the
horizon, was so stunning,
on the sunny first day of
2022, that it softened the
palpable blow from the
frigid gale.
Slightly softened.
A few times, when our
snowshoeing route along
the Skyline Road, near
Dooley Mountain Summit
south of Baker City, put
me (and worse, my cheeks)
pointing directly at the
wind, it slashed across my
skin, painful as I expect a
scalpel wound might be.
(This is supposition on
my part, as I’ve managed
to largely avoid encoun-
ters with scalpels. I’m sure,
though, that the wind-
borne agony is much more
brief. And no stitches or
scarring.)
My wife, Lisa, and I
return at least one time
most winters to snowshoe
along this spine of high
ground that separates the
Powder River to the north,
to the Burnt River country
to the south.
This is best done on a
clear day.
(Although perhaps not
one quite so cold as the
first day of 2022; the ther-
mometer on our Toyota
showed 12 degrees when
we parked, which happened
to be precisely the number
Lisa had guessed. As to the
wind chill factor, some-
times it is best to leave such
things a mystery.)
The Skyline Road, as its
name implies, never strays
far from the crest of the rid-
geline. The views here have
always been expansive but
there are, sadly, consider-
ably fewer impediments
since the Cornet-Windy
Ridge fire killed most of
the trees south of the road
in August 2015.
Most of the pines, firs
and tamaracks on the
shadier, cooler north slopes
survived. But they don’t
obstruct the view to the
northwest, which is dom-
inated by the Elkhorn
Mountains. I quite enjoy
this vantage point, which
puts this familiar range,
parts of which I can see
from my own living room,
in a decidedly different
perspective.
The breadth of the Elk-
horns, from west to east,
is much more noticeable.
The mountains, when seen
from Baker City, appear as
a single, seemingly narrow,
chunk of elevated ground.
But as much as I relish
the panorama, my favorite
thing about this place
during winter is its ability
to conjure all manner of
wind-sculpted drifts.
Drift, of course, is the
IF YOU GO
The Skyline Road, Forest Road
11, starts on the west side of
Highway 245 at Dooley Summit,
about 20 miles south of Baker
City. Drive south from Baker
City on Highway 7, toward
Sumpter and John Day. About
nine miles south of Baker City,
at Salisbury Junction, turn left
onto Highway 245 at a sign for
Hereford and Unity.
word most commonly asso-
ciated with wind-deposited
snow.
But to return briefly
to my Saharan compar-
ison, I sometimes think of
these natural creations not
as drifts but as dunes, so
varied are their shapes and
sizes.
Although winter storms
aren’t so generous with
snow here as in, say, the
Elkhorns or the Wal-
lowas, there is most winters
quite enough snow for raw
material.
And few places, at least
among those I’ve visited,
are as reliably blustery.
The first day of 2022
was quite still in the Baker
Valley below.
And I dared to mention
to Lisa, as we drove the
serpentine Highway 245
toward Dooley Summit,
that perhaps this would be
the rare placid day even
along the Skyline Road
(also known as Forest Road
11).
I really am sometimes
embarrassingly naive.
We had scarcely stepped
out of the rig before we
heard the wind.
And felt it.
There is ample space
to park on the west side of
the highway, near the shed
where the Oregon Depart-
ment of Transportation
stores sand to spread on the
snow-slathered highway.
Dooley Mountain goes
through a lot of the stuff in
a typical winter.
(Just don’t park directly
in front of the structure.)
The drifts — or dunes, if
you prefer — started imme-
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
Highway 245 winds up the southern slopes of Dooley Mountain toward the summit.
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald
Wind-sculpted snow drifts — or dunes — along the Skyline Road in Baker County on Saturday, Jan. 1,
2022.
diately as the Skyline Road
climbs a moderate grade,
heading west toward Bald
Mountain.
I know nothing of
physics, or whatever sci-
entific discipline it is
that would explain how
the interaction of wind,
snow and terrain com-
bines to create these fea-
tures, so fascinating and so
temporary.
See, Dunes/Page B2
Sunshine, but is it
dark days for deer?
Solar power
proliferation
threatens mule deer
winter range
GARY
LEWIS
ON THE TRAIL
I
Gary Lewis/Contributed Photo
What are the cumulative effects of solar farms? What about glint and glare? Can proposed projects be
built without affecting big game migration corridors?
n the fall of 1992, a
friend and I drove east
to hunt mule deer. In
places like Joseph and
Enterprise, and out past
Post and Paulina, we
counted hundreds of deer
in one day. Herds of 50
or a hundred does with
small bucks in the mix and
always a big mule deer buck
tucked up on a butte. It
opened my eyes.
I would never see that
many deer in Oregon
ever again. The winter of
1992-93 was especially
hard on deer when the snow
crusted over. Thousands
of deer were winter-killed.
Biologists thought the herds
would bounce back. They
always did before.
In those days deer num-
bers ebbed and flowed with
the numbers of predators.
Cougars were hunted with
hounds, and a lot of people
trapped the coyotes that
preyed on the fawns. When
the voters outlawed hunting
cougars with hounds in
1994, the numbers of deer
didn’t rebound. Think about
it. An adult cougar is prob-
ably going to kill 50 deer
or elk a year if it gets its
way. That’s a lot better suc-
cess rate than your average
hunter, who tags a mule
deer maybe once every four
or five seasons.
It is easy to find rea-
sons why deer numbers
have not bounced back.
But let’s talk about winter
range. Drive through the
Columbia Basin, out to
Enterprise or Whitney and
along the base of the Elk-
horns and you will see deer
in twos and threes. Count
the fawns. Every doe should
have a fawn each spring
and often two. By January
there are probably 45 fawns
for each 100 does. What
happened to them? Is that
enough fawns to rebuild a
deer herd? It’s not. But the
primary limiter is winter
range. Deer are most fragile
in late March and even in
April it is hard to get the
nutrition they need to stay
alive. Weakened by winter,
they are easy prey for cou-
gars, coyotes and bobcats.
Miles of sagebrush,
native grasses, stands of
bitterbrush and mountain
mahogany should provide
food, thermal shelter cover
and escape for deer, elk,
pronghorn and other spe-
cies that make the desert
home when snows blanket
See, Lewis/Page B2