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Wallowa.com
Wednesday, March 31, 2021
A9
The beckoning Blue Mountains
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
Renee Patrick started her
epic walk through the Blue
Mountains in the sweaty
heat of July, and she fi nished
it amid the nostril-freezing
chill of an alpine autumn.
Along the 566 miles of
hiking in between, Patrick
was at turns challenged,
enlightened and even awed
by the eclectic landscapes of
Northeast Oregon.
She also made history.
And now, a few months
after she fi nished her trek,
Patrick
is
helping to
promote the
Blue Moun-
tains Trail,
a route she
and
other
proponents
Patrick
hope
will
join
the
ranks of America’s other
long-distance
wilderness
paths.
“It’s fun to be at the
beginning of an eff ort like
this that people are excited
about,” Patrick said in a
Jan. 14 phone interview.
“It’s exciting for the east-
ern half of the state to have
more recreational opportuni-
ties. Northeast Oregon is not
well-known, even by a lot of
Oregonians.”
Although the current ver-
sion of the Blue Mountains
Trail is new, the concept
dates back more than half a
century.
Loren Hughes, a long-
time La Grande jeweler who
died on Jan. 29, 2016, envi-
sioned a long hiking route
through the Blue Mountains
as far back as 1960.
Later, Hughes and Dick
Hentze, who taught elemen-
tary school in Baker City
from 1970 to 2000, conjured
the idea of the Blue Moun-
tain Heritage Trail.
Hentze, who moved from
Baker City to the Eugene
area in 2014, died on Aug.
8, 2020.
Mike Higgins, of Half-
way, said in a Jan. 14
interview that he became
involved with planning the
trail in the 1990s along with
Greg Dyson, director of the
Hells Canyon Preservation
Council.
The organization, based
in La Grande, was renamed
as the Greater Hells Canyon
Council in 2017, its 50th
anniversary.
“The route was much dif-
ferent then,” said Higgins,
an advisory board member
for the council.
The previously proposed
trail was a loop that covered
about 870 miles.
Among the notable diff er-
ences, the current route —
the one that Patrick helped
pioneer with her hike in the
summer and fall of 2020
— is point to point rather
than a loop, with Wallowa
Lake State Park at the north-
ern end and John Day at the
southern.
“The current route to me
is a lot more attractive,”
Higgins said.
In particular, he appre-
ciates that the Blue Moun-
tains Trail passes through
all seven of the federal wil-
derness areas in Northeast
Oregon — Eagle Cap, Hells
Canyon,
Wenaha-Tucan-
non, North Fork Umatilla,
North Fork John Day, Mon-
ument Rock and Strawberry
Mountain.
Higgins said he believes
this concept, so long in
the making, fi nally has
momentum.
“I think it’s going to go
this time,” he said. “Jared is
going to make sure it goes.”
Jared in this case is Jared
Renee Patrick/Contributed Photo
Autumn scenery near Hawkins Pass in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. The Blue Mountains Trail ascends the pass and then drops into
the valley of the South Fork of the Imnaha River.
Renee Patrick/Contributed Photo
Sumac had turned its seasonal shade of dark red when Renee
Patrick hiked in Hells Canyon in October 2020 as part of the
fi rst solo thru-hike of the 566-mile Blue Mountains Trail.
Approaching Strawberry Mountain on the Blue Mountains
Trail.
Kennedy.
He’s the Blue Mountains
Trail project leader for the
Greater Hells Canyon Coun-
cil, a task that includes main-
taining the trail’s website,
https://www.hellscanyon.
org/blue-mountains-trail.
“This is an opportunity
for people to get a much bet-
ter idea of the landscapes of
the Blues,” Kennedy said in
a Jan. 14 interview. “It really
ties the region together.”
But when it comes to
connections, no amount of
conceptual planning or pon-
dering of maps can replace
And the fi rst day included
a stint on a freshly black-
topped road (a rare paved
section) and a 4,000-foot
climb over seven miles,
among the more diffi cult
ascents of the entire route.
Patrick said she took a
break during the hottest part
of that day and fi nished the
climb in the comparative
cool of the evening.
Her schedule allowed
her to hike for only a week
in August. She covered the
110-mile section from John
Day to Austin Junction,
where Highways 26 and 7
striving this past winter to
make the trail’s website
more informative.
His goal is to have an
online guide for hiker-ready
sections of the Blue Moun-
tains Trail, including maps,
by spring, in time for the
prime hiking season.
Solo hiker’s experiences
“Prime” not necessarily
being a synonym for “per-
fect” in this case.
Kennedy points out
that the window for hik-
ing the entire Blue Moun-
tains Trail is a relative small
Renee Patrick/Contributed Photo
But she said every route,
regardless of distance,
brings its unique challenges.
The Blue Mountains
Trail, unlike the well-known
and generally well-main-
tained Pacifi c Crest and
Appalachian trails, includes
several stretches that require
hikers to “bushwhack” —
fi nd their own way across
trailless (and roadless)
stretches.
And although many of
the trails and roads that com-
prise the Blue Mountains
Trail are individually signed,
there are no markers for this
“WHEN YOU SEE IT FROM THE START TO WHERE IT ENDS
YOU ALMOST HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH THE RIVER.”
— Renee Patrick, hiker
the actual experience of hik-
ing the route, Kennedy said.
That’s why the eff orts of
Patrick and a separate group
of three hikers were so vital.
That trio — Whitney La
Ruff a, Naomi Hudetz and
Mike Unger — hiked the
entire Blue Mountains Trail
during September.
Patrick
said
she
exchanged
information
with the three other hik-
ers about their experiences,
particularly any problems
they encountered with nav-
igation, distances between
water sources and other
matters important to future
hikers.
Now that four people
have negotiated the route,
Kennedy said he has a much
better idea of the trail’s attri-
butes — and its problems.
Although it’s called a
trail, the route does include
several sections on For-
est Service roads, although
most of those are little-trav-
eled roads in remote areas,
Kennedy said.
There are no plans to pro-
pose the construction of any
new trail, he said.
With so much new data
to digest — including GPS
waypoints and other digi-
tal details — Kennedy was
one, although he acknowl-
edges that the vast majority
of hikers will only attempt
sections rather than trying to
cover all 566 miles in a sin-
gle trip or even a single year.
The reason is elevation.
The trail samples each
of the higher ranges of the
Blues, including the Straw-
berrys, Elkhorns, Green-
horns and Wallowas. Sec-
tions of the trail in those
areas climb well above
7,000 feet, and in places
are reliably free of snow
only during August and
September.
Yet the trail also descends
into Hells Canyon, where
summer temperatures regu-
larly exceed 100 degrees.
Given that even an expe-
rienced long-distance hiker
is likely to need 30 to 45
days to complete the entire
trail, a start in July or early
August would be the most
plausible, both to avoid deep
lingering snowdrifts from
the previous winter and the
fi rst storms of the next.
But
a
midsummer
start has its own poten-
tial challenges, as Patrick
discovered.
She began her journey
at John Day in August. The
temperature was 99 degrees.
meet, about 50 miles south-
west of Baker City.
Although that’s a longer
trek than most hikers will
ever attempt in a single trip,
it’s little more than a jaunt
by Patrick’s standards.
Few people can match
her hiking resumé.
Patrick has thru-hiked —
completing an entire trail in
one year — America’s “tri-
ple crown” of long-distance
routes, the Pacifi c Crest,
Appalachian and Continen-
tal Divide trails.
The cumulative mileage
of that trio of epic trails is
about 7,800 miles — 3,100
miles for the Continental
Divide Trail, 2,610 for the
Pacifi c Crest, and 2,100 for
the Appalachian.
Patrick also helped to
pioneer the Oregon Desert
Trail in the state’s remote,
sagebrush-dominated south-
east corner. She hiked the
750-mile route in 2016, the
year after she was hired as
Oregon Desert Trail coordi-
nator for the Oregon Natural
Desert Association in Bend,
where she lives.
At 566 miles, the Blue
Mountains Trail isn’t terri-
bly daunting for a hiker with
as many miles on her boots
as Patrick.
new trail.
“People need to be real-
istic about the challenges,”
Patrick said. “It’s a great trail
for section hiking, as a way
to build your skills.”
Higgins, who helped La
Ruff a, Hudetz and Unger
during their thru-hike by
meeting them at trailheads
with boxes of food and other
supplies, pointed out that
the Blue Mountains Trail,
because it is made up of
so many existing trails and
roads, has a multitude of
access points.
And it features some sec-
tions that are easier to hike
than others, such as the Elk-
horn Crest National Rec-
reation Trail west of Baker
City.
“You can select sections
that match your skill level,”
Higgins said.
Regardless of where you
hike, though, you’ll be sur-
rounded by some of Ore-
gon’s most spectacular scen-
ery, Patrick said.
Among the sections that
especially entranced her is
through the Eagle Cap Wil-
derness south of Wallowa
Lake. That’s where she
started her second and fi nal
stint on the trail, in early
October.
The Blue Mountains Trail
follows the West Fork of
the Wallowa River to Fra-
zier Lake, then crosses Haw-
kins Pass and descends to
the headwaters of the South
Fork of the Imnaha River.
“I absolutely loved hik-
ing in the Eagle Cap,” Pat-
rick said. “That’s really an
awesome section.”
She also appreciated that
the route allowed her to trace
a major river — the Imnaha
— nearly from its headwa-
ters below Hawkins Pass to
its mouth at the Snake River
in Hells Canyon.
The Blue Mountains Trail
aff ords the hiker a similar
experience with the Grande
Ronde River.
“When you see it from
the start to where it ends,
you almost have a relation-
ship with the river,” Patrick
said. “I really enjoyed that.”
The Blue Mountains Trail
is also enticing for both its
geology, which includes
rocks more than 200 million
years old, as well as consid-
erably more recent cultural
history.
Patrick said that while
she hiked through the ances-
tral homeland of the Nez
Perce Tribe, including a
section of the Nee-Me-Poo
National Historic Trail, she
listened to an audio version
of “Thunder in the Moun-
tains,” a historical account
chronicling the Nez Perce
being driven from the area in
1877 as white settlers moved
into Wallowa County.
Patrick said the hike into
and out of Joseph Canyon,
named for Nez Perce Chief
Joseph, was probably the
hardest section of the Blue
Mountains Trail.
Among the other dif-
fi cult sections were those
where wildfi res have burned
in the past decade or so.
That includes what was
otherwise one of Patrick’s
favorite areas, the Wenaha
River Canyon, which she
describes as “amazing” and
“beautiful.”
“Fire has aff ected a lot of
the trails,” she said. “Every
year, more trees fall. It’s on
ongoing maintenance issue.”
Nor is fi re the only threat
to some of the trail sections
that make up the Blue Moun-
tains Trail, Kennedy said.
“There are many, many
sections of trail that are way
behind in terms of mainte-
nance,” he said.
Not long before Patrick
fi nished her thru-hike in
late October, she hiked the
Elkhorn Crest Trail during
an early preview of winter
when temperatures plum-
meted into the single digits.
She wasn’t deterred — “I
do a lot of cold-weather and
winter camping,” she said —
but Patrick said the range of
experiences, from her swel-
tering start to the frigid con-
clusion, was appropriate for
a trail with so many moods.
Patrick, along with Ken-
nedy and Higgins, hopes
this newest addition to the
West’s long-distance treks
will not only enchant hikers,
but also bring an economic
benefi t to the region.
The route comes close
to several towns, includ-
ing Baker City, La Grande
and Enterprise, and Ken-
nedy said local residents
and businesses could earn
extra money shuttling hik-
ers between trailheads and
providing other supplies and
services that hikers would
need.
Ultimately, though, she
said the Blue Mountains
Trail is a treasure for people
who want to follow in her
bootsteps.
“It’s a great opportunity
for hikers,” Patrick said.
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