Cascade Volcanoes • Entered by Laurie Kerr on July 21, 2020
Solitude Monitoring
July 20, 2020
Participants and Hours
| Pre Planning hours | |
| Post Admin hours | 0.5 |
| Activity Hours | 12 |
| Participants | 2 |
| Total Hours | 24.5 |
Key Issue: Doesn’t apply
Activity Type: Stewardship (monitoring, sampling, planting, etc.)
Key Partners: Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area FS
Landscape/area: Mark O. Hatfield Wilderness (65420 acres)
Measurable Outcomes
Outcome 1: Trail/land monitored (13.9 miles)
Short Description of Activity
Kathleen and Robin hiked the Mt Defiance Trail. A total of 15 people were noted for both sessions. The data sheets are attached. One dog was observed as well as several helicopters engaged in power line construction.
Reflection/Evaluation
This is NOT an area that works well for Broads monitoring. In addition to being essentially straight up for over 3 miles, the Mt. Defiance Trail is so steep and so poorly maintained that if you lose your footing on the way down there are numerous places where you can slide right off the trail and down a very steep drop off. The reason that we did the whole loop is that neither Robin nor I felt safe going back down the way we came. I had done the Starvation Creek trail years ago to Warren Lake and remembered it being less steep and slippery, which it is, though not by much, and due to a landslide, the cut-off trail that would have shortened our hike by nearly 2 miles, is closed.
If people want to monitor, here’s my suggestion:
Go up the Mt. Defiance Trail. Once you’ve left the bike path, you climb gradually on a diagonal (currently a busy place due to power line reconstruction involving helicopter delivery of materials) and then go into the woods, where the trail begins to switchback. At the sixth switchback (according to a very detailed hiking website), you enter the wilderness and can begin monitoring. Go up from there til the trail starts to get bad, find a nice place to hang out, and see if anyone passes you in 3-4 hours and turn around and walk back down.
On the Starvation Ridge trail, it takes MUCH longer before you’re in wilderness (on the way down it took us an hour from hitting the very sunny grassland area, where the wilderness begins/ends, and the parking lot. It would take longer on the way up, and there is more poison oak on this trail than on Mt. Defiance, where there wasn’t much and it was easily avoidable.
Photos/Uploads
Upload 1 |
Upload 2 |
Photo Captions
1-Data sheets for morning session
2-Data sheet for afternoon session