hurricane creek

I am an unapologetic backseat driver. I am terrified of dying in a car and so in order to avoid the likelihood, I annoy M (and anyone else behind the wheel) by advising constantly on speed, turn signal usage, following distance and the like. I justify this behavior by reminding M (or whoever will listen) that there have indeed been instances, however rare, when my startling gasps have saved us from a near miss. More often than not, these near-shrieks are simply frightening and attend to no immediate danger, but I will remain vigilant nonetheless.

Now M is what we like to call a backseat hiker. His harping has grown particularly more acute now that I am carrying his first born son. I admit I am off a bit off kilter, owing to my growing girth up front. As we trek along, through forests and over hills, M walks behind me warning me to be careful over the stony parts, to go slow on the descent and occasionally, over particularly treacherous bits, he’ll grab my arm tight and hold on for dear life, as though without him I might hurl myself over a cliff and to my death. It strikes me as sweet, although a bit silly.

Today he was in good backseat hiker form as we crawled out of the forest and along the ledges of Slick Rock at Hurricane Creek. We were lucky to stumble on this fabulous destination, since it wasn’t in our initial travel plans. But during a brief visit to a bronze art gallery in Joseph this afternoon, we met a local who tipped us off to a hidden hike deep into the canyons of the Eagle Cap Wilderness.

The forest here is distinct from those of the West. Gone are the verdant ferns and spongy moss that carpet the floor of the forests of the Willamette Valley and soggy Cascades. This forest was more like the seasonal forests of the east –the Northern Minnesota forests of my childhood. Quaking aspen glowed pale yellow and shimmered in the breeze and the ponderosa pines released their lemony scent into the air. Downed trees littered the canyon floor and we puzzled at the cause. We speculated that Hurricane Creek takes its name from gale force winds that blow down the canyon, and it was a mite windy during our excursion. We learned in later reading that the trees are knocked down by annual avalanches.

We hiked in rather late in the afternoon, and reached our destination just as the light began to fade. With a 2+ mile return trip, we couldn’t linger but we dearly wanted to. Slick Rock was an amazing sight. Water trickled from high up on the mountain, sliding down the face and at the base, cutting a deep cavern through the granite. The gray granite peaks of the Sacajawea and the Matterhorn mountains towered 9,000 feet above the trail, dwarfing the rest of the landscape. They don’t call the Wallowa’s “Oregon’s Alps” for nothing.

The winds picked up and dark clouds rolled in as we turned our backs on the brilliance of the scene and started for the trailhead at a quicker clip than that which brought us in. My legs were tired (we’d done a series of hikes that morning also) and my gait grew sloppy and I stumbled on the descent. Thankfully, M was there behind me as ever, ready to direct my stride and advise me on how best to navigate the dangers of the trail.