Camping - Strawberry Mountain
24 Jun 2019Two Week Camping Trip Part 3 - Strawberry Mountain
On our way to the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness we took a short detour to the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument Painted Rocks Unit. We had a picnic at the nice grassy area at the info center, then hiked the three-quarters of a mile up the Carroll Ridge trail to a nice overlook of the painted rocks as well as a panoramic view of the mountains around the valley.
We got back on the road and arrived at Prairie City at five to turn off onto the Strawberry Creek road. The road is paved for three miles, then good gravel for five or six miles, then narrow, rough, and washboard for the last two-plus miles. In a few places we began to question whether we should be bringing our trailer up the road, but everything arrived safely, encased in a thick layer of dust. We were surprised to see three other parties at the campground, but we got what we think is the best site, site #1.
After setting up the trailer and making some curry pumpkin soup that was complemented by the fabulous wood-fired oven bread from the Sisters Farmers Market for dinner, we walked down the washboardy road and four more vehicles drove in. This place is not quite as ‘remote and unknown’ as we remember from about a dozen years ago.
We got up at six and made tea and coffee. It was chilly, but not too bad this morning. We grilled some bagels for breakfast, set up the solar panels and the inverter, washed some dishes, and then got ready to go hiking by nine-thirty.
We hiked up to Strawberry Lake, then to Little Strawberry Lake. Little Strawberry Lake is really spectacular, in a bowl with cliffs on one half. We watched the fish in the lake, then set up our chairs near some big rocks and ate half our sandwiches and some nuts while enjoying the view and listening to waterfalls from the cliffs above. It was a tough winter for trees near this lake – it looks like a snow slide occurred which broke a bunch of trees about five feet above the ground.
We crossed a bunch of snow drifts to get to Little Strawberry Lake, so we thought we’d try going as far as the snow let us on the trail toward Strawberry Mountain. Surprisingly, we went about two miles of the nearly three miles to the top. We got some amazing views, first overlooking Strawberry Lake and the waterfall above it, then looking back toward Little Strawberry Lake, then we went over a ridge and got views out toward Prairie City and Strawberry Mountain. The small valley beyond the ridge was mostly covered with snow, though, and we could not follow the trail through it. Daisy loved the snow, and dashed around acting crazy. She even stained her legs pink with the pink mold that grows in the snow.
We hiked back down and found a few groups camping around Strawberry Lake. We returned to our trailer and re-heated pumpkin curry soup for dinner while the weather quickly cooled off and began sprinkling rain.
We went to bed a bit early, then got up a bit after six. Our breakfast was donut holes and a cinnamon roll from the Sisters Bakery, then we packed up a picnic lunch.
We hiked up to Slide Lake, nearly five miles from the campground. This trail travels to the next valley to the east, then tracks along not far below the bottom of the cliffs that make up the ridge between Little Strawberry Lake and Slide Lake.
Not a good hike for acrophobic people, and some of the snow drifts, downed trees, and gulley crossings were a bit nerve-wracking.
We got to a distant view of some falls emanating from Slide Lake, then began the very snowy last bit of trail to the lake. We had a grey and windy picnic where we finally opened the bottle of picnic wine we bought a long time ago at the Naked Winery. It was chilly but nice to look across the lake at impressive cliffs while listening to distant thunder, but then as we finished eating it began to hail. Small and light and only for a few minutes, we thought maybe that would be it. But a minute later we looked across the lake and saw an approaching line of splashing water – large and vigorous hail arrived at our side of the lake quickly. We waited out the worst of it under some trees, then packed up and began hiking back out while the hail turned to rain.
Fortunately the really snowy part of the trail was easier while going downhill. Then we decided to take the slightly longer horse trail instead of the very exposed hiking trail below the cliffs. Despite choosing the “safer” trail, I twisted my knee and hip a bit when I slipped and fell while going around one of the many downed trees across the trail, but we made it back to the seemingly more-maintained trail on the Strawberry Lake side of the ridge as the weather turned nicer.
Once back at camp we built a fire and made paella. We diced a couple beets from the Sisters Farmers Market and sautéed them with the sausage, then added them back with the sausage. They turned out well and really colored the paella – an interesting addition, and maybe a way to add a hearty texture to vegetarian paella. We also finished our opened-the-day-before bottle of 2013 Simaine Sangiovese, which had become fantastic with a bit of oxidizing.
We decided to take the next morning a bit easy. We built a fire and made Klinkhammer coffee cake in the Dutch oven. We still did not get this recipe quite right, and it burned on the bottom, but at least it cooked through in a reasonable time, so an improvement from last summer. Putting a hot log on the top helped, but next time we need to heat the oven a bit more slowly at the beginning and add the topping ingredients far earlier than the recipe says.
It sprinkled rain and hail off and on through the morning, so we sat in the trailer and had third and fourth cups of tea and coffee. During a sun break we washed our hair for the first time since Sisters and did a bit of washing up. We had left-over paella for lunch, then drove down the road a couple miles to the Onion Creek trailhead.
This trail climbs steeply up to a ridge west of Onion Creek. It levels out a bit following the ridge all while traveling through an old burn area, so you can see all around once up on the ridge. There is a lot of brush and flowers at this time of year, but there were also several large ticks that we brushed off, and one that I discovered on my leg when taking my boots off after the hike.
We hiked past the more-or-less level part and began another steep ascent, but we encountered a bunch of downed trees and the skies began to darken, so we decided to turn back a bit short of two miles in.
Once back to the truck we went a bit further down the road to check out the Slide Creek Campground. This one charges no fee but offers only a very old outhouse and no water. However, there are a couple sites that our trailer would fit into, and it seemed pleasant enough if you had plenty of water, or just drove up to Strawberry to get more.
We made Five Can Chili back at camp from the website Fresh Off the Grid in the Dutch oven over the fire. Easy to make, hearty, and very tasty, although quite spicy when you add the whole can of chipotle chiles like we did. Luckily we had plenty of sour cream to cut the heat.
It was a very cold night and morning at Strawberry. We woke up a bit early from the cold and sat in the trailer for a couple rounds of tea and coffee with left-over Klinkhammer coffee cake trying to stay warm. Once the sun made it down into the valley it made a big difference, and we started packing up and putting down the trailer.
Going out on the rough road feels better, partly because the very slow parts are at the beginning instead of the end. We got a great view of Strawberry Mountain as we left.
