Mike Walcher and I hung out after school today looking for random clothes at thrift stores. We took Highway 213 on our way back to Oregon City and as we were driving I was looking out on the forest (on your right side if you are headed towards Oregon City). I figured that hardly anyone ever went down there, and I mentioned something to Mike about how we should go hike down there. I had to go home and eat dinner, but we planned to meet back up at 7:00ish to go back there. I had some calc homework to do and I wanted to watch the season finale of 24, but I wasn't going to miss this for the world.

Around 7:20, Mike shows up at my house wearing a blue Cub Scouts bandana and some clothes he doesn't mind getting dirty. I run in and grab my red bandana, my dad's digital camera, a bright blue keychain flashlight, a knife (rapists?), and a couple water bottles. We parked at the warehouse thing near the intersection of 213 and Beavercreek Rd. and walked across the street to the forest. We definitely looked like a couple of wannabe gangstas about to rob a bank or something.


The "before" picture


Gangsta! (My "eastside" looked fowards in the camera, but I guess it wasn't)


The Abyss

As we walked into the forest we realized what we were getting ourselves into. It was really steep from the very start and there was nothing that could be considered a path. We crashed our way through the bushes down to the stream that runs through there. That stream turned out to be our savior by the end of the night. We just started heading downhill through all the brush and into "The Abyss." We stayed close to the stream so we didn't get totally lost. Occasionally, we would run into some really think brush and have some trouble getting around it, but for the most part it wasn't too bad.

It's hard to describe how awesome it was to be hiking down into this forest/canyon/whatever. It's one of those things that you had to experience to understand. The sun started setting and the hike was getting more tough as we went. We were getting beat up from all of the sticker bushes, but it was still awesome. We hiked for a long time and followed the stream for the most part.

Eventually, we realized that the sun was setting fairly fast and that it was almost 9:00. That meant we had been out there for an hour and a half and that we wouldn't get back until about 10:30 if we turned around then and Mike was suppose to be home at 10:00. We decided we didn't care and hiked on for a little while longer. Then it got really dark and we turned around. We didn't know if we wanted to hike up to 213 (shorter, but really steep) or follow the stream back (longer, but safer). We decided on the stream.

By this time, out legs had fallen in the water so many times that we didn't care if we got wet, so we pretty much just hiked directly up the stream. We used my blue keychain flashlight occasionaly when we couldn't see how deep the brush was. We were starting to get really freaked out because we realized the hike back was going to be a lot longer than we thought and the sun was already set and it was almost pitch black. We basically started running up the stream every chance we could, because it we didn't want to be there when it got completely dark.

It ended up taking less time to get back than it did to get there, but darkness is a strong motivator. We ran into a few really tough spots that were almost impassable, but we didn't want to go away from the creek. After a lot more hiking and getting soaking wet, we finally saw the railing by the road that we came up on. We fought our way to the top and emerged almost right by where we started.

As I already said, it's really hard to say how awesome this was unless you were there for all the tough parts and all the times we fell into the stream or slipped inbetween two fallen trees and almost broke our legs and such. It's one of those things you never forget. We ran back to Mike's Jeep and took some more pictures. Then he took me home. It was so spontaneous and awesome!