13th Training Hike - Ruckel Creek May 22nd, 2010

Did someone say it was a butt kicker of hike?? May I take the liberty to edit it a little in order to reflect the reality better by saying it was an @$$ kicker of hike?? To top it off, it was one of those hikes to nowhere that had no particular final destination. The sole purpose of its existence was to serve those who had not gotten their seconds after eating their own guts. And to give another chances to those who thought they already had their seconds in the past.  Scanning online about what other people said about this place, I found one of them said "Every foot of Oregon's Ruckel Creek Trail is a poem."  Huh??!! 

In terms of numbers, Ruckel Creek Trail launched almost 3,800' vertically over the distance of about five miles via its rather precarious path.  We were thankful that the weather held off while we were out there as it would have made it a muddy mess as if we would need that.

The only thing that made it mildly interesting was the variety of features the trail showed us.  Though we stayed almost entirely in the forests, there were meadowy sections with rocky features, including the rocky pits that were made over 1,000 years ago by the native Americans where we took a little breather.  Also there were some wild flowers blooming to look at and few breaks in the woods where we had the bird's eye views of the Gorge.

You must excuse me for not having stayed on top my photo taking duties while we slogged on upward to nowhere. We started to see some patches of snow and even a little flurries here and there once we got near the end of hike.  Later, I found out that we were actually at a place called Benson Plateau where the terrain leveled off for miles.  It got significantly colder at the end of the hike - so much so that most of us were pulling out down jackets out of our packs to keep warm while we devoured our food. 

On a hike like this with a wickedly steep trail, it was very strenuous to climb to put it mildly of course but the real kicker came going the other way.  And this was when we had to pay deliberate and close attention to what we are doing most.  It was easy to roll ankles, twist knees, do face plants, etc. because we were pretty fatigued. Generally speaking, 80% of injuries occured during the descent phase as a matter of fact and thus this was where our fitness levels counted the most - the less we were fatigued, the better our chances of making it down in one piece.

Just as I was starting to wonder if I should have knee replacement surgeries scheduled for myself, we were back down to where we started. Or so we thought - I forgot that there was a teaser section there that we still had to climb back up a little before we found the parking lot. 

Later that week, our training hike supervisor sent us emails to ask if we wanted to do Nesmith Point or Ruckel Creek again for one of our hikes in June.  I let you guess which one I voted for.

Next week, we'll be hiking Devil's Peak in the foothills of Mt. Hood, which we missed earlier because of the winter like weather condition.  Stay tuned!!