14th Training Hike - Devil's Peak, Cold Creek Trail June 6th, 2010

I've heard people say the weather on the climb would be good if it's crappy on training hikes.  I truly hope so after this very wet and muddy hike.  Where is the summer anyway?? It's already June and we continued to have spring like weather here in the northwest. 

I was feeling not as confident as I had felt on most of our past hikes when I stepped onto the trail in the morning.  I had not been able to do much of physical activities for this past couple of weeks due to a little knee issue that crept up on me.  So I was rather pleasantly surprised at how good I felt on this hike, notwithstanding its difficulty.

I brought a pair of YakTraks, traction devices that strapped onto the bottom of my hiking boots, however I left them in my car in my haste to get on with the hike.  They would have come in very handy today.  Our supervisor also warned us that there would be lots of roots and downed trees along the way, making it somewhat of an obstacle course.

The trail started off very steeply right from the trailhead.  For some reason, I was way overdressed for the occasion and, in a matter of several minutes, I felt like I had a kettle full of boiling water tucked under my shell.  Apparently, others needed to take early gear check breaks as well.  And that's what we did.  Actually, we knew that it would be almost pointless to be wearing a waterproof shells as, from our past experiences, we had known that we would be utterly wet inside and out anyway on a day like this with 1,000% humidity.  So we all decided to to pack them up and layered down to nothing but our base layers.  This worked pretty well - the rain had backed off a bit on its relentlessness mostly by this time and it was warm enough. 

Devil's Peak was located in the southwestern foothills of Mt. Hood in its wilderness area along a small backroad just off of Hwy 26.  If not for the sign, we would have completely missed the trailhead hidden in the bushes actually.  Although one might imagine from the name of the trail, Cool Creek Trail, that it would  follow right along a nice mountain stream cascading down boulders, we found out that it was not exactly like that at all.  However I am going to keep this one on my list of places I must revisit later in the season when I can expect dryer weather for the views it offers throughout the hike.  Unlike our last hike at Ruckel Creek Trail (another misleading name), this trail had actually had a final destination around 4,800' that we could look forward to reaching.  I think this helped keeping our morals up while slogged up 3,200' over the course of 4.1 miles or so.

Like I mentioned earlier, we did see lots of fallen trees blocking our path.  But it was fairly easy to overcome them by going over or under their trunks.  I actually enjoyed having varying features like these as it made the hike a bit more enjoyable.  We only took one 5 minute break along the way.  Our hiking leader, Eric, later took a vote to see if we wanted to take the second break and we unanimously decided to keep pushing instead. 

Somewhere around 4,000', we started to see some snow patches on the ground.  Soon, the snow covered the entire ridge this trail followed and our paces slowed down significantly.  This was where we appreciated what we learned during our climbers clinic last month - the value of making a good platform as we took each step, particularly when our footings were made somewhat precarious on half frozen snow pack.  Oddly, I ended up straying off form the path at one point so I had to cross over a woody section in order to rejoin them.

Soon we found ourselves at the summit of Devil's Peak where a small lookout stood.  Unlike at the trail head, it was freezing cold there especially wearing only a base layer that had been completely soaked in rain and sweat as we remained in the clouds pretty much the whole way up.  The first order of my business was to change into a dry base layer and put back on the mid and outer layer immediately before I lost too much of my body heat.  And what a difference it made!  It certainly made my lunch break far more enjoyable.  A note to myself - get a light weight thermos.  A cup of hot coco was the only thing missing from otherwise a complete picture. 

I went up into the lookout structure to see what it looked like.  It was actually pretty nice complete with a small table, a wood burning stove and a couple of beds!!  I could see this would be a very good place to be if I found my hike here in the snowier season turned into an imprompeau overnight trip.  It surely would beat bivying - that's for sure!

So what were those sayings - "What goes up must come down", "Summiting is optional, descent is mandatory", "What floats up must sink"??  Yes indeed.  It was a lot more precarious going down on this trail than climbing up as you probably can imagine.  The constant rain has made the snow near the top much slicker and the muddy trail lot looser.  Those  roots sticking out everywhere didn't exactly help either.  But we just had to do it - that's all.  The bottom of my feet were starting to get pretty sore by the time we were half way down the mountain.  All I could think about was how a hot shower was going to feel sooooo goooooood after getting home.  I couldn't wait!! 

Next week, we will be hiking together as a whole Reach The Summit team for the last time from the Timberline Lodge to about half way up to the summit of Mt. Hood.  After that, 9 of us climbing Mt. Adams will continue to train through the end of July.

It's time to bring it all home!  Stay tuned...