Another Umpqua Visit

The funemployment continues.

I have 3 songs for you today. Joe Purdy – Woman Go. Joey Quinone – Don’t Tell Me. Bobby Caldwell – Don’t Ask My Neighbor.

Technical note: if you’ve been having trouble playing the videos on the site, that issue is hopefully fixed. All my content is served up using cloudflare’s CDN as of now. Previously I was trying to use caching and some tricks to serve everything up from my home server. The performance wasn’t there so now everything hosted in some cloud somewhere. I also moved the website server to a Hillsboro datacenter. It should work a lot better.

I was at home in Hillsboro on the 11th. I was chatting with a friend when I looked at the weather. Southern Oregon was expected to see ~60F-32F over the next few days with no cloud cover. I don’t mind me some cold camping so I packed up real quick then set out for the Wilbur I-5 exit. I left around 2:30pm.

Dec 11th – Heading Down

The drive down was pretty uneventful. The weather has been weird though. I immediately noticed it when I got south of Wilsonville. The sky looked like it was spring time. I’m not quite sure how to explain it other than it felt and looked like that battle between winter and spring as the seasons change.

Dec 12th – Marsters and Move

Marsters Trailhead is a rad lil campsite that I’ve built up over the years. It’s generally used as a stop off for kayakers and rafters. Fly fisherpeople also use it pretty frequently. I have, however, noticed that many fly fisherpeople use it to take shits. I clean up probably two dozen or so piles of shit every year from Marsters and it generally happens after anglers stop by.

Tangent here. I know everyone likes to blame homeless people and transients for the garbage we see outside. My experience is not that. I see, more often than not, privileged people dumping and ruining nature. There seems to be this attitude that “everyone else is doing it” or often “it’s just me, it isn’t a big deal.” I really don’t like this. I pick up so much trash that clearly comes from affluent people who just can’t be bothered to find a dump. The way I look at it is impact. The impact of an affluent person dumping their expensive trash is way higher than a homeless person trying to survive. I mean the actual impact, not just the visible impact. People have endless excuses for why they can’t be bothered to try harder or to sacrifice for the betterment of all. It drives me nuts. This is very obvious at the North Umpqua Hot Springs parking lot where I see a ton of “decorative spiritualists” and privileged “nature lovers” who dump their garbage and shit everywhere. Leave no trace applies to everyone. I talk to and know so many folks who will claim they “love nature” but can’t be bothered to leave no trace. It seems like our society has twisted and mutated what it means to actually care. A few weeks ago, I cleaned up several pounds of trash from the hot springs because some folks threw a party there. They used tape to mark paths telling people where to go, left tons of decorative plastic crap everywhere, and even threw glitter all over the trail. They also destroyed the old outhouse by pulling the door off its hinges. There were empty bottles, cans, and containers all over the hot springs. All this trash because people wanted to take advantage of nature without understanding the responsibility of the gift. Anyway, sorry, tangent over.

I woke up on the 12th at Marsters and decided to get some firewood prepped. My morning fire wasn’t bad. There was a wildfire a few years ago all along this area, so there is a lot of decent wood already on the ground. I usually just walk up the road to cut some up. Then I get to roll it down the road. Enjoy this 8 minute video of me kicking logs down the road.

The Hike to Pig Iron

One of the things I was looking to accomplish with this trip was getting to Pig Iron Lookout. Its status isn’t well known, at least that I could find, so I wanted to get an update on it. In the winter they gate the road(NF 4780) that goes up along the ridgeline, so a 3.5-mile hike is necessary to reach the lookout. The drive to the trailhead is super cool. The road follows the forebay canal.

The hike was pretty brutal. This is an old unmaintained trail. I think I was following deer tracks for much of it. I’d say a solid day of work is necessary to bring this back up to snuff. Less than 5 trees to cut. It would mostly be raking to make the trail easier to follow.

Pig Iron Lookout

Some quick history on this particular lookout. Pig Iron is slightly unique. It is on the National Historic Lookout Register.

Prefabricated by the Weyerhaeuser Sales Company in 1950, Pig Iron Lookout is probably one of a kind. No other examples of this kit have been identified. Similar to an L-4, the 10′ x 10′ cab has 3′ x 3′ solid pane windows and a catwalk atop a 10′ wooden tower. This Umpqua National Forest lookout, located a half mile below the summit to get a better view, has been restored and it is used as an emergency detection site.

Former lookout Gary Wilson has contributed the following information: “I manned this lookout in the summer of 1951. At that time I believe it was an L4 type cab. The usual paned windows were present and the shutter assembly opened up for shading. It was a brand new lookout which allowed me to do some painting and trimming of Douglas Fir trees felled to improve the view. In 2001 or so I visited the site and found the cab to look similar to the photo. There may have been a lookout structure at site before the current structure. A friend of mine served as a lookout the previous summer living in a tent near the site with an Osborne situated outside on a large log. He joked that he wore out his shoes on one side due to the steep slope he was working on. The current structure was built during this time and into the Fall of 1950.”

Cheryl Hill also has a post about Pig Iron. She visited back in 2023 and it appeared to be maintained for use. Cheryl’s hike report is here. Another lookout tagger, The Roaming Civic, visited in 2022. Also, there is a geocache up there. Most lookouts have a geocache. Here is a 360degree pano from 2016 that I find kind of cool.

I have spoken to the Diamond Lake Ranger Office. The current state of the lookout is “Needs repair, was vandalized” according to the individual I spoke to. So, I’m assuming not long after Cheryl visited someone went up there and damaged it. The USFS usually shuts things down after that because of a lack of time/labor to repair it. I’m hopeful I can get this lookout back into great shape. It’s really a beauty and a gem.

After coming down Pig Iron I decided to move camping spots from Marsters to Clearwater Forebay #1. A couple of reasons, mainly being that the forebay has cell service, but also the forebay is really nice for washing off. My biggest issues with the Marsters spot are that the road is just across the river so it’s noisy, plus the river isn’t great for swimming at that location. Marsters is a salmon spawning spot which means it’s relatively shallow for the most part. This new site is raaaaaad.

Enjoy a view of the campsite plus some canal driving videos. After moving camps, I got all settled into CW FB #1 (clearwater forebay).

After getting setup at the new spot I relaxed for a little while. I watched Footloose. ….what a weird movie. I had never seen it before. It did make me dance, though, so mission accomplished Kevin Bacon. Once the sun set and I saw that the moon wasn’t going to wreck my view of the stars I went off to the hot springs. I arrived to 2 cars in the parking lot, one of which was a camper truck situation with the owner getting ready to leave. I figured I could get the springs to myself. I wound up getting the springs to myself for about a half hour. Not bad.

The photos below were taken using the Pixel Pro 10’s Astro mode. 3+ minute exposures.

Dec 13th

I woke up on the 13th feeling pretty swell. I made a dope ramen breakfast with broccoli, seitan, and carrots. I did a lil maintenance around the camp site, explored, and nearly got got by a yellow jacket nest. After all that I went for a lil run from Lemolo Reservoir(it isn’t a lake) along the Dread and Terror segment.

Once I was done with that run I went back to camp to relax for the rest of the evening. I really wanted a shower but I didn’t want to deal with the cold so I came up with a solution that worked pretty well. I put my solar shower on the Fiesta engine. For lunch/dinner, I made a really delicious vegan mac n cheese with seitan and a bunch of veggies. I also liberated some toilet paper from a construction porta-potty. I was out and they had a bunch in there.

Dec 14th – Return Home

On the 14th I decided to head home. Rain was expected in the afternoon so I figured I could get home before that. I audibled to a quick Chintimini run on my way home. I’ve been chasing a silly Strava segment. I figured I might be able to snag it. I wound up missing the top spot by about 4 minutes.