Whetstone Mountain and Beyond - third camper trip - November 5-6

Last summer Natalie and I hiked a very difficult trail up to Whetstone Montain (I published a post about this memorable hike on this blog).  Whetstone Mountain is a terrific destination as long as you can go on a clear day with sun and a blue sky.  In conditions like that there is  360 degree view, and one can see all of the mountain peaks in Oregon and the southern Washington Cascades.

After hearing about his place, Camillie also wanted to go but I wasn't willing to do the hike anytime soon - unless trail crews had come in and cut through the nearly million trees that had fallen across the trail.

But wait...upon review of the map, there are roads that go clear up the mountain side to the trailhead.  So there was a way to get there - Camille, Rado, and I decided to make the trip.  There are two roads that go to the trail head - 7030 and 7020.  A description of the trail I found on the internet said./to take road 7030.

Our plan:  leave Oregon City about 3:00 which would get us to the Bagby Hot Springs parking lot where we would park Rado and then leave early in the morning for the trailhead.  Everything was perfect.  We entered the parking at dusk and....there were about twenty cars already parked there.  Hmmm - must be a pool party going on up at the springs.   I didn't really want to park there and deal with the noise, etc that might occur later on in the dark of night.  So we did a u-turn and entered the Bagby Hot Springs Campground.  Talk about dark.  We entered the deep dark woods and looked for a spot that I could easily back into and then drive out of in the morning.  Camille and I had a nice dinner of fried chicken and mashed potatoes and maybe some cho-muffled-covrd-muffle-nutricious organic almonds with some kind of thick salt.  After dinner we read to each other a Richard Peck  book called The Mouse with the Question Mark Tail"

Come morning, we headed out, check the parking lot (no cars at all) and headed up Road 7030. I had checked the map previously and 7030 seemed to take an easy urving path up the mountain.  Road 7020, on the other hand, made pretty much a straight line up the mountain that had manny squiggles. I inferred that 7020 was way to steep and too curvy for us.

Road 7030 is good.  The mist is clearing, I can see blue sky, and the sunshine is peeking through the trees.  It is going to be a perfect day for sightseeing on Whetstone Mountain!!!  Our wishes have come true!  Then suddenly we rounded a corned and our hopes and dreams were dashed.  I could see a barricade with red and white strips guarding what no one wants to see on a one lane mountain road.  The road was gone.  Well - not all of it.  At least half remained.  Upon observation we could see that a big tree had toppled to the downhill side of the road and that the roots had ripped up the gravel and rain water had finished the job.  There was about a four foot crevice in the middle of the road.

I explained to Camille that this would not work for us ..not today.  Perhaps if a T-Rex were chasing us, I might ask Rado to sacrifice himself to get us around the washout.  But for now I needed to back down 

the road until there was a wide enough spot in the road to turn around.

So now we were heading back heading for Elsewhere.  I didn't want to try the steep and wiggly road 7020...I think I was scarred by the easy road 7030.

Back to the parking lot and we decded to: Go Soak ourselves

Looked around a bit

Ate at a yummy lunch at the trailhead

with Hershey bars for desert

We'll try again maybe, if in my lifetime, the road is repaired, or a\ crew clears the trail.