BUILD THAT (coyote) WALL

Jesus did a zombie thing once and now we call it Easter so we celebrated the day of bunnies laying eggs against the laws of nature by going on a hike to a cool new spot called Coyote Wall.

Coyote Wall is a massive cliff in the eastern gorge (past Hood River) on the Washington side. Some sort of geological thing happened here once. I don't really know what, I just know there is a big ass cliff there now, stretching from the river all the way up the hill.

There is a large labyrinth of trails here (One area is even called "The Labyrinth"). The area is a mountain biker's haven, so there are tons of cuts, loops, curves and weaves. It was clearly designed and made by mountain bikers before the hiking community really found it, because the trails are far more bike friendly than hiking friendly. On the plus side, that means no true backbreaker steepness since that would murder bikers. There are also old jeep roads and power lines. It's a very different area than most of the gorge, because it's in the dry desert area past the cascade line.

The trailhead is right below the base of the mega wall and it's pretty imposing and awe inspiring. A quick walk up the old, closed highway 8 takes you around the backside of the cliff and to the trail access. Since this was my first foray into the area and I don't have a map, I decided to keep it simple and hug the left, since that trail (The "little moab" trail), hugged the cliff. It's steeper, it's very rocky, but the views are great. Sadly, because it was a grey, colorless day, my pictures turned out kind of crap. I bet sunrise/sunset here on a clear day is spectacular.

The base of the wall from the trailhead parking lot

Walking the wall to start

Keeley looking west, Snowy Mt. Defiance far in the distance

The parking lot from on the wall

The Coyote Wall

We climbed up through the desert dirt and shrubs. It's a fun climb. You basically just weave back and forth on the trail (or be boring and take the jeep road straight up), periodically hitting the edge of the wall for a view. The views get better with each step. Mt. Hood comes into view, Mt. Defiance comes into view, and Rowena Crest and the eastern gorge come into view. About 2/3rds of the way up, right past a large notch in the wall, you get the best overall view at about 270 degrees. Past that, up one final hill, the creepy tree line arrives and the views basically vanish. A small loop on a dangerous narrow trail goes into the woods, meets up at a dirt road, and loops back to the upper viewpoint. There used to be a trail that descended to the base of the wall for a true loop, but it was closed due to private land stuff.

Mosier Oregon from Coyote Wall

Coyote Wall from the best viewpoint

I called it "suicidal rock"

That cliff 5 feet away from the biker is certain death, by the way

From here we took the long way down, taking a more easterly path that weaved around Burns Farm slowly downhill. Lesser views, more peaceful, some wildflowers. Eventually we met back up at the wall and got back to the car. We admired our feat from below and then ate burgers and beer in Hood River.

An even 6.66 miles (on a day about Jesus lol) and around 1500 elevation gain.
Keeley's garmin data: https://www.strava.com/activities/945401638

Abiqua Falls Saves The Day

Our first real adventure of the year!

During the week while I was at work, I stumbled upon some ads for a nearby festival for tulips at the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm. I figured it would be a good way to spend an afternoon with the wife. She could enjoy the farm stuff while I got sweet flower pictures.

I also realized before we left that it was close to a place called Abiqua Falls, which is a falls that gets a lot of love on the internet for how pretty it is but everything I read makes it seem hard to find. It's also a very short hike, which means that to see it, you'd be driving on old country roads for over an hour for a hike that was, effectively, a mile round trip. There is more to it than that, but I didn't know at the time. We'll get to what I mean.

First up: Tulips. We drove to the farm and it was pretty disappointing. I think due to to the extreme winter, the flowers were a little behind schedule for the festival. Only two rows of tulips were in bloom. We walked around but there just wasn't much to see when nothing is there yet. In a few weeks it'll probably look great but for now it looked like a field of green plants.

Since it was about 1pm and we suddenly had nothing to do, I re-proposed the Abiqua idea and we decided to go for it. I'd read it was hard to find, but generally knew where to look from descriptions, so why not try?

About 40 minutes later we reached the gravel section of Crooked Finger Road deep in the cascade foothills. I made the turnoff, saw a lot of other cars/couples, and felt good. Other people is a good sign.

The Abiqua Falls access road is 2 miles downhill and from what I've read, it gets sketchier the farther down you go. With the bad winter causing slides all over the place, I decided to not risk it and we parked at the top. PTSD from Silver Star Mountain. So instead of a 1 mile hike, we now had a 5 mile hike. Whatevs.

The road isn't actually too bad. You can definitely make it down about a mile in your average car to another large parking area before it narrows and gets a little risky. Past that last big pullout, you probably want a jeepish car to be safe. It wasn't that bad but getting stuck down there would suck. The road heads downhill for a mile and then sort of switchbacks west and levels out, following the cliff over the creek. At the end, a few subarus and SUVs were parked by a gate, and a couple of trails went down the hill.

We took the further trail and quickly realized that was not the correct path as it stopped at a cliff and the path down from there looked dangerous. We walked back up and found a much more reasonable option downhill. By reasonable I mean still very steep, but not "kill you if you fell" steep. More "Your ass is gonna get dirty and take some hits as you slide" steep. Some rope was actually on the trees to help. A short .2 miles down the hill and you are at the edge of the very wide and powerful Abiqua Creek. From here you just scramble along the rocky shore for another .3 miles or so till you turn a corner and DAMN SON. 

The perspective makes this look a lot less steep than it actually was

Abiqua Creek - The trail is the left shore. Yeah

And Boom

The high walls around the falls

The road appeared to be screaming at us

Abiqua sits in the middle of a huge basalt amphitheater, roaring 100+ feet over the cliff in an absolutely perfect rectangle shape. The theater has tall overhanging cliffs and the echo of the falls just roars throughout. Despite the surprisingly large number of people we saw coming and going, we had the place to ourselves for our whole stay. It's a picture perfect waterfall, tucked away in such a secret place, and it was completely worth the hassle.

Walking back uphill sucked.

Roughly 1,200 feet of elevation gain in about 6ish miles.

Also, as before, here's an art thing of The Old Man of Storr

A quick hike to Latourell Falls

Finally got back to the good stuff.

The past few weeks have mostly been forest park ramblings with nothing of true note outside my discovery of firelane 6. I actually spent more time in forest park this past week on long walks and had a bad time, because it seems forest park has been slowly infected by hobos living off the trails. I found some cool abandoned roads near Holman lane that were promising explorations, only to turn a corner and find a huge tent. I did this about 5 times.

There aren't many more corners of forest park to explore, but now I'm afraid if I go, I'll just find more hobo evidence. Hobos found all the cool stuff and made nests there.

This weekend though a brief day of decent weather gave us an excuse to get back to the gorge. The gorge is still pretty messed up (Probably will be for months) but some of the closer trails are open and clear. Latourell is one of them. The closest major waterfall hike to Portland and often overlooked because I don't think many people know there is an upper falls. It's a short, easy 2.5 mile loop and the waterfall is always more impressive than I remember it being.

Latourell in it's full 250 ft glory

From early in the trail, clockwise

Upper Latourell

Upper Latourell

The scale is huge

Behind the upper falls

Behind the upper falls

The Gorge

Dilapidated and possibly haunted house near the Latourell trail

Tourism in the 

The Yoga Tree, my favorite tree in the gorge, located on the Latourell trail 

The same tree, photo taken 2 years ago, during spring

Also, I'm cranking these art hike pictures out faster now, so i want to try and upload one with every trip report or close to it. Here is Hardy Ridge!