Backpacking in the Wallowas Again

    I have just returned from backpacking for four days in the Eagle Cap Wilderness Area in the Wallowa Mountains of northeastern Oregon. Stupendous country and a great trip with four women friends: Cheryl, Janet, Sandy, and Cheryl's sister Karen.

L-R: Sandy, Karen, Cheryl, me                     Photo by Janet

L-R: Me, Sandy, Cheryl, Janet.                Photo by Karen

    Setting aside simply the experience of being with these friends, under these conditions, in this kind of country, what was best?

    Was it Sandy's birthday, when we were camped on beautiful Lee Lake and Cheryl presented Sandy with a cupcake-paper of rich chocolate pudding, topped with a square of white chocolate and three tiny birthday candles?

L-R: Cheryl and Karen, singing "Happy Birthday" to Sandy

Cheryl had made the pudding at home, then freeze-dried it. At camp, she reconstituted it with water, then whipped it and whipped it to silky smoothness. After our dinners of various backpacking foods, we all had the marvelous treat of such a good dessert.

    Or was it the view from the top of Ivan Carper Pass, after the long climb up—Eagle Cap looming above the valley with its blue spots of Upper Lake, Mirror Lake, and Moccasin Lake far below? 

    Or was it my long swim in Moccasin Lake, when, swimming back to shore, I was swimming to the plinking tunes of a ukulele from another campsite along the lake?

    I don't think it was the campsite on Minam Lake because my swim was hampered by a long, ankle-deep, mud-sucking wade to get far enough into the lake to swim, but it could have been the campsite on the rocks above Lee Lake or the next night's camp along the East Lostine River, beside a plunging series of waterfalls.

    Some people put on the list of best moments the lightning and thunder at the first night's campsite. I don't. 

    But it could have been the spectacular view of Eagle Cap from the valley as we were hiking out—a quintessential view of a mountain peak framed perfectly by ridgelines of trees descending to a vee in the valley, with a creek in the foreground. I stared and stared, it was so unreal.

    For me, though, I know what the best moment was: the early-morning swim in Lee Lake, when the water was glass-smooth and a round moon, ghostly in the morning light, was looking down on the dark blue lake from the pale blue sky. 

Lee Lake

And then, after all those wonderful moments, we came to the end of the East Lostine Trail and were back at the junction where, four days earlier, we had started out on the West Lostine River trail. Maybe the best part, after all, was just doing it together.

From lower left, clockwise: Janet, Cheryl, Karen, Sandy, me