Deep lake in the high Cascades

The day was a typical hot day with blue skies and the hot, sweet smell of the desert. I lived in the Tri-Cities, WA state. The Tri-Cities were in a desert and comprised the cities of Pasco, Richland, and Kennewick. Some call this the Columbia basin. And it is a great basin where the air circulates in a spiral, keeping the winds blowing in a circle. Keeps the air a little polluted and full of pollen. The many forest fires burning in the spring make the smoke a heavy pollutant.

  I was leaving the sweltering heat to embark on an incredible mountain hike up to Deep Lake in the Oregon Pacific Northwest

   I was a quiet fifteen-year-old. My life was stressful; I was always in school, slaving away in the library reading to keep up with my grades, and I had a little trouble with dyslexia and attention deficit disorder. I was very active, having started working at a Thrifty grocery store. I had the most rad motorcycle, for which I was making payments. Back then, a 125cc two-cylinder engine was considered a status symbol. Today is not so cool.

    I drove this motorcycle everywhere in southeastern Washington. The speed limit at the time was 70 on all roads, and, of course, cars often exceeded it, reaching 80. My top speed was 55, so I'm not sure how I'm still alive. I think I used up my nine lives. So, I'm lucky to be here and write this.

  Deep Lake is located in the Cascade Range on the Deschutes River, and it's quite a hike up the mountains to reach it. We set out early that morning, left the highway, and traveled 20 or so miles to the trailhead. We left the cars there, not worrying about break-in; it was so isolated. Some of our leaders had gone up the mountain a day before. I don't remember the exact logistics of how we ended up without a leader. I think there was a road that continued up to the campground at the south end of Deep Lake that people took, and didn't have to hike very far. There was a beautiful forest trail that went up the hard way to Deep Lake, very popular with avid hikers. It was very steep.

It had rained the day before, and things were muddy and slippery.

We enjoyed a peaceful, heavily forested hike. We gladly slugged through the mud and were lucky to be there. The rain the day before we feared had been a massive downpour, and halfway up the mountain, we came to a fork: one to the left and one to the right. The trail sign had fallen over. We flipped a coin: heads for left, tails for right. We went right. The trails both went up and up. We had this sinking feeling that things weren't quite right after an hour going straight up the mountain. We were all eight experienced in the woods and weren't about to give up until we reached a trail that headed down. We were very high up the mountain. We soon got a clear view of the top of the hill and realized that no trails went down as we had supposed. Then we saw the lake, beautiful and partly hidden by heavy trees, so we didn't have a clear view of it on either end. We realized that we had the wrong trail a mile down the mountain. We really didn't want to go straight down the hill. It was so tempting not to go slipping and sliding back down the trail. We struggled all the way up in the mud and were exhausted. The shortest way was down… was straight down. We all took a deep breath, tightened our packs and belts, and securely laced our boots. It was scary steep.

We fell down the slope, grabbing onto branches, grabbing tree trunks, and fell from tree to tree. Very scary. At one point, Howard lost his sleeping bag—the way his pack was made, it didn't secure very well. And we were only halfway down after an hour. It was so comical that the sleeping bag bounced up and down, hitting trees, and finally bounced out of sight. We were so exhausted that we all laughed and laughed until we were all played out. Howard was devastated as he saw himself sleeping with another guy to stay warm. Yikes. It was late spring, and the temperature had already plunged from hot to cool.

We had to get down to where we could see the camp of our leaders. We didn't have to wait long. A break in the trees showed no camp—only a glacier. The sun was almost down.

We reached the edge of the lake. There was a beautiful trail. We hurried down the trail to the glacier. A stream flowed down into the lake from the melting glacier. I forgot to say we had found Howard’s  sleeping bag. We found it 20 feet up in a pine tree. I climbed up, being a class A tree climber, and no one else volunteered! I was one of the leaders. We fast set up our tents and rolled out sleeping bags. Fire was next. We fast warmed up just as darkness descended. Most of us had foil dinners prepared in advance. It was the most delicious thing I've ever tasted.

We knew it was best to hold tight at our little campground. We would let our leaders find us. We knew they'd be getting a little nervous. The smart thing our leaders should have done was never! Never had left us alone. We were known for straying off the beaten path. Hoping for exciting adventures and daring excitement. We were totally, all eight, very free spirits and driven to have accomplished one dangerous adventure after another. When I think of it, our leaders were as crazy as we were.

I'll write more later. My time has expired, and my wife is giving me the evil eye

Ric