Students (ages 10 to 18) learn it all from their certified instructors: how to properly pack a backpack, how to prep their feet for endurance hikes, how to determine fuel and rations, how to poop in the woods without the anxiety. Instead, the center has a remarkable number of youth one-week backcountry expeditions. Skip this one as a family-friendly adventure. The difficult backcountry 16.2-mile loop hike to Whetstone Mountain-Battle Ax Creek leaves from basecamp and has an elevation gain of about 4,000 feet.
They come for day hikes, wilderness backpacking expeditions, an outdoor school in the spring and fall, cabin rentals and workshops. Each year, the area hosts 20,000 visitors. Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center manages the little ghost town of twenty-four rustic buildings and promotes conservation through educational experiences in the wilderness. By 1996, with devoted conservation efforts, the federal government passed legislation and deemed the area Opal Creek Wilderness and Scenic Recreation Area. Mining carried on for another sixty-three years until the mining company donated the land to a nonprofit. In 1929, they built basecamp, which became known as Jawbone Flats. The miners arrived in 1859, when they discovered gold, lead, zinc, silver and copper. Seeing humans’ dross left in the natural world always makes part of me sad and annoyingly self-righteous. The farther I walked into the preserve, the more rain-braised steel parts from the miners’ past popped up on the forest floor. Karma wanted to stop and smell all the doggy Post-it notes. I walked faster to lose the scientists on this new terrain, hurrying over puddles and rocks. They would bunk at the cabins at Jawbone Flats, an abandoned historic mining town at the edge of the Opal Creek Wilderness and Bull to the Woods Wilderness. They, too, were headed to Jawbone Flats, the base camp for Opal Creek Ancient Forest Center to begin their four-day backcountry intensive study on mushrooms. I strapped on my daypack (see its complete contents in the sidebar), harnessed Karma and hit the trail, flanked by the Evergreen State College students from Olympia, Washington.
This wasn’t exactly what I had been expecting. Some of them, with their dreadlocks and rounded shoulders and brimmed hats and beanies, held 5-gallon buckets. I was not alone.įorty, maybe fifty Millennials gathered around a pack leader. Once I reached the Opal Creek trailhead’s parking lot, my jaw dropped. The rain pelted and the clouds pressed down on the treetops. I hadn’t seen another soul.įrom Highway 22, the 20-mile drive on a forest road took me one hour. One road cuts through the Willamette National Forest to reach Jawbone Flats. The deep ruts, shaped like rigatoni, peppered the single-lane road. My dog Karma poked up her head in the back hatch and looked out the window. “Please don’t pop, please don’t pop,” I said to the tires. The backcountry road tossed around my not-so-rustic, not-so-four-by-four Toyota Prius. I had the car paid off and then I got all ballsy. Written by Tricia Louvar | photos by Tim LaBarge
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