We also set a new mark for the western most point reached on a hike when we visited Cape Blanco in May ( post). Eddy ( post) and saw our first rattle snake along the PCT ( post). We also reached our highest elevation on that trip when we hiked to the top of Mt. Our visit the the Trinity Alps brought us to the most southerly point while hiking to date. On that trip we visited four of California’s wilderness areas: Russian ( post), Castle Crags ( post), Trinity Alps ( post), and Mt. Shasta website for his suggestions and input on our visit to the Mt. Sullivan’s 100 Hikes in Oregon guidebooks ( information) but we also made use of Scott Cook’s “ Bend, Overall“, Matt Reeder’s “ 101 Hikes in the Majestic Mount Jefferson Region“, and Bubba Suess’s “ Hiking in Northern California“.Ī special thanks goes out to Bubba Suess and his Hike Mt. Most of our destinations can be found in William L. This year we made use of guidebooks by four different authors as well as a few websites. Rock Creek ( post), Spring Basin ( post), Wild Rogue ( post), Grassy Knob ( post), Bridge Creek ( post), Clackamas ( post), North Fork John Day ( post), and Cummins Creek ( post).

The 64 hiking days was the most we’ve managed in a single year and the 751.6 miles was second only to 2016s 792.8 We managed to make decent headway on our quest to visit all of Oregon’s 45 visit-able wilderness areas by checking 8 more off the list. None of that made it a bad year, it just felt very different. In fact we stopped at a total of 106 trailheads this last year. We had been slowly increasing the frequency of doing so but this year 25 of our 64 days included more than one stop. On many occasions we visited multiple trailheads in a single day. Finally we chose to stick close to home the weekend of the solar eclipse. Several wildfires were burning by then and we also changed some plans due to work and family commitments. An example of this is the average high point of our hikes:Īnother example is our mileage distribution:Īs you can see August was way off the norm with many of those miles coming in September this year.

The blue hiker symbols denote trailheads and the two yellow houses are the approximate location of our two backpacking campsites.ĭue to the issues with access to so many locations the mix of hikes this year was very different. Despite all the issues we actually managed to end the year having hiked on 64 days and covered 751.6 miles. We had also planned on spending 18 nights backpacking but wound up with a measly 3 nights in the tent. Plans for another 12 of those days were shifted around on the schedule which meant that only 10 of our originally planned days occurred as we had envisioned them in January. In the end plans for 39 of our originally scheduled 63 days of hiking were pushed out to future years as well as 2 additional short hikes that were part of multi stop days. Snow returned in mid-September causing more changes to our plans. Jefferson and Three Sisters Wilderness areas as well as parts of the Columbia Gorge. Then an unusually bad fire season closed much of the Mt. A heavy winter snow pack lingered delaying access to many areas. This was by far the most challenging year we’ve faced in terms of being able to visit the trails we’d planned on. Each year has a bit of a different feel to it, but this year was especially so. Once again it’s time for our year end review post.

Ona beach state park camping