Hart Mountain

[Applejack]

My wife and I like to celebrate not only the usual yearly anniversary but also on the half year. It gives us yet another chance to get away by ourselves and "rough it" a little more than if our daughter is with us. This September we were celebrating the 7.5 year mark in our marital history book. Though we had planned a longer half year retreat an impromptu trip to Maui for 10 days earlier this year had depleted my wife's vacation days down to a meager 3. 3 days would not be nearly enough to go as deep into the Oregon Outback as we had wanted so we settled for was of our favorite places, Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge. True, we had been here before but there was still much exploring to be done.
Our plan was to leave late Thursday after my wife was off from work, and drive the 4.5 hrs to Hart Mountain that night, making it in roughly about midnight. We wanted to travel light,backpacker style, and had hoped that the in-laws would not only look after our daughter but also our 9 year old German Shepherd, who has the spirit but no longer has the legs for long hikes. Unfortunately they declined to watch him and he would have to travel with us and we would have to limit our hiking to shorter ones. And so Thursday came and I packed up the 4Runner with the pre-packed camping totes my wife took care of the night before. Though we packed as light as we could, hauling 100 lbs of German Shepherd and his beds, yes "beds", he has two, the 4runner quickly looses a lot of interior cargo space. I was glad to have recently bought the extension piece for our Thule MOAB basket. My wife was able to leave work early and we hit the road by 4:30. We stopped in Klamath Falls for food and to top off the tank and were on the road again. Maybe it was the Off The Grid podcast about how to save seeds that did but by 8 p.m. we were both already exhausted and were looking for a place to pitch our tent for the night. We found a place about 20 miles before the town of Lakeview called Cottonwood Meadows. It sounded pleasant enough so we headed for it. It was dark when we rolled in, but we found a spot that looked nice enough and pitched our tent through in our bags and zonked out. I was awoken from my slumber by the sound of AJ, our dog, growling at something. I blinked a few times to get my eyes to adjust a bit and noticed AJ was on alert! He was standing up, staring out screen of the tent and growling. The night was warm and clear so we opted not to put the rain fly on. I sat up a bit and patted AJ on the back to reassure him and his growling relented..........slightly. It was now quiet enough that I could now hear the distinct sound of slurping and then what sounded like a large, make that very large sigh, like a dog does. I fumbled around the tent pockets looking for my headlamp and clicked it on.

-----------More later with pics but i must go to work now--------

 

[Flip_4_It]

I love the ending! lol We should get together sometime, I live near Diamond Lake.

 

[Applejack]

Ok, where did I leave off? Ah yes, I clicked on my headlamp to see what was making the noise. Some of you may be thinking a bear and that is was I thinking as well, but as I tried to focus my light on the animal it turned out to be a cow elk that came up into our camp and was drinking our dog's water. All through out the night I would hear it wandering around below us near the lake.

In the morning we did indeed verify that it was a pleasant little campground and there was no one else there.

Never the less it was time to push on after some instant oatmeal and some coffee.
As I was heating the water I asked my wife if she only packed one canister of fuel for our snowpeak stove. She said, " No. I packed a big can of the blue kind also." Uh oh..... despite our best efforts to make camping gaz fuel work for a snow peak stove, it just doesn't work. We headed in to Lakeview for gas and looked around for a place that might sell some stove fuel, but again we were defeated. Katie suggested that we could, if needed, heat water over the fire, so we were off and running again for the final 1 1/2 hr drive that was left. What we didn't see the night before was all the smoke in the air from what I guess was numerous wildfires in several different areas.

As we rolled through the tiny town of Plush, Or we could see that the smoke was severely concealing the escarpment of Hart Mountain and Poker Jim Ridge.
I tried to clear these photos up as best as I could but still they're pretty hazy.

We didn't hang around too long before deciding to make our way up on top and into the Hot Springs campground, and all at once it dawned on me that this was the opening weekend for bow hunting antelope. At once I felt ill in the pit of my stomach. There would be little hope of finding any spot left. As we cruised along the gravel roads, we weighed our options, one of which was to get a backpackers permit and the ranger station which allows you to camp anywhere. I was less than enthusiastic about this option. I just don't like idea of camping out in exposed areas especially during hunting season.
When we arrived in the campground we were greeted with exactly what we expected, hunters and RV's everywhere. I have nothing against hunters or RV's but it just wasn't the idea we had in mind when planning this trip. As we searched for a vacant site, any vacant site, we relented and decided to head out past the campground and see what was available if we went backpacker style and got permits back at the ranger station.......an hour and a half away in Lakeview. Just about as soon as we exited the campground Katie spotted a nice little hole back in the brush along the creek, the very last site available. It was a nice little spot so we made it our home. As I unpacked and set up the tent and such, Katie got to work on making snacks and finding a way to open the wine which we forgot the opener for.

Ah...time to relax a bit


------More later-----must cook dinner-------

 

[bondvagabond]

Ha Ha, my wife and I have been married 7 years, we usually go to the hart mountain hot springs for our wedding anniversary, and we live about 5 hours away from there, and we have a german shepherd. That's got to be the string theory or sumpfin'.

 

[Applejack]

I love the ending! lol We should get together sometime, I live near Diamond Lake.

Sure thing!!

 

[Applejack]

Later that evening we decided to head down to the Warner Valley overlook to check out the sunset that evening. We thought that with all the smoke around in the valley it might make some really nice colors for the sunset. When we arrived at the overlook we discovered that the smoke had blown out of the valley, but we thought it would be nice anyway.

But as we waited it was looking more and more like it was going to be rather blah, so we left.
On the way back to camp we decided to check out a side road we never had taken before and were rewarded with a sighting of what we first though was a large mule deer. But as we watched it walk we could tell it wasn't a deer. I scrambled for my camera which had the wrong lens on for the distance, but I wasn't going to risk scaring this guy off before getting a shot.

I went for my 75-300 lens but the elusive sheep took off for higher ground. But we were still thrilled to have seen one.

After we hit camp that evening and settled in for the night we noticed something that we hadn't before, the camp trailer across the creek and down stream from us had it's generator running and it ran allllllllll night long, and alllllllll the next day and night. Irritating but at least it was one of those quieter Honda units.

The next day we had planned to go investigate Barnhardi cabin which is an old cabin having long since been abandoned. We tried to visit this cabin on a previous trip but found a strange man staying in it and so we didn't stick around.

But more on that later.............................

 

[Applejack]

We parked off the road and pulled out the binoculars to scope out the cabin before heading in on foot. It appeared to be empty so we went for it, hiking through the tall dry grass and eventually right it to a marsh. AJ was having a ball blasting through it back and forth between Katie and myself. So much of the time his nine years of age (which is getting up there for his breed) shows and it brought smiles to our faces to see him acting like a pup again.

We're unsure of what the original use for this cabin was. Probably just some old hunting cabin we assume.

It was a pitiful sight with the roof sagging in, but what a place it must have been, sitting alone and isolated from virtually everyone, with fabulous views like those the settlers on the high plains must have had.
We ducked our heads and stood inside and tried to imagine what it was like in its day/

I try not to be an introvert but at heart I really am one and the spirit of Barnhardi Cabin and I shared some peaceful moments while we were there.


Our plan was to travel in the later part of the morning, letting the hunters have there early morning hunts. We left the cabin around 11 am and figured most of them would be heading back to their camps. We decided to head on down the trail past the cabin to see where it went. My GPS showed a lake way on down the trail and we thought it might be nice to have lunch there. The road was slow going, rocky with deep water bars and incredibly dusty, we were forced to use the A/C. It took us through some shallow stream crossings, cut through aspen groves through grew up around the springs and to a few nice vistas.

Our plan to have lunch and Guano lake was quickly abandoned and we approached the halfway mark. The road condition kept our pace to a crawl and it would be 3:00 before we reached the lake, so we kept our eyes open for place to pull out and eat.
But then the road started to head down following Guano Creek and suddenly another campground popped up. Clearly this place was more accessible by roads other than the one we took. We crawled through trying to keep our dust down to a minimum and passed a couple of bloke skinning their antelope kills. Just past the campground we decided to turnaround and head back to camp ourselves. We had some Clif bars and apples with us and we'd just snack on the way back. The scenery level was declining and it looked as though we were working our way back to civilization. But as we turned around we notices a small wooden sign pointing down a side road marked with the word "GRAVES". We both looked at each other and without word followed the sign.

To be continued.........

 

[Applejack]

2 Graves

We meandered down the dusty side road wondering what graves they might be. An Indian burial site or that of some early settlers? We were somewhat taken aback when we arrived and we found two very well taken care of markers of two young soldiers. Not sure what the story was here.

We didn't linger here too long and hit the road back to camp. It wasn't late but we did want to make sure to catch the sunset on this evening.
About a mile outside of camp there was another road we'd not taken and it appeared to go up on top of a hill and perhaps even Warner Peak. The road, we discovered stops short of the top and has a gate with sign banning bicycles..???? So we hoofed it from there and climbed to the top.

We caught these guys along the way:

Sorry for breaking your leg off, pink grasshopper.

When we got near the top we found this interesting rock structure. It was almost like some kind of early fashion of a hunting blind. Very basic, just a small curved rock wall.

We hung around for a little while but AJ was getting anxious and tired so we began our descent back down to the car.

We cooked an early dinner and hit the road down to the overlook to try and catch the sunset again.

Just as we pulled in to the overlook parking lot a guy on a KTM Adventure bike rode by. We knew he wouldn't be finding any place to camp near the hot springs.

Katie and I agreed that if was saw that guy on the bike on our way back to camp we would invite him to share our site. As we rolled in he was rolling out. I offered him a flat place for his tent and a beer. I could tell he was glad to be off the bike, it was getting late and he'd been in the saddle for quite awhile.

Fires weren't allowed so we hung our headlamps from the tree branches instead, and chatted for an hour or so for our final night there.

Dave, I forgot to ask if you were on ExPo, if so it was nice to meet you and I hope the rest of your trip went well for you

 

[Eeyore]

Nice photos! That area looks like a lot of fun, thanks for the write up.

 

[mk216v]

Some fantastic colors there! Thanks for sharing.

 

[trackhead]

Great pics!

 

[Mr. Leary]

Great trip report, Applejack. Thatnks for sharing!

 

[esh]

Thanks for the writeup!

Hart rarely disappoints. If you want some more great exploring, continue down Guano Creek direction and and work your way to Hwy 140 staying above Shirk Rim. You can see some excellent country and tons of animals all the way to the highway or over toward the Pueblos. Probably won't have to share any of that area with generators or RVs either.

Did you find any other sign of travel restrictions on the mountain? Would love to see a track of the area you covered.

Cheers!

 

[Applejack]

Thanks for the writeup!
Did you find any other sign of travel restrictions on the mountain? Would love to see a track of the area you covered.Cheers!

We only found the single gate which restricted all travel with the exception of foot travel. I'll work on a map with out tracks listed, and post when completed.