Day 3: Christmas Valley and Beyond

Christmas Valley is an odd place. Aside from the town’s name and the fact that someone thought it was cute or witty to give names like Jingle Bell Lane to their unkept roads, Christmas Valley has an array of unusual natural features. And that’s why we ended up hauling in to the general store there in the first place. That and beer. If I could have foreseen how bad the roads were going to be I would have finished the twelve pack in the parking lot. Routes such as jingle bell were rutted out like a washboard. I could feel the nuts and bolts of my truck rattling free. But we had heard about the Lost Forest, Fossil Lake, the shifting sand dunes, and were ready to do what it took to see it. This place proved to be the most disappointing of the trip. I think we were both guilty of imagining the dunes to be rippled slopes of warm sand, rising starkly against the sky like a scene out of Lawrence of Arabia or even like the dunes along the Oregon coast. Not the case. At one entry point to the dunes, at the end of another shitty road, there were several signs warning that absolutely no vehicle shall be permitted beyond said point. Almost perfectly dissecting these signs was the track of an ATV, having torn through in a spurt of rebellion or pure disregard. Jamie certainly felt the nothingness of this windswept place, for she waited in the truck briefly while I made the wretched touristy assumption from atop a low sand hill, that there didn’t seem to be much in the way of dunes, and as for Fossil Lake–I didn’t see any bones.
Let me say that while I’m knocking this area it is pretty amazing. These are the largest inland dunes in Oregon and as they shift over the years they’ve uncovered bones from ancient epochs.

We didn’t say much on the ride back out to Kris Kringle way or whatever the hell it was called, slowly beginning to feel like I had seen enough sagebrush. Yet we pushed on for the lost forest, a large grove of ponderosa pine, a usually beautiful pine with long needles and tawny plated bark. The pines of this forest, surviving here only because the dunes locked in enough moisture for them to grow, were emaciated versions of the kind gracing the eastern cascades. Trees here stood at angles, lacked the luster in their bark, generally looking about as lonely and desperate as the groups of dirt-bikers hanging around their pick-up trucks. I’m not going to enter into any rants about ATV users on public lands, but it should be said that when they gather in even modest numbers it makes any other recreation virtually impossible. Everywhere we looked, driving into the lost forest, which wasn’t our preferred mode of exploration in the first place, were tracks off into the woodlands from ATV’s. The roads were rutted and in the distance near the dunes, a white haze, like smoke from a wildfire, reminded us that not all the riders were just hanging out. We checked out a campsite or two, which were wide sandy depressions some sixty feet across with a charred bullseye for a fire pit. If we had maybe six other jeeps with us we would have felt right at home. Neither of us were too happy.

Back out via Kris Kringle. Once we get under the highwire's we're almost off this road. Lets have a look at the map. Where to camp? I want a beer. Chuck's pissed off getting thrown around back there. My ass hurts from these roads. Let's see Crack in the Ground tomorrow. What about the green mountain camp? Decisions were being made and they led to a risk that the green mountain camp, some fifteen miles over the plain of Xmas valley and twisting up a mountain of lava, wouldn't offer a decent place to put up for the night. Temps were falling. We pulled onto another washboard and found this guy just hanging out in a farm field.

It's a pronghorn antelope. Not a true antelope according to science but close enough. From the looks of it Xmas Valley was a lonely place for everyone. Usually these animals can be found in large herds pounding through the sage at 60+ miles an hour. We couldn't tell if he was sick, lost, resting or none of the above. But he didn't mind the truck or our touristy camera gawking. We were now in a transition zone where the Great basin meets the high lava plains. These animals are tougher to find north and west of here. On the slithering road up green mountain we passed large buttes and mounds of red lava rock, some as high as large hills, others piled as if by the hand of man. Way back when Crater Lake was Mt. Mazama it exploded, its center falling in creating the would be national park, while the rest of the mountain fell hundreds of miles to the east (as far as I know).

Atop green mountain at last we were quite excited. Not only was there a small porto style bathroom facility, but there were several camps in among the juniper trees, some along the edge of a ridge with sweeping views of uninhabited land to the north and west. One of the best parts is it was free. There was no one else up there as far as we knew. The camp was perfect, we found a less exposed site at the base of what I called cougar mountain, because it was a craggy mound of lava possibly inviting to a resident cat. Jamie disliked the name. That night we got a good fire going of the best smelling wood I had burned in some time. Despite that, we still had to wrap chuck up in a down blanket to keep him from shivering while we made dinner. It was a sad sight, and had he any say in the matter, he'd probably rather I wasn't telling of it. It was now a far cry from our first night by Succor Creek. Around 11 p.m. the first of several snow squalls blew in with a flock of dark clouds blotting out the moon. Jamie retired. Twenty minutes later it was over, the moon having summitted cougar mountain, shown brightly again. I took a walk back out to the ridge. To the north and west as far as I could see there was not a light on the land. A gray plain mottled with the black of night time trees was all that was there. From somewhere close I began to hear a low rapid whistle like a slowed down trill. It went on and on, sometimes raising in volume and at times almost going silent. It was an owl I realized later; one I had never heard before. I'm still not certain what kind for sure. I walked back to camp and headed in for bed as the clouds thickened up. I zipped up my sleeping bag.
Snow ticked at the tent.