Leg 16. Dwane and I headed down early Friday, not as early as we’d liked, but it turned out OK. Dwane came down Thursday and we attended the Oregon – Cal football game that evening. Did I mention the Ducks thrashed the Bears! I had loaded up everything the previous weekend, so the next morning we got an early stop, topped off with fuel and munchies and headed towards Klamath Falls intending to fill in some of the gap between Lakeview (Goose Lake) and Malin. We got a few supplies in town after the 3 hour drive down and then headed east out into the Langell Valley area along the newly operational natural gas pipeline. Managed to make one wrong turn and headed back towards Malin instead of SE as desired, but after a quick turnaround we only wasted a about 10 miles of out of direction driving. Would have liked to be able to blame Dwane, but alas, I was driving and not paying attention to the intersections. The pipeline carries natural gas from Wyoming all the way to Malin where it plugs into the major west coast distribution system. Those cowboys will be able to pass their gas on to California now! We’d hiked a few segments back along their right of way and it was neat to see how they’d finished up the 100 yard swath they cut through the southern width of the state. The BLM made them sort rocks, save woody debris and whole trees, and then re-landscape the whole right of way with the rocks and down trees.
Here's a milepoint burried in a squirrel/rat nest. We found several like this where they had mounds of rock covered with woody debris.
Most of the country was wooded with open areas such as this and we walked along fence line for perhaps 70% of the way.
We planned to knock out 4 or 5 miles in the afternoon backing up east from about mile post 50 where we had jumped to from east of Goose Lake to leave this gap. This leap froging our vehicles eastward while walking west seems to be the best routine we’ve found. We can break the hikes into more predictable segments for time and effort. We unloaded the mini-bikes a couple hundred yards away from the road and pipeline right of way at mile point 50+, locked up the truck and headed west with the bikes to an area called upper Willow Creek along the border near 45. Saw a few hunters, it was opening weekend for “fire sticks”, and helped orient a lost pair of Forest Service folks and then found a spot in the trees a hundred yards off a side road to stash the bikes near 45. We started back along the state line headed west thru the pine forest, open meadows, a couple of irrigated pastures, and several lava rock strewn meadows. I’d made a major re-boot of the GPS over the last couple of months and had reloaded the mile point data provided by the BLM and everything seemed to be working great for once. Got good readings for the mile points, created a waypoint for each and took a close up and step back picture with the camera. Camera was working fine also, so we were upbeat. Beautiful weather, sunny but cool, and some of the nicest forest we’d walked thru to-date. The couple of pasture areas we traversed were wet, but my feet dried out pretty quickly and I didn’t even change socks. Still wearing my Merril shoes – I’ve made the whole trip with the same pair so far and they are wearing great. Hoping to become a poster boy for Merril Shoes when we reach the ocean and complete the trip.
We got back to the truck in a couple of long hours and headed east past the bikes along a fairly parallel road network to find a place to sleep overnight about 10 miles further back along the line.
By the time we checked out a couple of potential intersect points it was getting dark. We passed a couple of different hunter’s camps as we looked for another spot to overnight in the camper and settled on a spot near an intersection at about 38. Found a cleared area a hundred yards off the intersecting road and threaded our way in the dark thru some down trees and branches with the truck. Chowed down on some nutri-type bars and a couple of bagels for dinner and crawled into our bags for the night.
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