Seattle To Portland (The Long Way)

After having a traumatic evening the night before (see this entry) we decided to make up for it by taking a creative way back to Portland. Originally we considered driving from Federal Way to Yakima to Goldendale to Portland but thought that it would take way too long considering that we checked out at 12:01 pm.

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Instead, (after a wonderful breakfast/lunch at Poverty Bay Coffee Company) we headed east to Auburn determined to travel to Portland on back roads behind Mt. Rainier and Mt. Saint Helens. We stopped briefly for $50 worth of gas (around 12 gallons) in Enumclaw where we purchased a necessary map of Washington.

I had always wanted to go this way ever since I read the account of Kenneth Arnold when I was a little boy:

Kenneth A. Arnold (born March 29, 1915 in Sebeka, Minnesota; died January 16, 1984 in Bellevue, Washington) was an American businessman and pilot. He is best-known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to see nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947. Arnold described the objects' shape as resembling a flat saucer or disc, and also described their erratic motion as resembling a saucer skipped across water; from this, the press quickly coining the new terms "flying saucer" and "flying disc" to describe such objects, many of which were reported within days after Arnold's sighting. Later Arnold would add that one of the objects resembled a crescent or flying wing.

Unfortunately, we saw no UFOs on our trip.

One other thing that was present in my mind was the road/valley on the way to Mt Rainier. During every television "sweeps" period in the Seattle Area, there seems to be an in-depth story on the risk of a Lahar flowing from Mt. Rainier to the Seattle area. Wikipedia uses the canyon that we drove up to Rainier as an example:

A lahar is a type of mudflow composed of pyroclastic material and water that flows down from a volcano, typically along a river valley. The term 'lahar' originated in the Javanese language of Indonesia. In Hindi 'lahar' means 'wave'. Lahars have the consistency of concrete: fluid when moving, then solid when stopped. Lahars can be huge: the Osceola lahar produced 5,600 years ago by Mount Rainier in Washington produced a wall of mud 460 ft deep in the White River canyon and extends over an area of over 130 sq mi for a total volume of 0.55 cubic miles.

As we made our way to Sunrise, Washington I was surprised how "climbable" Mt. Rainier seemed to look. Of course 14,411 isn't exactly a day hike no matter how easy it looks. Also the mountain is famous for it's many crevasses which were visible from our location at 6400 feet. Even at this elevation the summit is still over a mile (7711 feet) in vertical elevation.

We drove down the mountain and managed to find yet another traffic jam. This time it was just past the Yakima turnoff toward Packwood, Washington. The construction seemed to go on for miles and miles and we felt sorry for a large group of motorcycle riders that had to drive over the gravel portions on their shiny Harleys.

As we approached Packwood I thought about another childhood curiosity...Bigfoot. Growing up I had studied Bigfoot as most 4th graders did and knew that we were in the heart of Sasquatch country. One story in particular has always peaked my interest:

1924: Fred Beck and four other miners claimed to have been attacked by several sasquatches in Ape Canyon in July, 1924. The creatures reportedly hurled large rocks at the miners’ cabin for several hours during the night. This case was publicized in newspaper reports printed in 1924. The Ape Canyon area has long been held to be a bigfoot refuge. Tribes in the area have believed that this is a home of the bigfoot. Ape Canyon was reportedly the site of a violent encounter in 1924 between a group of miners and a group of Sasquatch. Their account was publicized in several July 1924 issues of The Oregonian.[2] One of the miners, Fred Beck, claimed the miners shot and killed one of the creatures and that night a large group of Sasquatch attacked their cabin and tried to break-in. William Halliday, director of the Western Speleological Survey, claimed in his 1983 pamphlet Ape Cave and the Mount Saint Helens Apes' that the miner's assailants were actually local youths. Until the very last summer of Ape Canyon's existence in 1979, counselors from the YMCA's Camp Meehan on nearby Spirit Lake brought hikers to the canyon's edge and related a tradition that the 1924 incident was actually the result of young campers throwing light pumice stones into the canyon, not realizing there were miners at the bottom. Looking up the miners would have only seen dark moonlit figures throwing stones at their cabin. The narrow walls of the canyon would have served to distort the voices of the YMCA campers enough to frighten the men below. However, Halliday's explanation may fail to account for several factors:

• Beck claimed that the "apes" were seen clearly enough to note that they were not human;
• Beck claimed that one of the "apes" was shot and killed, but its unclear if Halliday claims that one of the stone-throwing teenagers was shot and killed in 1924.
• According to a series of 1924 articles in The Oregonian, multiple reporters and other eyewitnesses saw damage to the cabin, and enormous footprints at the scene of the "ape assault", and it's difficult to imagine how stone-throwing teenagers might have caused these details.

And An Interesting Missing Skier Story From Ape Canyon

In 1950 a skier named Jim Carter was with a group of other men from The Mountaineers club, but went off by himself to film the group as they went down the hill. He was never seen again, despite a massive 1 week search. One of the search team members said he had a chilling feeling of being watched the entire time. Carter's ski tracks seemed to indicate that he took off at a very high speed, making tremendous jumps that no experienced skier would make unless he was frightened beyond reason or being pursued. His ski tracks led to the edge of a cliff, but a search below never produced his body.


For the nearly 9 hours we spent in the car from Seattle to Portland, we saw some incredible countryside in some places so remote that we didn't pass a car for an hour and a half (this was behind Mt. Saint Helens.) The drive, though long, fulfilled a curiosity that I have long held since I was a boy. . .

We're off to Washington D.C. for a couple of weeks followed by a cross country trip back to Oregon.