Warm and sunny weather is here and the wildflowers are starting to show up everywhere. Along the Columbia River Gorge, this happens almost as a sequence. Flowers start to show up on the eastern side and, as day pass, they move towards the west. One of the first places to get a wildflower display is Coyote Wall as it gets full sun on most days. Haven’t done Catherine Creek in quite a while, we decided to make a loop starting from Catherine Creek and traversing to Coyote Wall to then go back closing a loop. The problem in this area, aside from poison oak, is that there are numerous trails that are not clearly marked or on maps. Going with a plan doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll end up doing what you expected and this hike was a proof of that particular point. We started from the Catherine Creek trailhead heading south and going uphill. It didn’t take a lot of time to find beautiful flowers as we gained elevation to the upper trail. Once there, it was and easy stroll with ups and downs traversing open meadows and forested areas. Along that path the views are impressive as you get most of the eastern side of the Columbia Gorge, Mt Hood in the distance and the multiple trails ahead. The original plan, and this is where things change in this area, we were supposed to veer slightly left and follow a more direct route to Cote Wall. That didn’t happen. Instead, we ended up doing a bit longer path that gained some extra elevation to then traverse and come down to a higher view point in Coyote Wall. At that point we decided to stop for lunch enjoying the views. From there we had the option to return the same way or go downhill to do a loop. We knew the loops was longer but were not completely sure what was ahead of us. Still we opted for loop (maybe because we were heading downhill). The first part was pretty much a straight line near the Coyote Wall edge. At all times we had to keep an eye for mountain bikers that fly down the trail. About half way down the trail splits in three but any of those will take you to the same place. So we took a trail that, after several switchbacks brought us all the way down to a trail that travels parallel to hwy 14. We followed that path to the next trailhead that goes up to the labyrinth and took it. Most of the trail was easy to follow until it splits and the left side goes back towards Coyote Wall while the other, head east towards Catherine Creek. Here’s wee things started to get complicated. We had more vegetation along the trail and most of it was poison oak (unfortunately I didn’t realize until it was already too late). The trail gained far more elevation than what I had expected and it was not showing signs of turning around and heading back down. At some point we realized it was going to be too long and tiring to continue up and come back down on one of the alternate trail starting from Catherine Creek. IN the map we saw a trail that went almost straight back down to the Old Highway 8 so we decided to take that instead even though we would end up about half a mile from our cars. The going went fast and soon enough we were back on the road where we split in two groups. Some of us went back to the parking area to get the cars while the rest waited at this second trailhead. It was a very long and tiring day… oh, and did I mention Poison Oak?
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