Being the highest point in the Columbia River Gorge, the Mt Defiance hike is arguably the hardest in the region. A lot of people use this hike for training carrying jugs filled with water all the way to the top. As with other difficult destination, there are several approaches to the summit. From the Gorge, you can climb the Mt Defiance trail or the Starvation Creek trail. An option is to combine these two to do a loop that includes the Summit. Val and I had been training for backpacking and did our first backpack trip of the year but we still wanted a bit more training. The main reason was a trip to Zion that later on got postponed. So we started on a cool, cloudy morning going up the Starvation Creek trail. As expected, the trail just shorts up from the get go and you realize that when, not even half an hour after you start, you already have a nice view of the Gorge. Unfortunately for us that day the views were a bit limited due to weather. After the first couple of miles, we turned into the forest and left the views of Gorge Behind us but that only meant that we were about half way up. Just for a little while the trail circles a ridge and then it goes back to multiple switchbacks as you continue gaining elevation. As we did, the weather got colder and colder. We reached the ridgeline and an old forest road that quickly took us to Warren Lake, a small lake tucked in the mountain surrounded by a big rock pile. We noticed several campsites in the area which gave us the idea of doing a single night outing sometime with warm weather. From there, the trail circles the lake and climbs the rock pile on the north side eventually arriving to a view point several hundred feet above the lake. After that we got back into the forest and continued going up until we crossed a service road twice and found the summit. Reaching this point is certainly gratifying knowing you have worked really hard to get there, but there’s no reward for it. At the top of Mt Defiance, not only you don’t get any views, you get an antenna tower… For us it was a bit worse as the wind was blowing pieces of ice from the antenna that were landing right where we were standing. It was actually pretty dangerous. Shortly after we continued on a path that circles the summit and re-joins with the main trail going down. The hike down goes by quickly and painfully as it descends pretty steeply. On that route we found only a couple of viewpoints with limited angles of the eastern side of the Gorge. Once we got all the way down, we followed the connector trail back to the parking lot passing by Lancaster Falls. The waterfall was beautiful but there was no bridge over it so we had to jump from rock to rock. Normally this is not a problem for me (especially after doing it several times while backpacking with Val in Quartz Creek) but luck was not with me that day… or it was plain lack of balance. As I was crossing I just slid and felt smashing my behind on the rocks, bending a trekking pole and injuring my pride. I guess it happens. I did manage to take a nice picture of the waterfall though.
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