Thanks Jim… Glad to hear it has a name. I still can't understand why they would of thought a cinder block wall would hold, the wall looks as though it is going to give way anytime. There were already a few blocks on the bottom missing. Was that dam in place 7 or 8 years ago? or is it younger, it's sort of a shame in my book that they decided to build that wall, it's such a cool fall.

Jamie

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When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.
- Wendell Berry

Jamie, your post has inspired me....I think I'm going to head up there tomorrow. Which trail head did you start from? Did you follow a particular route of the trails shown on Don's map? Thanks!

Beautiful pictures! So beautiful in fact that I set out this morning to do the loop as it's shown on Don's map. Since it looked kinda shortish in terms of mileage, I figured I'd start from Duncan Creek Rd to throw in a couple three more miles. Well, I shouldn't have worried.

The powerline road was easy enough. I stopped to see the hidden falls with its bizarre knee wall and PVC pipe. At the top there was a lot of snow on the ground and the wind was blowing really hard, I'd say the windchill was down in the 20s. Glad I took the 61 deg weather forecast with a grain of salt :)

I couldn't find any hint of a trail leading from the powerline road to Cable ridge (is that how you call it?) so I started bushwhacking my way in. The snow was pretty rough, icy and giving way without warning, and there were tons of blowdown. I took two old logging roads, but neither led anywhere. The sun was up so it was easy to orient myself, and the terrain up there is not too hard to read, still it took me over an hour to rejoin the very faint trail, 1/2 mile or so before the start of the ridge. After that the trail got better and better and there was never a question which way to go.

I had never been up that way and the ridge is truly beautiful. Unfortunately it was very, very windy with 60 mph gusts, which doesn't go all that well with a 6" wide loose-dirt trail abutting a 200 ft drop. At the edge of the ridge the wind was so strong it felt unsafe to stand.

The ridge coming down was a bit tricky, reminded me of Rudolph Spur. Need to be careful where you put your feet especially when wearing hard-soled, low-traction boots.

I should know by now never to hike downhill first. By the time I reached High Valley it was nice and warm, and going back up to Archer Mountain then bushwhacking another hour in the snow to the power lines felt extremely unattractive. So after much internal debate I'm afraid to say I gave in. I figured I'd follow the pipeline clear-cut back to Duncan Creek Rd. That was a bad idea, considering the knee-high, wall-to-wall cover of blackberries. So I trudged back to the road and made my way down to SR14, now looking at 7 miles of asphalt in waterlogged boots to get back to my car all the way up Duncan Creek Rd. Fortunately two nice women I had briefly met up the trail earlier drove by and offered me a lift. I didn't reach my goal for the day, but I'm glad I discovered another beautiful Gorge hike, and the weather was great. Below is the route I followed, based on Don's map:

 

Fredo,

   You had quiet a hike yesterday. Done all that but not on the one trip. Starting off at Duncan Creek is ok, but shortly  after seeing the first falls you should have turned left on the logging road and you would have easily found your way over to Archer, view points. However the way the wind was blowing yesterday that too would have been a real adventure. Then you  could have dropped down to Hi Valley and taken the trail up to Indian Head and followed the ridge up to see Archer Falls from the cliffs.Then it was only a very short hike out to the power line road and hike back to your car. It is difficult to find trails from power line road especially in the snow. Easier to start from Hi Valley, and the six mile hike is a very good  workout.Not sure where you got hung up in the blackberries because there is a logging road and a trail going East to Duncan Creek road . Some of the road is on private property but when one wants to get back to their car at the end of a tough day, it would take a gun to stop me from trespassing.A few years ago I had to drop straight down off a bit of a ridge near the saddle on Archer and bushwhack back to my car at Duncan Creek. I found a lot of interesting stuff that day but have not been back there since. There is another trail, or route  heading East and North below Archer Mountain eventually tieing in with the power line road less than a mile from your car. Ah well, the joys of bush whacking.

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Jim Daly

Fredo, you're not alone. We were there yesterday and had a terrible time trying to find almost every trail we were looking for. We started from the other trailhead and hiked, after many wrong ways and backtracks, up to the pipelines and then across the steep talus slope and up the switchbacks to the dizzying crag that juts out to the north. Actually, one of our many poor decisions was, not exactly sure where we were supposed to turn north, hiking straight up the talus slope, getting to the top, and realizing there was no way up or around from there, then coming back down with loose scree sliding around under our feet and onto our hands and legs. We finally figured out where the trail was supposed to go and made it to the switchbacks. We then would up taking several more wrong turns as we tried to get off the windy ridge and look for the old logging road noted on Don's map. With no luck, we went back up to the ridge and hiked that trail for a ways, tried to find the next logging road cutoff and couldn't, but eventually bushwacked down to it and continued. We couldn't find the turn-off for Archer Falls and never did see it, though we dod stumble around the woods for a while trying to find that trail. Finally we came out to the power line road. It was late and we'd been at it for hours, but since the "old logging road" we'd just been on was pretty well defined, and since the way down was going to mostly follow what we figured would be similar roads, we decided to hike up the powerline road and finish our planned hike. Of course, after a while the ground was blanketed with snow, and as you found out, the old logging road we were looking for was nowhere to be seen. We followed some footprints that must have been yours but to no avail. At this point it was pretty dark in the woods, we couldnt find the first trail, and even if we had, we'd have to tangle with a few more intersections, having gotten almost every intersection wrong earlier in the day. So we decided not to risk a night in the woods and hiked back down the powerline road all the way out to Duncan Creek Road. We had the bright idea of hiking the power lines all the way to Bonneville Hot Springs and getting a soak and a cab back to our car, but the power line road seemed to end at Duncan Creek Road and we couldn't figure out how to continue. So we walked the pavement of Duncan Creek and Franz Roads down to SR 14, flagged down a car that passed us and then came back, and they gave us a lift back to our car. 1.2 miles along R 14 in the dark wasn't feeling too appealing, so we felt pretty lucky to find someone to help us out. In the end, the hike was beautiful but very frustrating. Many of the trails noted on Don's map just didn't look like I'd have expected them to - some green dots were well defined, some blue dots were impossible to see.... obviously there's been a ton of blowdown, and the snow up top was kind of the last straw in terms of us feeling like we'd be able to follow the trail. We hit the trail at about 11 in the morning and didn't get home to Portland until about 10:30 at night! Quite a day. Next time I might want to bring a GPS and mark all those trail intersections as waypoints.

Fredo and Spoonie_B,

I feel terrible that you had such a tough time up on Archer! I should have put a warning in the report that those trails are hard to spot when there's no snow and imposssible to find in the snow - you either have to know them well or have a GPS with the waypoints loaded ahead of time. The bushes alongside the old logging roads bend over in the snow and so even some of the old roads get hard to spot.

I'm impressed by your resiliance and stamina to do what you did - and your adventuresome spirit to even try it without someone who knows the place along with you! (something I do, too, with near disastrous results once in a while.)

I would be more than happy to provide the waypoints or even the whole track logs for any or all of the trails up there. You really need a track or a waypoint to find that overlook for Archer falls - just a hundred feet north or south and you end up on the wrong cliff face and lousy views.

I hope we get a chance to meet and hike together sometimes - I'll tell you a story of what happened to me and my companions up there and I'm sure you'll enjoy the tale of our misery! (It was totally my fault, too.)

Don

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"If I had known I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself" - anon

No worries, Don. Every day a different adventure! We had some good fun on the trail and we're determined to get back up there one of these days and do it right - I think well wait for the snow to melt, though! I suppose you might want to update your summitpost.org report with a note about the difficulty of finding the trails, just so more folks don't get into more trouble. We didn't figure they'd be quite so hard to find. Missing the trail across the bottom of the talus slope was all my fault, though - I didn't see the part of your summitpost report that mentions how to follow this (under Routes). Anyway, maybe we'll try to organize something together up there later in the spring and we can hear all about your tale of woe! Happy trails.

Spoonie

Spoonie_B:

No worries, Don. Every day a different adventure! We had some good fun on the trail and we're determined to get back up there one of these days and do it right - I think well wait for the snow to melt, though! I suppose you might want to update your summitpost.org report with a note about the difficulty of finding the trails, just so more folks don't get into more trouble. We didn't figure they'd be quite so hard to find. Missing the trail across the bottom of the talus slope was all my fault, though - I didn't see the part of your summitpost report that mentions how to follow this (under Routes). Anyway, maybe we'll try to organize something together up there later in the spring and we can hear all about your tale of woe! Happy trails. Spoonie

Hi Spoonie_B,

I have taken your comments to heart and made some changes to the Summitpost page. I have wandered in the woods a lot and taken a few folk's names in vain myself but as you say, "every day a different adventure!"

Happy trails to you too!

Don

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"If I had known I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself" - anon

Jim,

Thank you for the tips. I guess for some reason I wanted to do the loop counterclockwise, though I'm not really sure why but you are right, it would have been easier to do it clockwise. As for going East from High Valley to Duncan Creek Rd, I didn't see on the map the route you mentioned and that's how I ended up on the gas pipeline.

Spoonie_B,

I'm sorry you guys had such a hard time up there! My day was mostly a comedy of errors (I skipped the part where I started up the Archer trail from High Valley, forded the creek about 1/2 mile in, then decided against going through with it, turned around and back to High Valley, then had the brilliant idea to hike the pipeline back to Duncan Creek, spent a miserable 1/2 hour going down the first hill through the blackberries... then found myself at the exact same creek fording I had passed 45mn earlier!), but it sounds like you guys came closer to some real unpleasantness. I wouldn't have wanted to bushwhack those woods up top after sundown. I did OK earlier in the day, navigation-wise, because the sun was up and I followed it due South; I had to hit the ridge at some point and my troubles would be over. Kind of. Someone else had been up there very recently, I tried to follow their tracks in the snow but they seemed to be going in sometimes opposite directions so I gave up but they kept showing up all the way to the ridge. Someone wearing smallish boots and hiking poles.

Don,

Don't worry about it. Instead, thank you for sharing the map and the photos that got me going in the first place. I had a good day hiking and that's what counts. Yesterday I nearly caught myself wishing I had a GPS. Maybe one day I'll give in and get one, but I have a feeling it would give the whole experience a different slant and I'm not sure it would be better. I guess I feel like the possibility of getting lost is part of the fun... Maybe you guys have some wisdom to offer on that subject, sounds like many of you use a GPS. In fact I started a thread at http://portlandhikers.com/forums/31025/ShowThread.aspx#31025, your feedback is appreciated. But back to Archer, I'm determined to do it again one day soon, maybe we'll try and organize something.

WOW! Thank you very much for posting this trip report and the photos!

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Greg Lief
LiefPhotos.com
OregonWildflowers.org

I dug up a two year old pic I took of that wall:

The concrete piece was still in place at the bottom and water exited just one place. Note also that there is debris heaped on top of the wall as if in high water the dam overflowed. Taken May of '06.

I managed to climb the wall and jump down the other side for a closer look.  I remember it was very hard to get back out!

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"If I had known I was going to live this long I'd have taken better care of myself" - anon

    Thanks for posting Don, it's amazing the difference in the amount of water coming through there.

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When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.
- Wendell Berry

¡Saludos a todos desde Guadalajara!  Había caminando mucho por los calles, pero no hay ningúnas montañas aquí.

Hey keep me posted on whatever gets organized for Archer in the future.  I so thoroughly enjoyed the trip and would love to bring my S.O. as well. 

Susan

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"Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature." - Cicero

    Susan I guess you are in Guadalajara from your greeting… I forgot. Well if you are back by the 6th your Dad and I along with a few other poor souls are going to trek into an area north of Archer to see what kind of trouble we can get into… and hopefully not the 4 wheel kind…

See you then…

Jamie

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When going back makes sense, you are going ahead.
- Wendell Berry

Susan Nelsen:

¡Saludos a todos desde Guadalajara!  Había caminando mucho por los calles, pero no hay ningúnas montañas aquí.

Hey keep me posted on whatever gets organized for Archer in the future.  I so thoroughly enjoyed the trip and would love to bring my S.O. as well. 

Susan

 

Lo siento!  No comprendo....digame mas despacio!!

(sorry, i don't understand, please speak more slowly)

I think she said, "Greetings all of you from Guadalajara.  Although I've walked alot of the streets, but there are no mountains here".  Am I close? 

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Jeff - Site Admin

Someday you'll take me home to live forever....up on the mountain
S. Chapman