With a record-breaking heat wave just starting to simmer, I went to the mountains July 6 to kick some snow for maybe the last time until autumn.

The snow, as it so often does, fought back.

I ended up with a camera lens slathered with grainy slush and a slightly damp sock.

But no mosquito bites.

No new ones, anyway.

I consider it very nearly miraculous to venture in the alpine country in July and escape without a smattering of welts that demand to be scratched.

My route was the most popular segment of the Elkhorn Crest National Recreation Trail, starting at its northern trailhead just east of Anthony Lake.

It’s the only place with paved road access to the 24-mile-long trail.

This explains the 14 cars in the parking lot when I arrived around 9 a.m. — a volume of vehicles normally seen only at a few trailheads near the Eagle Cap Wilderness in the Wallowas.

Most other roads that lead to, or near, the Elkhorn Crest Trail would be more fairly described as paths — routes rich in gullies deep enough to swallow a tire and littered with boulders perfectly placed to puncture unprotected oil pans and other vital vehicular parts.

The road to Marble Creek Pass, for instance, the trail’s southern terminus, will turn back most drivers who aren’t accustomed to traversing torturous terrain.

Although I appreciate the summer sunshine that does away with snow blocking hiking trails, making for easier, and less moist, walking, I also feel a twinge of melancholy as the few lingering drifts diminish.

I find these vestiges of winter fascinating, so incongruous on a hot afternoon when the very idea of a blizzard feels farcical.

They remind me of fall leaves, symbols of a season that has passed on.

(Except snowdrifts, unlike leaves, don’t change color. Nor need to be raked.)

The Elkhorn Crest Trail climbs from the northern trailhead for 1,100 feet over about 3 miles to Angell Pass, at 8,200 feet the highest point on the northern part of the trail.

(The path climbs to about 8,400 feet farther south, near Rock Creek Butte.)

In some years, snow lies across short sections of the trail, as it ascends through fields of granitic boulders just below the pass, until late July.

But I was curious about how much snow had survived the slightly warmer than usual June and the building heat through the first several days of July.

What I found, for the first 2 miles, was dust in places but no snow.

Also wildflowers, which reliably replace snowdrifts.

One of my favorites — mountain heather — was in bloom, its bright pink blossoms conspicuous against the low-growing plant’s dark green foliage.

I’ve hiked this part of the trail probably a few dozen times but it never bores me, an unfortunate trait that travel routes can be afflicted with through familiarity.

This was the last section of the Elkhorn Crest Trail to be built.

The general route dates to the 1960s.

For the next decade and a half, the northern section started at a different, higher trailhead on the ridge above Anthony Lakes Mountain Resort. The trail, since renamed as Crawfish Basin, runs through the forest above that alpine meadow, one of the biggest in the Elkhorns, to Dutch Flat Saddle.

In 1984, four years after Congress designated the Elkhorn Crest Trail as a national recreation trail, workers built 3.3 miles of new trail, connecting Dutch Flat Saddle with the new trailhead near Anthony Lake.

As its name implies, the trail generally stays near the crest of the Elkhorns. Few long-distance trails, if any, in Oregon are so consistently an elevated vantage point.

But the section I hiked is the lone exception.

From the northern trailhead the path climbs through a forest of lodgepole and whitebark pine and subalpine fir, passing a few meadows and skirting the eastern shore of Black Lake.

This is also the most arduous climb on the Elkhorn Crest Trail, which elsewhere has exceedingly modest grades and for extended stretches is all but flat.

About halfway to Angell Pass, the trail emerges from the forest into the headwaters of Antone Creek, a miniature version of Crawfish Basin.

The trail, hacked from the granitic bedrock, climbs consistently, with several switchbacks to moderate the grade. In places you can see, in slabs of stone, circular impressions, not much deeper than a tea saucer and about the width of a baseball bat. These are remnants of the channels that trail-builders drilled, in which they packed the explosives that blasted a route through the obstinate stone.

(The northern Elkhorns were formed by a mass of granitic rock known as a batholith — molten rock that cooled and solidified underground, rather than erupting onto the surface as a volcano does. Most of the batholith formed about 141 to 147 million years ago, according to geologists, and it is largely made not of granite but of similar rocks, primarily granodiorite and tonalite, hence the description of “granitic.”)

I came across snow about where I expected — where the trail curves from a south-facing slope, fully exposed to the sun, to an easterly aspect that is more sheltered.

Snow covered the trail for perhaps 300 feet altogether, the drifts in places at least a few feet deep.

The slope isn’t terribly steep, fortunately, and previous hikers had left tracks that offered solid footing.

Even so I managed to slip once. I didn’t go down but my camera, slung by its strap around my neck, brushed against the snow.

There was also evidence of an avalanche — many subalpine firs, about the size of Christmas trees, that had been snapped off and were strewn over the snow.

The avalanche threat has long since passed but the less dangerous, but potentially quite annoying, specter of the mosquito has begun.

The bloodsuckers were out, to be sure.

I stopped once at a switchback to take a few photos, and within 10 seconds I could see the bugs flitting about, engaged in their dubious sorties.

But while I was hiking they kept their distance.

I suspect the usual brisk alpine breeze also helped to deter the insects.

It certainly refreshed my sweaty forehead as I climbed toward the pass.

Angell Pass is a narrow gap chiseled through the Elkhorns’ spine.

It’s a fine place, as passes tend to be, for a snack and a rest.

The view, which up to the pass is confined by rock walls, suddenly sprawls for dozens of miles, taking in distant peaks such as Strawberry Mountain, still conspicuous with its own stripes of persistent snow.

The lake far below, to the southwest, is unnamed.

I had other business later in the day so I turned back.

This is, though, part of a fine 7-mile loop that continues on the Elkhorn Crest Trail to Dutch Flat Saddle, then on the Crawfish Basin Trail and the road that descends to the parking lot at the ski area.

Another option, by trail rather than by road, passes the Hoffer Lakes, two tarns with a dramatic backdrop of white granitic cliffs, and then descends along Parker Creek to the parking lot at the southwest corner of Anthony Lake.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald.

 

If You Go

The northern trailhead for the Elkhorn Crest National Recreation Trail is just off the Anthony Lakes Highway, about a quarter-mile east of the entrance to Anthony Lakes Campground and the ski area. There is an outhouse at the trailhead. No parking fee is required.