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Stand-ins

In my (so far) limited experience, Washingtonians tend to be outdoor types—and with good reason. With so much beauty at our fingertips, it’s no wonder that with the first hint of a sunny day, we’re out in force. Add to that the near-clockwork arrival of the dry season by Independence Day, and the fact that huge swaths of the mountains are inaccessible for nine months out of the year—well, you can see where I’m going with this. Since the Fourth of July was kind enough to fall on a Saturday this year, the cities emptied and thousands headed Outward. And this year, though we’re normally Off-Season, Off-the-Beaten-Path types, the Tailor and I were no exception. Like zombies we staggered outdoors to pack our tiny Subaru sedan—must … go … camping!

We knew it was probably folly, but we had a goal in mind: find a beautiful, mountainous campsite away from the teeming hordes. We knew Mount Rainier would be out of the question, as were the Olympic Peninsula, Mount St. Helens, or any other popular tourist destinations—but even though we had a head start by leaving on Thursday afternoon, our hope faded as we saw the crush of fellow vacationers on the freeway. “Camper … camper … RV … canoe … RV … kayaks … cyclists … camper,” the Tailor droned, counting cars, “this was a dumb idea.” Yet as our route took us on smaller and smaller roads, the number of fellow travelers dwindled almost to none. It began to seem like our instincts were right after all.

Our destination? The Morrison Creek Campground, located on the southern slope of Mount Adams, Rainier’s slightly-smaller, lesser-known brother.

While we were nervous of the possibility of any volcano attracting busloads of holiday tourists, our choice had a couple of points in our favor. For one thing, one can’t reserve a campsite in a national forest; all sites are taken on a first-come, first-served basis. For another, Morrison Creek is in the middle of freakin’ nowhere.

The only way to get there from the north is to use the system of Forest Service roads that wind through the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest. The paved sections are breathtakingly beautiful and super fun to drive (especially with a stick shift; I felt like I was filming a car commercial). The “unimproved” stretches, on the other hand, range from challenging to terrifying. Mindful of the consequences of puncturing an oil pan or snapping an axle on a holiday weekend in one of the most remote pockets of the state, I took my sweet time picking my way around the detritus of recent rock slides and dodging monstrous potholes.

When we pitched our tent just as the last light faded, however, we knew that it was absolutely worth the trip. Our campsite was in a lovely, secluded spot, adjacent to the Creek, just below the last traces of mountain snow, and surrounded by pockets of blooming beargrass. And to our immense surprise, we had Adams almost entirely to ourselves, for the whole weekend—funny, considering that the next campground, three miles up the road, was crawling with mountain climbers.

I was hoping our travels would afford us at least one view of Rainier in the distance—that way I’d have another sketch to add to my store of potential artist book imagery. FS Route 23, however, doesn’t afford such a vista, and any potential viewpoint reached by hiking trail was well out of range of our abilities. A two-mile hike from our tent did give us a spectacular, alpine-meadow view of Adams, though—and I realized that for my research purposes, I could use the peak as a sort of stunt double.

From certain angles, Adams is remarkably similar to Rainier (and people often mistake one for the another when viewed from a distance). All the more reason to use my time there for drawing. I was surprised to see, however, how drastically Adams’ appearance changed, depending on the vantage point. This is the view from Bird Lake, on Yakama Nation land, just a couple of miles (as the crow flies) east of Morrison Creek:

And though there was nowhere to sit to capture it in my sketchbook, a gap in the trees gave me the chance to glimpse another stand-in to the south: Mount Hood.

What an incredible weekend. As you can probably guess, Adams is on the short list for Best Camping Spots Ever, and I’m sure we’ll end up returning again and again. Next time, though, it might behoove us to reconsider our mode of transportation; it’s doable in a compact car (just barely), but I think I’d rather rent a pickup truck—or a mountain goat.