Hike to Alder Springs

 Where we went and why

We went to Alder Springs today. We picked it because it was close to home and we've been wanting to do this one for a while now. We found the same hike in two different books. One of them listed this with a 1600 foot elevation change and the other showed it with 400ish elevation change. I Googled it and someone else had gone all the way to the Deschutes River and logged it as 1,000 foot elevation change. We knew this would be a pretty big challenge for this, but we were up for it. We packed up the backpack with water and snacks and headed out.

Outside the house, we were accosted by massive smoke. There's a fire going on in Bend and apparently the smoke was travelling all the way to Sisters. I have breathing problems so we weren't sure if this hike was going to happen. We decided to see how it was like at the trailhead.

How to get there

From Sisters, head east on HWY 20. Just outside of town head left towards Redmond on HWY 126. Take a left onto Goodrich Road. Follow that down and it curves to the right. Then take a left on Road 6360. There's a sign that says the Alder Springs trailhead. This road SUCKS! We took our VW Jetta and I was scared the entire way. It's bumpy, rocky and narrow. It's five miles of insanity. We will never take the Jetta there again. We made it to the trailhead and out, but it was nerve wracking and who knows what kind of damage we did to the under carriage. The road was one lane and the center of t was up a little high so there wasn't a ton of clearance. After 4ish miles, you turn right. There's another sign. We're not sure what happens if you go straight.

The Hike

The hike starts off going downhill. This always makes me happy. It's so much easier for me to start out going downhill. There are a couple reasons. I hate hate hate going uphill. I get out of breath and I'm miserable. I need to get warmed up a bit before I can tolerate uphill. If I start out going downhill, I get warmed up and can handle uphill. Also, if you start up going uphill, it's much easier to quit because you know that if you turn around, it will be easier. If you start out going downhill, turning around sucks. You also have no choice, but to keep going once you turn back since you have to go up to get home or just stay there in the wilderness.

Okay, so the hike starts off downhill. You can hear the Whychus Creek, but you can't see it really well. The path is super narrow and it made using my poles difficult. There were a ton of wildflowers all over the place. It was really pretty. There were also some great views of the mountains. Eventually the trail flattened out a bit and got a little wider. The trail also got pretty sandy. We started going down again and then it went down pretty steeply. The rock formations were pretty awesome. My battery in my camera died after the first 30 minutes or so. I really need to get better about charging that sucker after each hike!

After the steep decent, we came to the oasis! There was an educational sign talking about the oasis. There was information about birds and trout. Then you come to the river. At this point, you can cross the river and continue to the Deschutes, or you can turn around. There are no bridges across the river soooooooooooooo you need different shoes to get across. We thought about continuing on the journey, but we decided to turn back. We'd like to go back to finish the hike, but it just wasn't in the cards this time. It was pretty warm and we left pretty late. We knew that if we didn't head back then, it was just going to be way too hot when we got back to the higher parts in the sun!

The trip out was hard. All of that down that we had done was now up! This is one reason that I don't like out and back hikes. It's always more fun to see new stuff. If you do an out and back, the back is the same stuff that you saw on the out. You see it from a different angle, but it's still the same stuff and you already know if you're going to hate parts of the way back. The initial ascent wasn't so bad. I actually felt pretty good about myself. Just when I thought I would need a break, the trail leveled out and I was fine. Then we hit the steep part and I needed several breaks.

We made it out by taking a lot of breaks. We thought we had plenty of water, but then realized we didn't have any left in the car so we tried to save the last bottle. 

Overall Thoughts

This was a challenging hike. I had told my husband the other day that I wanted to do a challenging hike and he found me one. We also learned that we're not really ready to go back to the top of Smith Rock, which is the challenging hike that I had come up with for next weekend. It was put off by two weeks though because of a Father's Day and Graduation celebration, but even 3 weeks probably isn't enough to get us ready for that. We have to get up there before the end of August though since we had told the boy child that we'd take him up there and haven't done that in the last two years. Oopsy. I'm 290 pounds, but I survived this trip. I might not be able to walk tomorrow, but I survived the trip. We used our hiking poles. I would not have attempted this without the poles. 

There are no bathrooms on this hike! 

The Video

If you like the pictures, feel free to check out the Alder Springs video on YouTube.

Backcountry Navigator Screen Shot

Since I've had so many problems with MapMyHike, I downloaded BackCountry Navigator. I got the free demo. I have 21 days to try it out. It's not all that I had hoped for and more. I love MapMyHike, but the save feature sucks and I question the accuracy at times but BackCountry Navigator doesn't do everything that I want it to do. I love the elevation and pace map with MapMyHike. BackCountry Navigator does have some issues as far as speed. There is no way that I ever moved 11.2 MPH. I'm not sure if it has issues with speed when I take my phone out of my pocket or what, but I know I didn't do 11.2 MPH. Our average shows as 1.1 MPH which is low, but I didn't pause it when we had breaks. 

BodyMedia Screen Shot

 I didn't bother trying to do a workout tab for the hike. It just sucks too much of the battery. Here is the website screen shot. The big flat spot in the middle is when we took a break at the river You can see that we had to stop a lot more on the way up than we did on the way down. BodyMedia says I burned 1184 calories in this section of the day. It's a little more than just the hike though since I like to have some flat on the screen at the front and back of the hike. MapMyHike has 3679. That's more than I will burn all bloody day. It makes no sense to me.

MapMyHike Screen Shot

MapMyHike has this as 3.19 miles, but BackCountry Navigator only has 2.9 miles. I'd really like to know which one is more accurate. I wish I could find an app that has everything I want in it. 

(I posted it before I put the pictures in so I went back to add them. Oopsy)