How to get there
Take Elm Street in Downtown Sisters and head south. After at least 14 miles, it turns to a dirt road. Keep going and after a few miles, you'll come to the Driftwood Campground on the right. Park in there. If you get to Three Creeks Lake, you went to far. Just turn around and take your first left. The dirt road gets a bit narrow. It's also pretty bumpy, but we did it with a VW Jetta pretty easily. If you drive around 40-45 on the washboard stuff, you don't bounce as much. The road climbs up pretty high. The lake was at 6500 feet!
The Hike
We found the hike in Hiking Oregon's Central Cascades. We picked it because it was under 200 feet in elevation, it was close to home and it was just 2.2 miles. The hike starts off going uphill right away from the parking lot. I hate going uphill first. This went uphill on this rocky, root covered step type thing. It didn't give me the warm fuzzies about the hike. We trudged on though. It didn't go up for long before it went down again. Then it went up a little bit and down again. It leveled out again. This trail gets some heavy use by horses and there was horse poop in numerous places. The trail was wide in some places, but narrow in others. It also had a couple river crossings. They were pretty simple. There were rocks or tree limbs to make it easier.
For some reason, we walked really slowly for the first mile. It took about 45 minutes to get to the lake. We did stop to take pictures periodically, but we were just walking slow. I'm not sure why though. There were a lot of people running on the trail and we pulled over to let them pass whenever we saw them so I'm sure that added a little bit to it.
A short bit into the hike, you come to a fork. The way the sign was stapled to the tree, it looked like we were to go left, but there wasn't a trail to the left. We went straight which turned out to be the correct way.
We finally made it to the lake! It was really pretty. We ran into a couple there and we started talking. The book didn't mention anything about going around the lake, but the people there said that it did go all the way around the lake. They also said that there were two ways to get back. You can go all the way around the lake and cross the river to get back onto the trail we went in on or you can take a different path to get to the other trailhead in the campground. They said that trail was shorter, but steeper. We decided to go all the way around the lake.
The path gets a bit narrow and difficult to follow at times, but it's hard to get lost when you're walking around a lake. The lake was pretty cool. The water was perfectly clear! The bottom was a bit mucky looking, but the water was just so clear! There were so many tadpoles in the lake! At one point while going around the lake, the trail continues around to the right, but according to the people we ran into, it deadends, so you switch back to the left. There were parts that were mucky on the other side of the lake.
It was pretty easy to follow the path on the other wise, but then we came to a fork and we weren't sure which way to go. The markings on this side were non-existent. We continued around to the left and then went through the marshy part. We ended up hooking back up with the trail that we had used to get there. It was about a mile around the lake.
We walked really quickly on the way out. I didn't take many pictures on the way out. We don't normally take many pictures on the way out. We go super slow getting there and then just race back to the car. There was a porta potty in the parking lost. There wasn't a lot of parking in the parking lot, but there were plenty of places to park along the road.
Overall Thoughts
We really enjoyed the hike once we got to the lake. If we hadn't gone around the lake, I probably would have been disappointed in the hike. Before the lake, the scenery was a bit blah. There were some interesting trees, but overall, the walk around the lake made the hike.
BodyMedia Screen Shot
Here is the BodyMedia Screen Shot for the hike. I actually got some vigorous activity on this hike! On the way back, we walked really fast even on the rough parts. I was pretty proud of myself for that. I usually go super slow. I felt like a mountain goat!
BackCountry Navigator Screen Shot
The app said that I had a 21 day free trial. I'm pretty sure it's been more than 21 days. It still works though. Since we stopped without pausing the apps, my average speeds are wonky. I need to get better at pausing things. Oh well. The 5.6 MPH for the max speed is definitely wrong. I still don't understand how this app works for the max speed. The altitude gain is a bit more than the book said, but the book didn't talk about going around the lake.
Runtastic Screen Shot
This is a new app that I'm trying. I was going to compare it to MapMyHike and Runkeeper, but I couldn't get Runkeeper to open when we got to the hike. Runtastic is already my favorite trail tracking app since it opens and it saved without needing the Internet. It has a half mile less than BackCountry Navigator though. I really need to just buy an actual GPS unit that tracks this stuff. Sometimes I think I should have gotten the Vivofit instead of my Polar Heart Rate Monitor since it does GPS tracking while tracking activity, but I just think that if my BodyMedia cost $100, a GPS unit costs at least $100 and a heart rate monitor is at least $60, how can a device that only costs about $160 do all three tasks effectively? A bit more about my love of Runtastic........it was able to pull the map up during the entire hike. BackCountry Navigator requires map downloads. It tracked my hike, but it didn't show me a map of where I was. MapMyHike rarely shows me the actual map of where I'm at. I can see the trail of where I've been, but I can't see the map. We actually used Runtastic today to make our decision about trying to find the other path back to the parking lot. It was nice actually being able to see the lakes on the screen.
There is no way the calorie burn on this is accurate. I'm also thinking I did something funky and shut the app off where that blue dot is between miles 2 and three.
MapMyHike Screen Shot
Here is my MapMyHike screen shot. Check out that insane calorie burn! It's not accurate, but whatever. I think my insane weight really messes with the math. Oh well.
Polar FT7 Heart Rate Monitor
Here are my stats from my Polar FT7 heart rate monitor. This has 5 minutes less than the Runtastic app because I couldn't figure out how to stop the Runtastic app. Hubby suggested that I try once I got into the car. I believe the calorie burn on this a lot more than on the Runtastic app. I'm not sure if my weight really messes up those things up. I just know that MapMyHike is the same way. It comes up with crazy crazy high numbers! I spent an hour and 40 minutes in the fat burning zone! Woot woot! Then we went to Takoda's and had a peanut butter chocolate pie. Oopsy. At least I burned the pie off.
No comments:
Post a Comment