Wandering in the Rain Shadow

Deschutes River State Recreation Area

Although I’ve lived my whole life on the wet side of the Cascades, I’ve always been fascinated by the dry side. The parched country east of the mountains seems so exotic, so other. Trees and forests, my familiar frames of reference, evanesce here; distances look greater, air feels lighter and the sky reaches closer to the ground. 

Eastern Oregon owes its arid beauty to the fact that it lies in the rain shadow of the Cascade Range. As water-laden clouds from the Pacific Ocean move up the west slope of the Cascades they cool and condense, allowing the mountains to wring out most of their moisture. Very little rainfall is left for the leeward side to the east. One of my favorite places to explore this harsh landscape is at Deschutes River State Recreation Area, east of The Dalles.

The riverside trail leads me south from the picnic area’s irrigated lawn past several pocket-sized, sandy beaches bordering the water. Soon the dirt path rises slightly as it crosses alternating patches of grassland and sagebrush steppe. The wind numbs my face as I stop to study the rolling  hills clad in autumn-dry grasses on either side of the valley.

Suddenly, a shadow sweeps across the hard-packed trail in front of me. Looking up, I see a Red-tailed Hawk riding the blustery current. Working the wind like an airborne sailor, it tacks hard left and glides low toward me. Cocoa-brown wings make one slow flap. As the hawk flies directly overhead, I notice that its pale underside is the color of a coffee-stained napkin. It tosses a raspy scream to the wind: a fitting welcome to the Deschutes Canyon.

Hiking on, I meet a steelhead fisherman getting ready to cast his line into the Deschutes. The slate-gray river rushes by us in swirling currents. Below the surface, steelhead—anadromous rainbow trout—swim by unseen, having recently returned from the sea. They will stay in the main stem of the river or its tributaries for several months and then spawn next spring. Afterwards, most will die but a few stalwarts will survive to migrate back to the ocean. In a year or two they will return to the river of their birth and spawn again. If my new acquaintance hooks a steelhead, he can keep it only if it’s a hatchery fish, identifiable by a clipped fin in front of the tail. Those with fins intact are wild fish and must be released.

After walking for a little more than a mile along the riverbank, I take an unsigned side trail east; it switchbacks once as it climbs above the river. Soon it crosses an old railroad bed and climbs still higher. Short stalks of desiccated grass, dried to a stark bone-white, rustle in the wind. Across the river, waterless creek beds crease the hills, their canyons in full shadow.

The trail makes a steep ascent and rounds a curving contour. Pausing to catch my breath, I jump at the sight of a three-foot gopher snake soaking up the weak warmth of autumn sunshine. Dark skin blotches on a yellowish background remind me of a western rattlesnake, but this snake’s tail tapers to a point instead of ending with a rattle. I watch as it slowly crawls into deeper grass and disappears. It probably has already located a winter den, called a hibernaculum, but has ventured out to bask. When the cold truly sets in it may share its den with several other snakes, who all enter a state of winter dormancy similar to hibernation.

My trail reaches its highest point and then dips to cross the tiny flow of Ferry Springs. Swinging north, it traces the rocky route of a nineteenth-century wagon road. Layered basalt cliffs loom on my right like a giant stack of hardened, dark pancakes. Bisected by the bleached chute of a dry waterfall, this lava wall was created by numerous basalt flows that poured from distant cracks in the ground and traveled down the Columbia Gorge sixteen million years ago. The molten rock oozed along at about fifteen miles per hour; layer after layer formed over millions of years.

The wind picks up; I pull my cap low, hunch my shoulders and finish the last stretch of trail back to the picnic area. My cheeks sting with the cold and my gloved fingers have lost all feeling, but I’ll never forget the desolate, raw beauty of this morning’s hike in the Deschutes River Canyon.