for the Siskiyou Hiker
by Gabriel Howe, Executive Director
03 DECEMBER 2021 | BABYFOOT LAKE TRAILHEAD, OR. — The rear wheels of the F250 bounce along the wash-boarded road to Babyfoot Lake, and I have three hikers in the cab. Sitting up front with me, Peter is a former board member. Zach and Bob are in the back. I can feel the back wheels losing their grip to the wash-boarded road and I take my foot off the gas. I inch along and we break out of the fog bank into the sun. It felt like another world, and we’d have never known how clear it was if we hadn’t driven up above the haze. “Hey can you take a picture for me?” Zach asks me as we look down onto a thick white blanket engulfing the valley, small peaks poking out like tiny islands. We all take pictures and move along.
We met Aaron, Misti and Tom at the trailhead.
After some small talk and some housekeeping, we hike out on the trail. After just a couple of minutes, there’s a junction and we head left, marching uphill at a pretty good clip. After climbing about six hundred feet, we reach the rim of Babyfoot Lake. It’s gorgeous up there, and we take a survey of the Siskiyous. I point out the prominent peaks of the Kalmiopsis, then track to the high Siskiyous, punctuated by Preston, the highest of them all, then down the line: Young’s, the Lieutenants, Sanger, Red Buttes, Mt. Emily, Grayback, Mt. Elijah, Kerby Peak.
After a few minutes, we drop down a trail section made faint by the 2017 Chetco Bar Fire. We reached the Kalmiopsis Rim, which is an old road track once used to reach mining claims deep in the wilderness. We hiked it north, toward Onion Camp, eventually reaching a scrambling, cobbled, put-together trail that does its best to traverse the sharp cliffs that lead to the lake.
At times, we have to use all four limbs to clamber and crab-walk over the steepest chutes in the trail, and eventually we cross a small stream to a flat area, and as we meet the rise, the lake shore sneaks up on us. Retired Kalmiopsis Wilderness Ranger Rene Casteran recalls his first time reaching the lake similarly. This was back in the 70s, before the modern day trail near Hungry Hill was built, and you had to come in the way we did.
“I remember hiking along and like a kid in the backseat of a car, kept asking, well where is this lake?” He writes. “Until suddenly we were right there. It made an impressive introduction. ”
It made an impressive introduction for Bob, Tom and Misti, who hadn’t been to the lake before, as well. Zach had visited years ago. “It looks more green than I remember,” he mentioned. I thought he meant the water. “No, I mean the greenery, there’s trees.” There wasn’t trash along its shores, the temperature was perfect.
“December 3,” Bob said. “I can’t believe it’s December 3.” And at lunch, Peter mentioned it was his third time at Babyfoot.
Rays of late-fall sun bounced off the lake as we sat and ate lunch, speculating about the naming of Babyfoot, which is still a mystery to me. I’ve been to here a lot of times. I took a group up there on the November 2016 election night. Some of my kids’ first camping memories are from here. I’ve been up at the trailhead in 100 mile-an-hour wind and sideways sleet, through triple-digit heat.
This time may stand out some, it being in December with this nice weather with a great group who joined me for one of the first trips I’ve led since March 2020.
We wrapped things up and made the short hike back to the trailhead. There we took a group shot, got into the F250 and headed back down the mountain. The conversations were good, and on the way down I snapped a pic of these trash sites on our backyard National Forest.
“The stuff hasn’t been rained on,” I pointed out. “It’s not that old.” Hampers and totes filled with once worthwhile stuff lined a camper parked at a beautiful campsite not far off the bank of Josephine Creek.
Bob points out that one of the trailers, the one below, didn’t even look like it was in that bad of shape. Soon it will be. Rain, the mildew, the critters will find their way there after human scavengers strip anything worth a dime, securing this trailer’s destiny in the dump. Just down the road about a quarter mile, someone left another broken-down camper. It bothered me more than usual this time.
Make no mistake, on most of my trips up to Babyfoot, I do see abandon campers, appliances, trash, and other garbage large and small. It’s par for the course on any exploration of this National Forest. But it bothered me more on Friday, and I had to ask myself why.
I think partly, it irked me more because after going for so long, this is just the reality. This is how we as a community treat our public lands. I also think it’s age. After so many years of going up there, part of me has resolved: Eight Dollar Road has always been trashed and it will always be trashed. Accepting that feels like a loss of innocence.
But I think it bothered me mostly because I know it doesn’t have to be this way. I know that these are some of the world’s more easily-solved problems and that really what it comes down to is leadership. ###
