North Minam River Eagle Cap Wilderness, Oregon

All right, it is September and this is our annual fall campout. We are in the Eagle Caps. Everything goes as planned. We'll come out at the Tupan Trailhead in eight days. We were starting out from the Bowman Francis Trailhead and we were just trying to get in a few miles and set up camp for the night. With the long drive to the trailhead and our full packs, we figured we'd ease into the video. This is the 23rd year of the fall campout and this year we were going in for our longest trip yet, eight days. Our packs are pretty heavy on that first climb of the trip. All right, so we're just coming into Brownie Basin, starting to look for a camp. We've kind of taken that first camp, but we got a little intel as we came in from a group coming out who said there was a really good campsite at the end of the trail here in the meadow, so I am the scout. Let's see what it looks like. I walked down towards the end of the meadow, but I saw somebody camping back there. It was just as well. We had a nice campsite. We'd be moving on in the morning anyway. From our camp at Brownie Basin, we'd start climbing up to Wilson Pass right away. Once on the other side, we planned on stopping in Wilson Basin and if we could find a decent spot, we'd camp near John Henry Lake. Well, good morning. It is morning day two. Just heading back. Going to take the trail up and over Wilson Pass. Go down by, I think it's Wilson Lake or Henry Lake or forget which lake, but go check it out. Hopefully, it's worth staying at. Well, we have made it up here to Wilson Pass. I think we're going to take a little break and John Henry Lake should just be down on the other side, so could be a short day today if this lake works out, which is just fine with us. All right, just took a break here up on Wilson Pass. About to start heading down into, I think we're going to go to John Henry Lake. Now, we'll move on tomorrow. Well, kind of down out of the rocky stuff now and back into the forest. It is so beautiful. I should be coming up, I think, pretty quick on the junction to the lake. I don't know. There's an old mine dump over there. Oh, yeah. Looks like it shoots off down this way too. I don't know what they were looking for. There's mylonite and granite. There was a big quartz vein, a little bit of metamorphic rock, a little bit of iron oxidation. None of these guys wanted to sit in a rock hound. Oh, my God. They're tiny little frogs. That's how determined he is. Oh. Say it back, cheese. What are you doing, Tib? What are you doing, Tib? Here for your close up? Well, good morning. Morning day three here from John Henry Lake. Today, we are pushing on up to Green Lake, I think. We got to finish dropping down out of this basin, and then we'll climb up to the lake. Hoping nobody's there. We've seen people so far, but we're less than 10 miles from the From John Henry Lake, we would have to drop nearly 2,000 feet down to the North Minum River. From there, we would have about a 1,500 foot climb to get up to Green Lake. We planned on zeroing there the following day. Well, I think we're going to kind of bushwhack our way up to the trail instead of heading back the way we came just to come back this way. Little adventures start the day. As the views of the river started opening up, we could see that we still had a long way to drop. This climb up would be the toughest one we've done yet, and this one was coming at the end of the day when we already hiked five miles to get where we were. But then, we started getting some views. Well, good afternoon from Green Lake. We are taking a zero here today, and that means we're just playing games and relaxing. Tomorrow, we got to push out of here and probably have our highest mileage, toughest hike of the trip, but we'll worry about that tomorrow. Today's a zero, and we're here to enjoy Green Lake. Well, good morning. Morning day five here from Green Lake. We got our big hike today. Not sure how many miles. I'm guessing over 10. That's not the part I'm worried about. The part I'm worried about is how much we're going to climb, which I'm not even sure right now. I just know it's more than anything we've done so far, so big day ahead. After resting up for a day, we pushed out of Green Lake and backtracked down to the North Minum River. From there, it was all new trail. We'd hike through North Minum Meadows and push up towards Steamboat Lake. If we still had some miles in us, we might push past it, but we'd have to make that call when we got there. We've linked back up with the river trail. This is where we came down yesterday, and now it's all new trail, and we start climbing up here once we through the meadow. This meadow is going to be a nice walk. And up and out of this valley is tough. The ridges on either side of the valley were incredibly steep, but the trail crews have done a great job, and the trail is fairly gradual on the way up, but it was still up, up, and up, and up. We were pretty worn out by the time we hit Steamboat Lake, and we decided to stay there tonight. What a welcome sight. Well, we have made it here to Steamboat Lake. It's really pretty. We've got a nice campsite. The only bummer about being here is there's no fires. Honor that. The sun's already behind the mountain, so it's going to get cold here. There's no doubt about it. Well, good morning. Morning day six here from Steamboat Lake. It's a beautiful lake. It was a chilly one this morning, but now that the sun's on us, we're just kind of warming up, and we're going to get packed up, make our way over the pass, and head down into Long Lake today, which means we'll have to come right back out tomorrow with an even bigger climb. That's the plan for today. Day six. We're on the back half now. What a trip it's been. Yeah, this is really, really beautiful. This wasn't going to be one of our longer hikes, but as the route has proven, there's always a pass to go over, and today was no different. We'd hike to the end of Steamboat Lake and then to the pass above it. We'd hike over to Swamp Lake before turning and hiking down into Long Lake. Getting ready to head out of this beautiful place. So this is the start of the up. There's our campsite down there. Once again, the trail up the pass seemed perfect. There was still a lot of work to go up, but at least it was easy walking. The sign said the trail wasn't maintained for pack strings, and they weren't kidding. It was the roughest trail we'd seen so far, and every step we took down the trail, we knew that we were going to have to turn around and come back up the next day. Well, we made it to the bottom. That was a really rough trail coming down, and that is going to suck to go up, but it is what it is. We're down here. We can have fires, and we're gonna, we just got to find this lake now. What's a little ways? Miles? Well, good morning. Morning day seven here from Long Lake. So this is our last full day of the trip. Last major climb. Last major hike. Really the toughest part is just going to be getting back up to Swamp Lake, and then we got to climb a little more, but the trail should be back to the nice graded stuff. Getting to be the bittersweet time. Ready for some real food, but I'm not wanting this to end. Get our gear packed up and make this climb. We were all dreading it, but we would have to backtrack up the rough trail we came down yesterday to get back up to Swamp Lake. From there, we'd hike up onto the ridge. We'd walk the ridge around Swamp Lake, and then it was the long drop down. We'd start looking for a place to camp. This is where we turn to head down. Well, we made it back up to Swamp Lake, and now we are working on our last climb of the trip. Just at the start of it, we got about a thousand feet more to climb, and we will be done with the climbing. I thought it was interesting just how different the landscape was once we were up on the ridge. I wasn't 100 percent sure, but I thought that out in the distance I could see the Matterhorn. I thought I could even see Eagle Cap. Well, we have made it down here to Copper Creek, our last night's camp. We just dropped off the trail, found a nice spot here. A little tougher day than we anticipated. Going down always seems to take it out of you, but amazing views today. It's time to soak it in and enjoy one more night. Back to the world tomorrow. The fall campout is the most important trip for me all year. It's the only one that gets officially scheduled. On our last night of the trip, I took some time to soak it all in. The views, the adventure, the work, but it's really the time with these people that make the fall campout so special. Well, good morning. Morning day eight. It's officially the longest I've been out now, but it's going home day. We're almost packed up. We're all looking forward to burgers. It is time, but we should have an easy out today and wrap up this trip. What a trip it's been. It's been incredible. To wrap up the trip, we had a few miles to go and it was all downhill into the Tupan trailhead. And of course, there's beer in the car. All morning we watched the clouds starting to gather above us. The weather had been perfect for the whole trip and now it looked like we might just be getting out of there ahead of the storm. This is it. We have officially made it back to the trailhead. This epic trip is in the books. Now let's go get some burgers.