Hike on with clean lungs and a full heart-I'll be here reading a magazine when you get back. I am in awe of your bravery and your wind-kissed lust for life. You can try to wear this city like a mask, but the frozen water warping the bottom of your jeans tells a different story.įor Jack London types, you human mountain goats with gaiters and Buck knives, there will always be Bagby in the snow. That trip to Bagby made me ask and answer questions of myself: why I'd moved to Portland, and whether I was supposed to be here.
We'd both visit the hot springs again, but never together. The snow and ice crept into my sneakers as we hiked back down the hill, the chill lasting through the car ride back down the mountain. Your private moments are never private, even when you're the only person there. Bagby belongs to no one and everyone, built by dead men from another century connected to you through an unbroken trekking chain going up and down the trail. You aren't special here-the gnarled layers of graffiti, epitaphs and epithets scrawled on every wood surface makes ready proof of that. In the summer, you'll see candy bar wrappers on the side of the trail, but in the winter it's all white, gleaming where the sun peeks through. The Collawash River roars alongside the trail. Bagby Hot Springs Perhaps the most beloved hot springs in Northwest Oregon is reached on a beautiful trail through old-growth forest 40 miles southeast of Estacada. One-point-four miles seems like forever in soaked denim and tennis shoes, with a creeping dread that your front is being exposed with every grimacing step. My wheezing, molding, late-'90s Saturn Ion did fine on the snow, but things got more arduous when we started hiking. Forest Service road in Mount Hood National Forest. To get to Bagby's complex of communal and private baths, you have to hike for 1.4 miles from the parking lot off a U.S. Indeed, I may have presented myself as stoked. I responded with a false familiarity with hiking and hot springs. Hollowed out cedar logs transport hot spring water into hollowed out cedar log tubs, Bagby Pegleg Falls on Hot Springs Fork of the Collawash River, Mt Hood. If you're not really that sort of person-if you're more at home navigating the wine list, if your parents took you to the theater instead of the woods-well, you fake it.Īnd so a long time ago, someone I used to know talked me into visiting the 103-year-old Bagby Hot Springs during February.
We're supposed to be ruddy-cheeked, always willing to scale the crest through the pines. Heated to 104 degrees at their hottest point, the pools are lined with mineral-rich clay and filled with a steady stream of ground-fed spring water, which trickles down a perfectly worn rock vein. (Emma Hughes) By Jordan Michelman Decemat 4:19 pm PSTĪs a Portlander, there are certain expectations.
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