alone at last

It took forever on a knee that protested painfully and threatened to buckle at several points, but I finally made it to the old Army Corps of Engineers campground at Exit 151.

Somewhere during the final few miles of the walk, the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge finally seemed to peter out, and I found myself walking that last stretch on perfectly flat road, with water to the left of me, flatlands to the right, and a big, beautiful sky above.

The portion of Exit 151 that curved toward the river also dipped and passed beneath the ubiquitous railroad track. The road quickly transitioned from paved to unpaved, and I walked into a wide-open area filled with sagebrush and scrub vegetation. Along the road were signs proclaiming the area a SAFETY ZONE: HUNTING PROHIBITED. No one was there, but another sign, reminding sturgeon anglers that keeping sturgeon was also prohibited, indicated that this was a place for fishin' folk. Later in the evening a few pickups drove tentatively toward my spot, then turned around.

I spotted a decent campsite (nothing is marked as such, but my map lists this as a public campground) and went to it. Aching from the day, I creakily set about the task of putting up the new Big Agnes tent. It took a while; the soil here is rocky, making it difficult to find a soft "fontanelle" into which to drive a tent spike (I hope I didn't just scare off any new mothers).

I had marvelled, early on, at how few critters were about, but once the sun had sunk below the horizon, the beasties made themselves known. Luckily, my REI-bought Jungle Juice and AfterBite were enough to handle the situation.

Aside from setting up the tent, my other major task was to see whether my filtration system would work. I gathered the various items and lined them up:

1. A gallon jug for collecting river water, later fitted with a rinsed antibacterial wipe that would be elastic-banded over the jug's mouth, folded to create a double layer, to serve as the first filter.

2. A 1-liter soda bottle fitted with cotton balls and another double-layer of antibacterial wipe material (rinsed to remove the alcohol flavor); the first major filter in the process, and one that would use two types of filtration (cotton plus fiber sheet).

3. A Brita pitcher that would, I hoped, strain out over 90% of the remaining impurities before passing on to the final stage:

4. A Katadyn pump filter that would deliver the coup de grâce (pronounced "grahss," not "graah," by the way) to whatever microorganisms might be left over. The pump houses a carbon filter cartridge similar to the Brita's; it also has a filter on the tube attachment that goes into the unfiltered water. In essence, the river water would be passing through five filters.

To make an already-long story short: I went to the water, fetched a little over a liter of it from the shallows (I would have had to wade into the water to be able to dunk and fill the jug completely), brought my catch back to the campsite, and put it through the filtration process.

Result: very drinkable water. Everything seems to have worked perfectly, although the Brita cartidge needed another rinse-through before it stopped producing black water. Brita cartidges aren't really designed for the bumping and shifting that come with being strapped to a backpack; this, I can tell, is an issue that merits a long-term solution.

The water must really be all right: I drank a half-liter about an hour ago and am in my tent-- no barfing, cramps, or projectile diarrhea, which is a very good thing. We'll see how I am in the morning.

I plan to spend another night here to give my poor, beleaguered knee a chance to rest, and then I schlep onward to Boardman, where I may have a choice between motels and a campground.


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