Three Fingered Jack Loop Hike, OR

The first real backpack trip since before I had kids! Thanks to a push from a good friend and a supportive spouse who stayed behind with the kids I was able to spend 3 days and 2 nights exploring a beautiful part of the Jefferson Wilderness in the Deutsches area. I am proud to say that I was far more organized before children and found I had done a stellar job cleaning and packing away all my backpacking gear 5 years ago, so everything was in great shape.

I would not call the Three Fingered Jack Loop (20.5 miles) an easy hike at all. It has some more advanced degrees of difficultly but it is worth it for the absolute beauty and uniqueness of the area. We started with an easy 5 miles or so on the first day which took us through a rather beautiful young second growth ecosystem recovering from a fire that surged through the area in 2003.

We camped in a beautiful meadow. It was raining but that wasn't the best surprise of the first night. At some point during the night our tent and one backpack were attacked by a very vicious creature with sharp teeth and amazing sense of smell for granola bars, commonly known as a chipmunk.

 Hole chewed by a chipmunk (aka chomper)!

The second day was clear with a partial overcast. The weather forecast for the third day was rain again so we decided to put down as many miles as possible before the second storm rolled in. We went off trail following a stream through meadows of wildflowers.

 Paintbrush growing in meadow along stream

The stream began to shrink as we climbed in elevation until coming to a snowy mountain ridge that we climbed up and over to get back onto the trail. This climb up and over was by far the most challenging part of the hike.

Climb down from ridge back to trail

Once we were back on the trail it continued in elevation but had some spectacular views along the way as we hiked along.

Looking down on Wasco Lake

We continued to hike through many patches of snow before setting up camp, finishing out the day with approximately 11.5 miles hiking (we felt like bad asses). 

Crossing one of many sections snow cover trail

We decided that we deserved a fire. After collecting wood and much effort we finally got a fire started.

Do not ever start a fire like this...seriously!

It rained that night again. We had wet gear, frozen hands and were almost out of water, so we were very grateful that we only had 4 or so miles all downhill to our vehicle. We hiked out into a cloud so we did not get any views of 3 Fingered Jack but all the views of the prior day still had us feeling good.

Foggy view on hike out

Lessons learned: 1) Remove all food from tent and pack and secure it before sleeping! 2) Collect water at every opportunity 3) Bring fire starting supplies 4) Keep smiling!