Oregon Butte Backpacking

Me and the two older boys had a great late season backpacking trip into the Blue Mountains last weekend. We saw an opportunity when we were all available so we took advantage and got away in the afternoon on Friday. We parked at Teepee Trailhead (along with several hunters vehicles) about 40 miles south of Dayton and set out. We got to camp in about an hour. The trail was a bit muddy and we ran across some patches of snow. We stopped about a quarter mile before our campsite at a spring to fill our water bottles. The trough the spring fed into was frozen over so we had to break some ice to get to the water before we pumped it through our filter. It was dark by the time we got there but we each had our headlights. We had some great foil dinners so we got a roaring fire going first then we pitched our tents. The clear night sky made for some awesome star gazing. We got our foil dinners on the coals and they cooked up nice. We enjoyed them around a nice campfire. Then we hit the hay. Our tents held up but the rustling wind made for a noisy sleep. It was a bit cold at night but we all stayed warm. We got up Saturday morning and the boys saw the amazing view from our campsite to the spacious valleys below. We were hungry so we cooked our bacon and eggs. Then we took a little walk to the fire lookout that has views of Oregon, Washington and even into Idaho on clear days. The lookout was boarded up for the winter. We went back to camp and just relaxed and napped and just messed around. We heated up our freeze-dried lunches then packed up and headed for home. Going down was significantly quicker than the trip up. We stopped in Dayton so see grandpa and grandma's house then it was back to the Tri-Cities. A wonderful trip!