Don Nelsen of Vancouver hiked 85 days, 663 miles and 150,000 vertical feet of elevation gain in 2010. More than 100 miles were off-trail bushwhacking.
Sound like a lot of hiking?
“It was my worst year in decades,” said Nelsen, 63, an industrial abrasives salesman for Mirka Abrasives, Inc., based in Finland. “I had two surgeries for crushed discs, one in September another in December.”
He was ailing some in 2009 too, yet managed 97 days, 772 miles and 213,000 vertical feet.
For Nelsen, an average pre-surgeries year was 1,000 miles and 250,000 vertical feet. Tack on an extra 200 miles and 100,000 vertical feet in a good year.
This year, Nelsen is off to a better start. Despite the wet weather, he had 377 miles as of mid-June.
Nelsen downplays the reality that he is among the elite of local hikers.
“There are people who hike twice as much,” he said. “I’m probably a bit older than most of them.”
But Nelsen tends to avoid the well-marked, wide tread of formal trails.
He scrambles all over the Columbia Gorge and Silver Star Mountain, searching out abandoned routes, overgrown roads and former railroads.
Nelsen has close to 1,000 GPS tracks in his archives. He has documented more than 100 sections of steel rail, in addition to old cable, spikes and other logging gear.
“We live in an area that is very rich in history,” he said. “The native Americans, the loggers, the railroaders, the old trails. It fascinates me how nature can take over a rail bed or a logging road or old trail and turn it back into a natural environment virtually indistinguishable from what it once was.”
Nelsen has documented about 1,000 artifacts of one sort or another.
“The cups and saucers they actually drank out of are still up there in the woods,” he said. “The cables their hands touched, they are still in the woods. The wheels from trains that crashed off trestles and down the mountain in accidents are still there in the creeks or laying in the woods to be found.”
Nelsen hikes all over the United States, grabbing quick trips while traveling for work. But he estimates two-thirds of his hiking is in the Gorge or on Silver Star.
“The Gorge is a world-class environment for hiking, for scenery,” he said. “I’ve been a lot of places and the Gorge is spectacular. It’s got year-around accessibility. The climate is great. Once you hit the forest, it’s rarely too warm.”
Nelsen hikes very light — generally a fanny pack with his GPS, some identification, a cellphone, fluids, and possibly a sandwich.
“I’ve found I can go all day without food,” he said. “Actually, I can go days without food as long as I keep by blood sugar OK. I’ve experimented. I’ve gone a week without eating anything, just making sure I have fluids and a little sugar — some sort of energy. Three hundred to 500 calories are all I need. You do lose weight quickly.”
This spring Nelsen retraced an old route from milepost three on Kueffler Road near Beacon Rock to the end of the paved road on Duncan Creek in western Skamania County.
“It’s available trail that some day may be part of a Washington side trans-Gorge route,” he said.
Nelsen has spent an extensive amount of effort around Larch Mountain in Oregon and in Greenleaf Basin, north of North Bonneville, documenting old rail routes.
“I haven’t been on all the Gorge trails,” he said. “There still are a few segments I haven’t been on for one reason or another.”
He mentioned Green Point Mountain on the Oregon side of the Gorge as a great, but little-visited area.
“It’s a beautiful, primitive area,” he said. “It probably was burned in the great fires about the turn of the century…This is so far in that it’s tough for people to get to.”
His plans call for documenting the route believed to be the former Oregon Skyline Trail from the forks of Herman Creek to near Chinidere Mountain in Oregon, checking out the area between Mitchell Point and Warren Lake in Oregon, and a potential trail on Viento Ridge, also on the Oregon side.
He has climbed more than 20 glaciated peaks, but still has Mount Rainier, Glacier Peak and Mount Baker on his to-do list.
Nelsen has hurt himself in woods, but never been forced to spend an unintended overnight.
“I’ve sprained my ankle miles from the trailhead,” he said. “I can move pretty fast on one foot if I have to.”
But it is possible to get in serious trouble hiking in the Gorge, he added.
“You can head down a ridge and end up in something too steep to continue down, or up against a cliff that you simply can’t go down without technical equipment and the knowledge to use it. The steepest terrain I’ll tackle first in an uphill direction.”
Nelsen said he still has plenty of hikes to complete.
“Another reason the Gorge is fascinating is because you simply will not run out of things to do,” he said. “There’s too much history and it’s too vast an area.”
