Hiking the Great Northwest: Snowy Shellburg Falls

While hitting my 200 mile mark was incredible, it was just one mile mark on my journey. For my next trip, I had originally planned on hiking out to Cape Lookout on the Oregon Coast, however, I caught news that the coast weather was pretty nasty, windy, and hiking up to the cape might be dangerous. Therefore, I switched gears to a more local hike at Shellburg Falls. And my friend Heather joined me again for this hike.

Shellburg Falls and I have quite the history actually. When I was 18 years old, I started working at YMCA Camp Silver Creek. And just so you know, I had never hiked in my life. I also had been very sedentary during my freshman year of college and was completely out of shape. My first week with kids, I was working with teenage Leaders in Training. During that week, we planned to hike to an overnight spot, stay the night, and return the next morning. I was already nervous at the sound of hiking anywhere, let alone when I found out that we were headed to Shellburg Falls. Our camp was a good 8 miles from Shellburg Falls. I might also add that the hike starts climbing significant elevation, surfacing out for a while, and then straight down for a while down into the ending place campsite where we would stay the night. As we set out, about 30 teenagers and 8 counselors, I hung back with the medic at the back of the line. The terrain was rocky and the elevation was something my muscles had never experienced. Every single step was a struggle. I was unstable in balance and could never quite catch my breath enough. After settling at our campsite, we then took the kids down to the falls, which was more hiking for me. I slept deeply on the forest floor that night. On the return hike, I tripped and fell several times and ended up significantly behind the rest of the group.

Although I struggled with every step, I had two amazing counselors who stuck by my side and encouraged me the whole way. A special thank you to Pancakes (Sam Lewis) and Strider (Joseph Carlisle) whom I will never be grateful enough for your encouragement and sticking with me on that hike. They countered the internal battle of shame I had running through my mind. Like many times in my life when it comes to health and fitness, shame gremlins always creep in with messages telling me that I'm not good enough. On this hike it was a spiral of those messages and the fact that I couldn't keep up was just proving that message. I was thoroughly ashamed that I had a hard time keeping up, that I was breathing hard, and that I couldn't keep my body stable enough not to fall repetitively. As I shared that experience of struggle with two incredible human beings, my shame was quieted. That hike became a point of reference for the rest of the summer and what would be the rest of my life thus far. I always refer back to that hike thinking, if I could do that hike, I can do anything; I can do this challenge in front of me right now.

So as I hiked the Shellburg Falls area, I was transported back to my 18 year old self and remembering my camp days, but also reminded of the immense strides in health I have made in the last 6 years.

Our hike started off at the Shellburg Falls Trailhead on Fern Ridge Road. The weather as we started was overcast, but fairly cold. As we got to Upper Shellburg Falls, it began snowing. The magic and beauty of Oregon wilderness in the snow is indescribable. I tried to capture it in photograph, but it just couldn't do it justice. As we hiked up and back around behind the falls area, it started hailing profusely. Finally, in the last leg of our hike back the sun came out and shone on us highlighting the beautiful country field that we came back through. Needless to say, we had an entirely Oregon experience, featuring 4 different weather patterns within 2 hours.

Date of hike: November 29th, 2014
Distance: 5 Miles (roundtrip)