North Fork of the Umatilla

This page last updated on 01/26/2019.

August 2002

Zach and I drove up toward Tollgate with the aim of finding an area to go for a hike. We decided to try the North Fork of the Umatilla as neither of us had never been there before and we were in the mood for a little adventure.

The meandering dirt/gravel road dead ended about 3-4 miles from the main road. As we stepped out of the car, I immediately got the creeps thinking something's not right here! We find the start of a trail, and a little ways down it we see a dead fawn. There seemed to be something unnatural about the way the poor thing met its death. I say to Zach there's something weird about this, he agrees, and I try to ignore the cold prickles on the back of my neck. We hike down the trail further and come to a meadow of sorts. There is a picnic table and a huge sculpture or wind mill - as Zach remembers it. Something about this place isn't right either. We walk to the edge of the hill and look out over the Umatilla National Forest and down into the canyon where the Umatilla River must run. The trail crisscrosses down into the canyon and we stand there on the edge of the hill talking about hiking down it, but decide we don't want to hike back up the hillside. We walk around for a bit, then agree it's time to start heading back to the car. The creeps intensify when I don't see the body of the fawn as we pass the spot where I know the poor thing was laying. Neither one of us knows what gave us the creeps. It was very quiet, no birds singing, no bugs flying. The only noise was the wind roaring through the trees and a vague feeling that something wasn't right about the area.