9 November Search Report- Working a “Seam” at the Lee Site

The weather is definitely turning towards its winter pattern as November progresses. I’ll be continuing to search as conditions allow but updates might be farther apart than usual. My goal for today was to grid search a “seam” between the searches completed around where the bottle was found, and the area searched by volunteers on Memorial Day weekend. It had been on my “to do” list for a while, but I had focused on the slope below the bottle location for most of the late summer and fall. The slope is fairly unstable ground, and I’d rather wait for dry weather before roping up again.

The conditions were just below 50 and damp, but not wet. This was far easier searching than the rappel assisted descent of the slope and working the hillside, so I was able to cover a decent amount of ground before dark. The seam consisted of two drainage lines, two ridges between them, and a depression where a tree had gone over.

The broadleaf and vine maples were shedding their golden leaves as I worked, reminding me of how the forest covers its secrets annually. I started along the first drainage line, about 20 feet from the bottle, and began clearing the duff and debris until dirt and bare rock emerged.

The relatively flat terrain made this a far less physically taxing day than the previous few searches have been. I was able to clear the two drainage lines and the ridge between them before my lunch break. After that I focused on the depression at the head of the lines, the outflow of which was blocked by a large boulder that trapped a lot of debris around it.

As I was working this area, the large amount of river teeth and the top soil composition led me to believe that this had been a slash pile from when this was logged. The top soil color was frequently the red-brown indicative of a decomposed Western Red Cedar, which the numerous cedar saplings confirmed. After searching the depression and the debris trap around the boulder, I moved on to the last ridge between drainage lines. I made fairly quick work of it on my hands and knees.

I finished up around 4pm, just as dusk was approaching in the Cascades. Driving back home, I counted 7 other vehicles on US20 between Soda Fork Rd and Sweet Home, reinforcing the isolation of this stretch of road.