Puffer Butte

Name: Puffer Butte

Elevation change: 643 feet (All Trails) 533 feet (Run Keeper)

Distance: Depends. All Trails says 2.5 miles, Run Keeper says we went 2.77, Washington Trails Association says 4.4 miles **shrug**

Difficulty: not easy, I'd say medium-easy. Steep in places and I accidentally left my hiking poles in the car so some parts were treacherous for me without them. I also am significantly out of hiking shape so it was definitely a workout. 

My friend Lynne and I made camping reservations for Field Springs State Park back in the fall of 2019 before the world went to hell in a COVID handbasket.  But after the spring of triage online teaching we managed to hang onto the reservation and the reopened the camp in early June--just in time for us!  We stayed in the little cabin at the park. 

Field Springs State Park is out in the middle of nowhere. It's perfect. It's south of Clarkston/Lewiston area and north of Enterprise, Oregon. You can find out more here. Because we stayed in the cabin, we didn't really see much of the rest of the park so I can't report on RV or tent spaces.  

We decided to check out the main trail linked to the park, Puffer Butte. This trail goes up and at the top of the butte the view is spectacular. I just can't explain my love of the Blue Mountains but hopefully the pictures will do a bit of justice.  It was June so the wildflowers were exploding everywhere! It was awesome and I saw some I'd never seen before.

It's a well maintained trail. There are several branches off the trail and so that may explain the variances in distances. In fact, the map of the trails for the park is terrible, I'm glad we were able to even find the right one.  

The trail (at least the first half) was well marked and the blue markings on the trees led the way. There were a few parts that had some vegetation overgrowing, but nothing too invasive or that got in the way of the trail. 

There is a cabin up at the top that is evidently available for rental, but you'd have to haul everything up there. Maybe someday...

In the distance there is Hells Canyon and I *think* those are the Idaho Rockies in the very back. There's no way a photo can truly capture how beautiful it is up here. In my college geology class, my professor was super focused on coastal erosion so I don't know every one of the cool forces that made these mountains these shapes, but I love it. Obviously years of water erosion but it just looks so damn cool. Hard angles yet soft. Here's a good overview of the geology. 

And! Fun fact: the Blue Mountains really are blue. Trees emit isoprene as a defense mechanism and when the isoprene interacts with other molecules in the air it creates a blue haze. Additionally, blue light scatters easily so our eyes pick it up. So they aren't really blue (duh) but toss in some chemistry and physics and they are.  Bananas!  We learned this because this AMAZING book was in our cabin as reading material. 

Larkspur

These red flowers were my favorite. They were SO striking against the brown landscape. They are Scarlet Gilia or Skyrocket. Also in the bottom photo is the yellow balsamroot. We also saw honeysuckle, phlox, penstemon, lupine, asters, and so many more. It was a wildflower bonanza.

On the way up we drove up out of Walla Walla toward Pullman, cut over to Clarkston and then south. On the way home we took the much more scenic southern route to Enterprise.  I'd always wanted to do Highway 3, I'd seen pictures and it looked beautiful.