Ok, so the last Columbia Gorge Forest Service road we looked at (NF-1500-150) was a tad underwhelming. Hopefully this next one is a bit more interesting. We're still poking around on the south side of Larch Mountain Road, this time at the crossroads where Larch Mountain Road meets (gated) Palmer Mill Road, around milepost 10. The seasonal snow gate goes up here in the winter. Today we're exploring Forest Road NF-20, which is sort of a continuation of Palmer Mill that continues south, curving around the side of Larch Mountain and continuing on toward points unknown deep within the forbidden Bull Run Watershed. So far this probably sounds a lot like Forest Road NF-1509, and it is, with a couple of differences.
Like NF-1509 and the upper portion of Palmer Mill (aka NF-1520), NF-20 was gated off sometime in the late 90s due to undesirable uses of the area. Then in 2010 the Forest Service went a step further and decommissioned NF-20, evidently with a great deal of enthusiasm and an unusually big budget. Which means they daylight every culvert under the road, grind up any asphalt that might be there and cart some of it away, then go through with an excavator and dig a sort of tank trap pit every so often, to make the road impassable by any sort of vehicle, and by people on foot if possible, then remove it from all maps, never speak of it again, and deny it ever existed, under penalty of I'm not sure what exactly. As you'll see in the photoset here, returning the forest to something resembling a pre-road natural state was not a goal, so the finished state is a long line of little hills and pits with a lot of clumps of old asphalt lying around. On the other hand, I suspect this treatment would work really well against the tanks of an invading army, should we ever need that.
I turned around and went back at a multiway intersection of Forest Service roads, which is close to the Bull Run boundary, and I seem to recall that all but the rightmost of the available roads continue into the Forbidden Zone, so those are out. The remaining road takes you to the big powerline corridor, and after a short distance strolling under the buzzing wires you can connect to NF-1509 and make a loop of it. The main problem with this loop is that getting back to your vehicle (assuming you brought a vehicle) will involve a stroll along Larch Mountain Road, which has a lot of fast drivers who aren't expecting to see pedestrians through here. A bike would help for this part, but it would be kind of useless now on the NF-20 part of the loop. I dunno, I have no useful advice here, but I'm sure you'll figure something out if you decide to try it.
The only other intersection or trail crossing or what-have-you that you'll encounter is closer to the start of the road. NF-20 crosses a small stream and intersects a trail that runs parallel to the stream, heading steeply uphill without switchbacks. There are no signs to explain this, but I'm fairly sure the trail is actually County Road 550, which was once the main road up Larch Mountain from 1891-ish until 1937 when the current road opened. The county never actually vacated it after the big rerouting happened, and the unused old road just sort of faded away into the forest over time. But it still legally exists on paper, as the county never officially abandoned it. (You can see the county's collection of these on this ArcGIS layer. It's a map of "local access roads", the county's term for roads it owns but feels it has no legal obligation to maintain.)
I think I've found one end of Road 550 over near the Donahue Creek Trail, or technically a bit of County Road 458 heading to the long-abandoned town of Brower, where the 550 branches off, in theory. On paper the old road heads due east and straight uphill, crossing Larch Mountain Road (though I can't find any surviving traces of that intersection) and vaguely tracking along the section line a mile north of the Stark St. survey baseline. After crossing NF-20, instead of climbing to the very top of Larch Mountain it turns south and curves around the side of the mountain instead, running roughly parallel with NF-20 and a bit uphill of it. Eventually it, too, enters the Bull Run zone, and probably once connected some godforsaken logging camps to the outside world, so long as it hadn't rained recently. Evidently when it came time to build the scenic viewpoint on top of the mountain, and a modern paved road with two normal-width lanes to get you there, the powers that be decided to just ditch the existing road and start over from scratch. I may try to check out the 550 at some point since I'm curious how much of it still exists, though my expectations are pretty low and I wouldn't say it's a top priority.
Anyway, regarding the NF-20 and what happened to it, 2010 doc from Zigzag Ranger District about that year's round of road decommissioning explains further, and makes it clear they knew Putin-proofing the road would be a bit disruptive for the slow trickle of visitors who used it, but went ahead and did it anyway:
page 70:
The Gordon Creek area is located on the western flanks of popular and scenic Larch Mountain. It is the watershed for the town of Corbett. Forest Road 15 takes recreationists to nearly the summit of Larch Mountain ending at Sherrard Point Picnic Area with views of five Cascade peaks. The road system south west of the road to the summit, Roads 20 and 1509 were blocked with gates more than ten years ago due to illegal target shooting, dumping and other inappropriate uses that could adversely affect the Corbett Watershed. The loop roads behind the gates are used by dispersed recreationists for mountain bike riding, horseback riding, hiking, hunting, and special forest product collection. Gating the area has greatly reduced the previous dumping and target shooting problems.
page 73:
Alternative 2 would decommission Forest Road 20 and several spur roads in the area effectively eliminating the “Road 1509-Road 20 loop” used by hikers and mountain bikers. It is possible hikers may still be able to access the loop, but mountain bikes may be displaced.
Which brings us to the main reason anyone still ventures down the former road. In the Northwest, "special forest products" typically means mushroom picking, which is big business around these parts. In the eastern US it can mean wild ginseng ( https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/Native_Plant_Materials/americanginseng/index.shtml ), while in Oregon state forests the list includes "Truffles, Mushrooms, Alder or Corral poles, Beargrass, Ferns, Huckleberry, Manzanita, Rock, Salal". If you're curious how this works in practice, here's a 2019 Zach Urness article at the Salem Statesman-Journal about obtaining and using a permit for collecting sword ferns.
In any case, a Mt. Hood National Forest map of legal mushroom-picking zones includes a corridor along either side of the road formerly known as NF-20, despite the road no longer existing from a legal standpoint. In practice, the gravel roller coaster ride they made is still the only useful access into the picking area. This is one of the few parts of the whole National Forest where this is allowed -- the only other one north of the Bull Run watershed is a bit of the Bonneville powerline corridor along Tanner Creek, outside of both the National Scenic Area and Bull Run. Inside the National Scenic Area it's currently not legal anywhere and evidently not a high priority for them. The linked page explains that, by law and in theory, they could allow mushroom hunting, but even now they're still a very new unit of the National Forest system (established in 1986, which is almost yesterday by federal bureaucracy standards) and they've had higher priorities and just haven't had time or money to perform the full environmental analysis they would have to do first.
Which is not to say there hasn't been any research done. Here are a couple of Forest Service docs: "Handbook to Strategy 1 Fungal Species in the Northwest Forest Plan" and
"Handbook to Additional Fungal Species of Special Concern in the Northwest Forest Plan", both part of a survey of fungi known to be present in Northern Spotted Owl habitat. It's not that owls eat mushrooms directly; as I understand it, the idea is that they indicate general forest health, and you never know if one might be a key part of the spotted owl food web, especially if the number and distribution of species is poorly known. Plus it's basic research fieldwork that generally doesn't get funded on its own.
Speaking of mushrooms, and the variability that comes with eating things that some rando found in the forest, a recent food poisoning case out of Bozeman, Montana was linked to either morel mushrooms (which are generally recognized as edible), or possibly false morels, which are quite bad for you. Evidently the toxic component in this event was a chemical called hydrazine (or maybe a precursor chemical that turns into hydrazine when eaten), which is often used as a spacecraft propellant because it's simple to ignite, meaning it spontaneously combusts on contact with all sorts of things. In fact NASA and the US Air Force are working on a 'green' alternative fuel to replace hydrazine because it's is so dangerous (and therefore expensive) to work with. 2013 Proton rocket launch accident, to give you some idea.
And since we're off topic already, it turns out that hydrazine is also the stuff of myth and legend in the drag racing community, spoken of in hushed tones, comment sections full of stern warnings from surviving oldtimers:
And I can't really go off on a tangent like this without recommending John Drury Clark's 1972 book Ignition!, concerning the early days of liquid fuel rocket research. Here, the author reminisces about chlorine trifluoride, another rather alarming substance:
“It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
