Recent Exposures

Just a quick post to say Go BEAVERS!!!!!  Today the Beavers won the World Series of College Baseball in Omaha for the 2nd straight year in a row!!!! 

Today was one of the most physically challenging days of my life.  After I dropped my mom off at the airport last night I drove two hours north across the Columbia River to the South Climb trailhead of Mt. Adams.  I organized as much as I could, set my alarm for 3am, reclined my seat back as far as it would go and fell asleep at around midnight for a 3 hour nap before climbing the third highest volcano in the lower 48 at 12,276ft.
    I woke up at 3am and after packing and eating some left overs I was able to hit the trail at 4am.  I had forgotten my Forest Pass but luckily didn’t get a ticket for it.  I filled out a climbing pass at the register and with my 20lbs of downhill ski gear strapped to my tiny Mountainsmith Day pack I headed up the mountain.  The guidebook says it takes 6-8 hours to climb the mountain and I was hoping to make the summit by noon because weather reports said the weather was going to turn nasty by mid-day and I wanted to be headed down at that point. 
    The south climb trail turned to all-snow at around 7,000 ft and by 8,000 ft I had put on my crampons permanently to the summit.  I started off in the dark but by 5am I was able to take off my headlamp and could see dawn shining on Mt. Hood to the
south and Mt. St. Helens to the West in a reddish
glow.  By the time I hit the lunch counter rock area the sun was fully out and I had put sun tan lotion on my scars and face (missed my left side apparently as I’m now so sunburned that my nose is blistered).  The route to the summit from here was a steep climb up Crescent Glacier.  Many others were already on the climb because they had stayed overnight at 9,500 ft to become acclimatized to the altitude.  I on the other hand was not used to
the altitude and it really slowed me down as I got above 10,000 ft.  I was running on nearly no sleep, carrying 20 pounds more than anyone around me and was not acclimatized at all so I was really struggling.  I ended up climbing with a nice guy named Rob for that section who also had skis but by the time we got to Pinnacle Peak, the false summit, he decided to bail and ski down some chutes from there as I kept going towards the true summit.  I was hoping that the sun would soften up the snow but it was about 20 degrees and very windy at the top leaving the snow pretty much boilerplate ice.  I had promised myself that I would ski from the summit though and that is exactly what I intended to do. 
    I got to the top at 11am just in time to see a couple getting married at the summit (seriously, with a priest and witness).  I was able to snap a few pictures of them and get some video at the top while I took a much needed rest.  To my great
dissapointment all of my video from the summit and pics of me at the top got erased from my camera but one picture of the couple at the top with Mt. Ranier behind them was preserved thankfully.   I’m not too upset though because I know that I’ll definitely be back to the summit again once I get a more lightweight ski mountaineering set up next winter.   
    At over 12,000 ft my head was beginning to throb from the altitude and I was feeling a little dizzy so I geared up, strapped on Chris Holm’s helmet cam, squeezed my cold feet into my frozen downhill boots and headed down the sheet of ice I had just climbed.  From the summit I had to cruise down and then slightly back up the
shoulder of Pinnacle peak to head back down Crescent Glacier.  This required some speed and speed required balance and strength on top of sharp glacial ice and my legs were already rubber.  I took a few moments to rest then pointed em’ down the face of the summit into the saddle and then up the shoulder of Pinnacle peak reaching a max speed of 40mph (according to my GPS) which took all the strength I had to maintain my balance.  From there I carefully made my way down the sheer ice face of Crescent Glacier all the way to the lunch counter rock area using all the strength I had in my legs to not fall down.  If I had fallen at the top it was a good quarter mile slide all the way down to jagged volcanic rocks at the lunch counter below.  Check the picture with the clouds below to get an idea of the height and distance I had to ski down. 
    When I got to the bottom the snow became pitted with too many "sun-cups" for me to ski it so I changed back into my plastic mountaineering boots for the descent.  I ended up hiking the rest of the way down with two older men Doug and Ken (twins) back to trailhead.  I got a few more pictures on the way down that unfortunately got erased somehow as well.  If I ever find them on my computer I’ll make sure to post them here but it doesn’t look good… I guess I’ll have to wait until next year.  By the time I got to the parking lot my knees were beginning to really hurt and my shoulders were so numb with pain from supporting all the weight of the ski gear on the way down that it was extremely painful to even lift the cell phone to my ear to call my mom and let her know I was ok.  It was a 13 mile trip with 7,000 feet of elevation gain and my first ski descent of a cascade volcano.  Can’t wait to go back!

So, after 3 years without any injuries I decided to give myself one mountain biking.  The first picture my buddy Mac Bar took of me in the hospital room when I got to the ER.  The next one is when I got home from the ER 6 hours later and the final one is
me a week and half later.  This all occurred because I decided I wanted to break a small tree in half with my face while mountain biking….  When my buddy Mac came upon me he said I was lying face down in a pool of blood unresponsive.  I came to a few minutes later but I don’t remember a thing until I was in the hospital room getting sewn up.  I asked the doctor how bad it was and he flipped a mirror so I could
see… pretty bad.  30+ stitches in my head to get my eyebrow back in place and in my lip to hold it together.  I also have some pretty deep wounds on my hands and knuckles that will have scars.  I was told that in the first cat scan they thought I had
bleeding in my brain but 5 hours later I looked ok so they let me go.  I lost about a liter of blood and was told I’d have horrible headaches for a week.  I actually felt no pain since I left the hospital and only took a couple asprin for a canchor sore that was in my mouth before the accident… Anyway, while my mom was here visiting me I healed up quick and am pretty much back to how I looked before with a slight scar down the front of my head.  Like I always say… if you have no scars or broken bones you aren’t living life hard enough!

Ok, this may be a long entry…
This week my mom came to visit me.  It was her first time visiting the Pacific Northwest so I thought I would give her the grand tour of what I’ve experienced so far but jammed into a pretty exhaustive but amazing week.  On Thursday at school I printed up all of the Oregon Scenic Byway maps and linked together several cool trips  for her stay here.  I’ll try to split this into sections…
    On Friday I picked her up at the airport after doing some hiking in the Columbia Gorge (see previous post).  Her plane came in at around 3pm so that gave us time to head towards Cape Meares and Cape Lookout from Portland so she could see some rocky northern Oregon Coast.  She was amazed when she saw the huge Octopus tree as well as the giant spruce in the park and she also enjoyed all the salmon berries that we came across on the trail, but not so much the huge banana slug I showed her!  It was a beautiful day and I think she was really amazed by the views.  We saw a bunch of cormorants on the rocks as usual and we even stopped for dinner at a wonderful restaurant in the town of Oceanside.  We also picked up 3 dozen oysters from my favorite skeevy RV park Oyster dealer on the way home.  It was getting late and I could see she was exhausted from the flight and time change so we booked-it through Salem to Corvallis instead of going through Lincoln City to get back to town quicker.  After meeting Kenzie and seeing the house a bit I gave up my room for her and hit the couch around 10pm for bed.

    On Saturday we took the rental car I still had from Enterprise for a 3 day trip down the Coast and through the Cascades.  First we drove to the coast after getting breakfast downtown at the Broken Yolk and walking the Saturday Farmers Market, which amazed my mother.  We stopped at all the great places I had been to throughout my first year here.  We drove to the top of Cape Perpetua, checked out
the lighthouse at Haceta and saw seals and sea lions at Cape Arago.  We even went for a short hike at the Oregon Dunes State Park near Umpqua where I coaxed her up one of the biggest sand dunes in the state.  It was a beautiful day and I could tell she really enjoyed seeing the various coastal environments from rainforests to desert dunes.  We made it all the way to Brookings where we used my GPS to find a seafood restaurant for dinner before crashing at a local motel there.

    On Sunday morning we woke up early and hit the road for the Redwoods at Crescent City which was only an hour away.  When we got to the town my mom wanted to get some water for the trip so we drove downtown to a grocery outlet and got some while also stopping at the cities information building.  A nice kid there told us to take a backroad through the forest instead of the main highway so we took his suggestion which turned out to be an amazing ~15 mile drive on a one way dirt road through some of the grandest trees I have ever seen!  My mom and I had both seen
the trees before on our 1989 trip through Northern California but they seemed equally amazing this time around as well.  I even got
my mom to crawl into one.  There was a downed one across the road which had been cut to allow cars through.. check the picture of me on it for a size reference…  After we made it through the forest road, almost running into a mule deer, we jumped on to route 199 (the same one with the landslide that forced Emily and I to turn around 2 months ago) and drove to Grants Pass where I we stopped for some food at a DQ so I could call my dad on
Fathers Day.  We then drove to Crater Lake for the afternoon and words can’t possibly describe how beautiful it is there.  The rim road had just opened two weeks ago and there was still plenty of snow around.  We drove around the rim taking pictures at various road-side turn outs and then stopped in the gift shop briefly before heading down towards Bend and the high desert of Eastern Oregon.  There wasn’t
very many places to eat but we luckily found a really cool restaurant in Crescent, OR.  The place must have had 400 stuffed animals in it and was known world wide (except to us…).  We stayed at a motel next door to it that had just been renovated and was adorned with
a new western motif of antlers, landscape paintings etc.  In a part of Oregon with very little population and places to eat or stay we definitely lucked out for the night.

    On Monday we woke up and drove through the Cascade Lakes around Mt. Bachelor with amazing views of the Sisters wilderness.  We went for a short hike to a place called Osprey Pt. in hopes of seeing some ospreys but there were none.  The drive
was pretty desolate and we only passed about 4 cars despite the fact that the route was an Oregon Scenic Byway.  After driving around the lakes we went to downtown Bend to browse the shops, walk around a park and get some lunch.  It was the first time I had really walked around downtown Bend and it reminded me a lot of ritzy
locations in Boston and Greenwich, CT.  Everything is overpriced and only the rich celebrities on vacation in the hills can afford to shop there… But we did make it to REI for an hour or so, allowing
me to check out equipment that I hope to buy soon for CMRU and my Continental Divide backpacking trip.  We left Bend and tried to drive over McKenzie pass to head back to Corvallis.  We stopped for ice cream in the town of Sisters and made it all the way to Windy Pt. on the pass before coming to a barracaded road preventing us to go further.  The top of the pass was essentially a giant field of lava with amazing views of Washington to the North
and the Sisters to the south.  We could even see as far north as Hood and as far south as Crater lake.  There was a very cool stone sheter made out of the lava rock that you could climb up to for fantastic views.  Inside the shelter were windows cut out pointing towards teh various cascade volcanoes.  When we got to the
barracade we saw a large black bear run across the road ahead.  We turned around and headed back down towards the Sisters to take Santiam Pass over the Cascades
instead and on the way down the mountain I had to swerve to avoid a mother skunk and it’s baby crossing the road.  When we got down from the pass we ate dinner at a wonderful restaurant across from Foster Lake near Sweat Home before heading back to Corvallis.  When we got back I found out that someone had stolen my oysters!!!!  Arrgghhh… if it was a homeless person I don’t feel to upset about it but if I ever found out it was some frat punk I’d be pissed as hell.  It was a great trip and I saved a lot of money with the rental car on the 950 mile trek. 

On Tuesday I decided to take my mom for a short hike up to the summit of Mary’s Peak where we were rewarded with the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen of the
Cascade range from California all the way up to Mt. Ranier in Washington!  The flowers were out in full bloom and we could even see the ocean clearly to the west.  I wish I had more room for photos to post all that we could see from the summit that day!  I then took her for a brief tour of campus, introducing her to Anne and Bob Lillie and also stopping at the Bookstore to pick up some maps for our next adventures. We ended the day by taking Jason out to dinner at McGrath’s Fish House which was fantastic (except for the weird "bite-size" oysters in the shooters I ordered). 

    We took Wednesday to relax a bit.  We walked around town, bought meat at Emmon’s meat market on Rte. 34 and stopped at a fresh vegetable stand for some fresh fruit.  At 5pm I was sworn in by Diana Simpson, our county Sheriff, for CMRU with my mom watching and from 7-10pm my mom was my guest to one our CMRU training meetings where we went into the truck bay and learned how to rig up our rescue system.  I think she was really impressed at the knowledge that we need to have to properly conduct a rescue mission.  Jason missed the meeting because he and a few others were on a classified search elsewhere that he couldn’t even tell me about. 

Thursday I again rented a car (this time a really great Nissan Altima instead of the Chevy Aveo shitty car we had before).  We drove to Silver Falls, stopping at a pancake house in Portland on the way for Breakfast, to hike the 10 falls trail.  My mom had been nervous all week about the hike but I kept assuring her it was a piece
of cake and as it turned out she did just fine on the 4 mile walk.  We walked past a total of 15 waterfalls in about 3 hours through a temperate rain forest that simply blew my mom’s mind.  She was amazed at the beauty of all of it.  I ended up running the 3 miles back on the rim trail of the canyon to the car to go pick her up at the North end of the waterfall trail.  We then drove another scenic byway past Brietenbush Hot Springs towards Mt. Hood.  On the way we passed by Detroit damn and got out to take some pictures and look around and the massive damn.  The Hot
Springs had some healing weekend going on so we weren’t able to actually see the springs.  It was a long drive through the woods to get to Rte. 26 and Mt. Hood but I thought it was definitely more scenic than taking the highway.  I took my mom to Government Camp, SkiBowl and to Timberline to show her where I climbed to the summit of Hood a month ago.  We then drove down to Hood River past all the
scoured rivers from the excessive rains of last fall.  We ate a quick dinner at Shari’s (yuck) and made it to Multnomah Falls just as the sun was setting for some beautiful pictures of the falls I had stood atop of just a week before.  We ended up getting a hotel room at a Portland Quality Inn for the night.

On Friday we slept in for a bit then drove the 2 hours up to Mt. St. Helens to check out the Johnston Ridge Observatory.  At the first visitor center of the park I got some great pictures of a couple Osprey nesting in a tree high above the visitor center building.  Driving the road through the 1980 blast zone was absolutely amazing.  You
could see the devastation everywhere but at the same time the forest was returning and life was everywhere.  About halfway to the observatory we almost ran into 3 huge female elk crossing the road ahead of us.  At the Johnston Ridge Observatory we watched a movie on the eruption which then opened up to a view out a large window of the volcano as it is today.  I had not been there yet and I found everything
to be absolutely amazing.  It was pretty cloudy but I was able to get some cool pictures of the mountain and the new lava dome growing it side of it.  There were also a pack of 5 bull elk in the valley below that we could see.  We walked along a self-guided walkway for a bit until my mom began to freeze up in the cold and wind so we returned to the car to head back to Portland.  After stopping at REI in portland to browse a bit and then at a great Prime Rib Restaurant near the airport I dropped my mom off for her 11pm flight back home.  I really do think she had a great trip and I wouldn’t be suprised at all if she decided to move out here in a few years.  At least now she has a better understanding of how wonderful this state is. 

Before picking my mom up at the airport I decided to go for a hike in the Columbia River Gorge up Wahkeena Falls.  The trail I took climbed steeply up to the top of
Wahkeena Falls and then up to where the spring that feeds the falls comes out of the ground.  It was amazing to see a decent sized creek simply come out of nowhere in the ground.  The trail crossed above the stream but there was simply no water up the hill, it simply just poured out of the ground… The trail then followed the shoulder of the mountains to the Larch Mountain trail which I took down to the top of the 600 foot Multnomah Falls.  Looking down from the top of the falls was certainly a new perspective and you could get a much better feel for the height of the 2nd largest waterfall in the U.S. from there.  I bet someone could easily base jump it…. hmmmm…… From there I simply followed the trail down to the bottom and took an
easily trail following the historic highway back to my car.  Unfortunately for my pride the Multnomah trail is a very popular trail and I got a lot of pity looks by everyone who passed by me and saw my face…  Other than that it was a great hike and I can’t wait to get back and explore the trails around there further!

Well, tonight was Eleanor’s going away party.  Everyone dressed up in ridiculous outfits
for the party.  The girls bought a keg which was quickly drank so they went out and picked up 8 racks of PBR to finish the night off.  I brought my ipod and played DJ as usual.  The party was a blast and I definitely drank more than I wanted to which led to a pretty intense mountain bike race around the block with my buddy Mac Barr… only a few people here know the TRUE results of that race… We are all going to miss Eleanor as she heads home for the summer to work at Isle Royal on Lake Michigan as a park ranger.  See you this fall Hodak!

Last night I went with the outing club to a secluded beach just south of Seal Rock on the Oregon Coast.  We had a big bonfire on the beach behind the trunk of an enormous tree that had been washed ashore.  The base of the tree was so big that people could sit on top of it and still be 5 feet above the flames of the bonfire underneath it.  I met a bunch of great people and we had a great time.  Bryan let us take is huge Van down to the coast and he met us there with several others at the Rogue Brewery on their road bikes.  We ended up getting pretty damn drunk and running around in the waves fascinated by the bioluminesence in the sand that would shine like stars when you stepped on it.  I look forward to getting to know all the outing club people more when they all get back from summer break next fall.  It was my first bonfire and overnight on an Oregon Beach and I can’t wait to go on another!

This past weekend I found out that oysters from the Pacific Northwest are 3x the size of the ones from the East Coast and are absolutely amazing but really difficult to get open.  I looked up on Google how to open the damn things and tried using a knife to no avail.. they are like cement!  I decided to then use a screwdriver and hammer instead and was able to get a few of them open for raw oyster shooters!  (an oyster shooter is a large oyster in a shot glass with cocktail sauce).  I decided that opening them raw was going to be too difficult so I decided to steam them instead which worked out fabulously!  I think I found the equivalent to lobster on the West Coast!

Today Jason, Kristen and I headed up the Oregon Coast with McKenzie to Cape Meares and Cape Lookout for some easy day hiking on the coast.  It took us nearly 2 hours of driving to get all the way to Tillamook where we headed West onto the scenic drive around the state parks past Oceanside and other cute little Oyster towns around Netards Bay. 

Cape Meares was really beautiful.  When we first got there we went over to the wooden viewing platform above the cliffs where we met some Audobahn people who
were looking at Black Cormorants through their telescopes.  The birds were pretty far away but you could see their nests due to all their white shit dripping down the rocks around them…  The three of us and dog then hiked down a little ways to the lighthouse where I climbed inside to check it out.  They are all pretty much to the same when you are in them I’m learning.  After the lighthouse we took a walk around the park and came across a giant sitka spruce tree called the Octopus tree which had a circumference of about 50 feet!  It basically looked like a
giant end
of a sprouting potato sticking out of the ground!  Check out the picture and read the description in it.   After hiking back out to the road we came upon a path down to the beach which we decided to check out.  After descending about 2 miles we came to a very eroded beach which McKenzie had
a blast running around in.  I also found a live small mother dungenese crab to check out that was protecting a huge sack of eggs with it’s hind legs.  On the way back up the trail we found some pretty huge red raspberries to eat.  I’m not sure what variety they were but they were pretty tarty… maybe not ready to eat just yet.

After climbing back up the trail we headed south down the coast towards Cape Lookout.  On the way I stopped at a skeevy looking R.V. park to buy some local Netards Bay Oysters.  24 for 9 bucks!… ohhhh yeah.  We through them in Kristen’s lunch bag where she conveniently had ice packs as well!  I had no idea how I’m going to get them open when I got home.

Cape Lookout was fantastic.  We basically followed a path that led out to the end of
the peninsula.  The trail followed the upper edge of massive cliffs that plunged into the ocean hundreds of feet below us.  The picture in this paragraph I found on the web to show you what we were hiking above… We were so high that we were stuck in a pretty neat fog the whole way out with strong winds.  When we got to the end after hiking through a bunch of mud, covering the dog, the fog
began to lift and we could see the beaches and shore to the south.  There was a cool looking coastal squirrel who was curious about us as well.  On the way back I spotted some more cormorants on the rocks and got some better pictures of them then I’m sure the Autobahn guys where getting at Cape Meares. 

It was a beautiful day on the coast but Jason’s and Kristen’s Knees had enough after the 10 miles so we decided to call it a day and head back to Corvallis through Lincoln City where we got some DQ per tradition of weekend hiking return trips.

Yesterday’s night of partying began for me at the annual Spring COAS barbeque where we roasted up two pigs in a pot-luck dinner.  The food was nearly completely gone when I showed up to the park on my bike and I was lucky to be able to snag a whole leg off one of the pigs before it was all gone!  As usual, Greg Little, the owner of
Squirrels was the bartender serving up the hefeweizen.  Unlike the fall bbq where Hodak, Mac and I got tore up finishing the keg ourselves this keg was kicked before I even had my 4th cup!   The bbq dissipated into a game of frisbee and kickball where Hodak was at her finest…

After the bbq I rode my bike home with everyone and stopped at my house to change and slam some beers (got temporarily hooked on youtube watching animals battle
each other..) before heading to Chris Somes for some pre-game drinking before the 7th Annual Battle of the Bands on the quad.  My lighted longboard was a hit as usual with everyone until Hodak tried to ride it and smashed herself good, spraining her ankle and managing, as we later found out, to score a decent puncture wound into it as well!  The picture is of me pushing her along the rest of the night as she rode on it on her butt.

The battle of the bands was huge and the even had a beer garden set up for it.  None of us were really digging the music (the sound person sucked) so we retreated back to Chris’ place for some more drinking before heading out to Jame’s party on VanBuren.  When we got to his place it was packed as usual and the bands he had, as well as the beer where the best of the night.  Cups were gone but I managed to find a large,
clean pickle jar to use for stout I found.  I ended up staying late into the night talking to a couple girls, but the only number I got was from a kid named Ben who loved to ski and thus instantly took my drunken attention away from the girls.  Ha.  I ended up leaving the party to see Hodak sitting on the curb nursing her ankle and a fire thrower in the street tossing around flaming sticks… typical for a party there.  Great night, but it took me until 11am to get up today so hiking will have to wait until tomorrow.