Blog-Worthy Event

Since I don't get around to blogging very often (it's been 5 months since my last post), right away you should recognize I am about to fill you in on something big. This time it is a mountain, the third highest in Oregon to specific, that's pretty big.

Let us start by stepping back a few months, I had overhead a couple co-workers talking about an annual "climb" of the South Sister (her name is Charity by the way). Since I have always enjoyed hiking and what-not I spoke up and asked if I could come on this years trip? I was told sure, just be ready, stragglers would be left behind.

Fast forward to last Monday, I see said co-worker in the hallway and ask what are the plans for the trip. I was planning on heading out Friday afternoon and meeting them at the trail head. Much to my disappointment, I was told just to get going when I was ready and we'd see each other on the mountain. He'd planned on hitting the trail around 7am. I quickly realized that unless I was climbing slow or he was going fast, the only time our path would cross would be as one ascended and the other descended. I told myself not to worry, there would be plenty of people on the trail to make friends with, so on-ward and up-ward.

The only time I had seen The Sisters, was from in-town in Bend and driving over McKenzie Pass. My mental image of the mountain, was not such a mountain, more a large hill. Even though the elevation is that of the third largest in Oregon at 10,358' (Hood 11,249' and Jefferson 10,497') I still didn't really comprehend it's size. That was until I drove over the top of Mount Bachelor to catch this first glimpse, from near where I would be starting my trek.


My first reaction was that I was not prepared to hike this mountain and that I was in store for a world of hurt. After the initial shock and awe wore off I proceeded to find a campsite at the nearby Devils Lake campground. After a bit of panic and a lot of searching, I found one of the last two remaining campsites that would not garner me a fine if a ranger strolled by. The site was worth the effort.

As with all trips, after unpacking I discovered I was missing something, hiking socks. So I ate my KFC in haste, washed it down with a cold beer, and got in my car for a 20mi drive back to Bend to buy some socks. Disaster adverted, I came back to camp, enjoyed a nice campfire, and hit the sack for an early start in the morning.

5:45 I awoke (15 mins later than I planned), cleared camp, ate a quick bite and hit the trail as fast as I could. Having not made the trail until a little before 7a I decided that I need to hike fast, I didn't want to hike the standard 5-6 hrs up and 3-4 hrs down. After the first mile there is little relief from the sun so I needed to get off the summit before it got real hot. So at a pace that set a pretty good sweat I started to climb. The first section is all forested and pretty steep, it is roughly 1 mile in length and a little over a 1200' of climbing. 45 minutes later I popped out of the forest and realized I had a long day ahead of me.


The first on-trail view of the mountain was a real gut checker, did I really have the stamina to get to the summit? Not only was it a long ways up, but it seemed a long ways away from where I was. After another half mile of hiking and not much elevation I was rewarded with a view of Mount Bachelor and Moraine Lake.


As I trucked on, I knew I was hiking at a good pace and making good time, ask anyone that has hiked with me, making good time and staying out in front of the "Boy Scouts" are very important to me. Today the boy scouts were the hoards of people on the trial behind me. About an hour and a half into the hike the trail pitched up again, this time for good.


As I really started to climb, I kept cognoscente of the ever ticking clock that is the sun and put the camera away. Somewhere around the 8000' elevation I took my next break for a quick bite to eat and a quick click of the Camera. Not having an altimeter or gps unit I relied on my previous study of the topo map and felt good about my progress. It seemed I was on track to hit the summit in less than 5 hours.


From here, the trail when from difficult to strenuous, not only was it steep but it was like hiking on quicksand. Every step you took would slide back down in an avalanche of shale and pumice sand. I could no longer see the summit, but I knew I was getting closer.

A thousand vertical feet later I knew I was just over 9000' and only 1300' from the summit. The sun was starting to shine, but it was only 10a, i was doing great. If I pushed hard I would make a four hour summit, which would put me on top and on my way down before the sun began to bake the slope.


After a false summit and a slog through some serious shale, I crossed the summit plateau (which is a crater that his been filled in with snow) and was rewarded with incredible views and the hardest earned, best tasting PBJ sandwich of my life.

Broken Top


Posing in front of the other two sisters.

The views were amazing, the descent was miserable. It took me 3 hours to cover the 6 mile, 5000' descent, only one hour less than it took to climb it.

Next year I have a few summits on the list: Mount Hood, Mount St Helens, and Mount Adams. I am hoping to make at least one if not two of those...

Mt Adams Adventure

It's been almost a year since the last time Ky and I went for a backpacking trip, so we decided it was about time to checkout the "Around the Mountain" trail around Mt Adams, it was spectacular. But like any worth while vacation, it was somewhat of an adventure.

Since we wouldn't be leaving work early to start our vacation I planned ahead and did all of the "packing" and route setting and the general what-nots. One of those typical things would be to figure out how to get to our destination. Since I knew where Mt Adams was and I knew where I wanted to car camp before the hike, I just grabbed the GPS coordinates and figured I would let the Garmin show us the best way there.

We grabbed a quick dinner, pizza and a strong beer (12% alc), at the Walking Man Brewery in Stevenson WA. With this little bit of beer in the system I blindly followed the GPS North, it wasn't until I saw my first sign for Cougar WA and an INCREDIBLE view of Mount St. Helens from way too close (sorry no photo) did I realize we were not taking a short-cut to Mt Adams.

"Fortunately" a fire closure stopped us before we got really off track, but the long and the short of the lesson was that we were going to be setting up our base camp in the dark. We decided our vacation was now Barker worthy and said oh well as we pulled off the side of the road and set up our camp.

The next morning was cold but not as cold as the following, and the weather was grim at first but it quickly improved. After 7 miles of hiking and one incredibly tired dog we struck camp at Horseshoe Meadow, ate some lunch and took a nap. More eating and napping along with fire and good times ensued before off to bed. As previously mentioned Sunday morning was terribly cold (high 30's) so we were very motivated to hit the trail back to the car, which was a good thing considering the angry storm that was quickly coming.

The hike was a blast and we saw some incredible views. So without anymore jiber-jaber the photos...

Setting camp by lantern

Early on the trail while we still had energy to smile. Mt Adams into the clouds over head.

A valley view of The Gorge and Mt Hood

Crossing one of many streams and waterfalls, all glacial run-off.

Ky showing Kona Mount St. Helens

One of the many different angles of Mt Adams

Our last resting spot before we got to camp, 1.5 miles to go

Horseshoe Meadow

Ky posing with Kona while he surveyed the surroundings

Around the Mountain and Back Again

14 Miles of Beautiful Hell!

Ky, Drew, Kona, and I made a great decision to get out of town over the weekend and into the deep back country of the Mt Hood Wilderness. Unfortunately we were not the only ones (by far) to make that decision, but as soon as we got more than 3 miles past the trail head the Freds were dropped and the real backpackers started to shine.

All went well except for an altercation Kona had with a couple of Huskies and their clueless owner.

During one of many river crossings, Ky and Drew demonstrate the proper technique in rock surfing/checking.

Elk Cove, our final destination for the evening and probably one of the most beautiful views of Mt Hood that I have ever seen. After a hard weekend the team headed down the mountain back to the car and off to Sandy to have lunch at Calamity Jane's, home of gigantic hamburgers and milkshakes.

Many more photos available on Flickr.

Weekend Update

A long time in the works, you never thought it would happen, yet here it is. A blog post that isn't about biking! Well unless you count the fact that I am talking about not talking about biking.

Over the weekend Ky and I packed up Boatie, grabbed some friends and headed out to what has to be one of the most beautiful lakes in the Northwest. Yes that is a huge claim, there are a lot of beautiful lakes up here, but Detroit Lake is pretty incredible. Located up high on the Santiam River, at the foot of Mt Jefferson, the water is crystal and the views are breath taking.

On a beautiful summer weekend with temps in the mid eighties and the shrinkage factor of the water was set to minimal, the lake had somewhat of a party atmosphere. Boats and jet skis were crusin, fish were jumping, children were screaming, music was blasting, oregon was alive.

While it was a great break from the daily grind, it was not without a hitch. Friday afternoon traffic was murder and speaking of murder there are several children fortunate to be alive this Munday morning. While vibing out on the dock Ky was invited by screaming children to play life guard, she declined and the children continued to scream and run around her until she cracked. At this point I was notified that if I didn't come pick her up with the boat in the next 5 minutes, there would be murders. I was quick to respond and return to the dock, thanks to idiot parents, the children were swimming in the docking area and I was forced to try and turn my boat around in shallow water with a bad cross wind.

Guess what, I ran my stern drive into the ground. Not too much damage, just a really ugly looking propeller. Boatie tells me that she is not exactly happy and to punish me, her gas gauge is now malfunctioning. With a malfunctioning gas gauge we ran out of gas in the middle of the lake the next morning. Fortunately a fellow boater towed us back to shore (giving us a very evil sounding laugh while doing so), everything turned out fine.

Aside from some heavy traffic due to construction in Wilsonville, nothing exciting on the way home. Kona was pleased to see us and his house/dog sitter seemed to be at ease. Although he was drinking a beer and he quickly got in his car and left once we returned, maybe we need to ask Kona some questions.

Good Times!

21, a Lucky Number?

Can you believe I have already written 21 blog entries (counting this one)? I doubt that my reader list is 21 people long, if half of that. So how is it going? Do you enjoy? Surf or skip the writings and just look at the pictures? Let me know, feed back, it's a wondrous thing.

Another lucky thing, Ky, Kona, and I are still alive. In our Thursday/Friday weekend we decided to head out to the Mount Hood Wilderness for an a quick backpacking trip to Ramona Falls, one of Oregon's best waterfalls.

After a beautiful hike along the Sandy River Gorge with sunny skies and warm temperatures we took our time eating lunch, setting camp, photographing the waterfall and deciding if we needed the rain fly. Later in the afternoon the sky changed shade and we decided that maybe a rain fly would be worthwhile, in case it started to rain in our sleep. No sooner than we finished staking the fly, did a wicked wind pick up and rain commence. Shortly thereafter Ky, Kona and I jumped into the tent and began to pray for a shift in wind as a lightning and thunderstorm erupted over our head. Being a good 90 minutes from the safety of our car we decided it was best to ride out the storm in our tent. Kona slept while Ky and I watched lightning strikes light up the thin walls of our tent and count the delay before the thunder crash. While the sound was near deafening, the delay never came inside of 5ish seconds, which urban forecasting says is 5ish miles.

I have been through many many thunderstorms, much larger ones, but nothing compares to riding one out in a tent under fir trees. Although, I must say a night in a single wide trailer on top of a bare hill in Alabama came in close second, literally rolling thunder. Here Ky waits patiently for our dinner to finish re-hydrating. The dinner was a scrumptious backpacker rendition of "Tamale Pie." Not until I started eating did I realize it was a vegetarian dish, some chicken would have been a nice touch, maybe some cheese and sour cream too. As you can see in the photo is more a soup than a pie, apparently when you pour soup on top of stale tortilla chips it makes it pie.

The next morning we awoke to cold and damp weather with the promise of rain, so the pre-hike oatmeal was abandoned in favor of a little bit of trail mix and a quick breakdown of camp. An otherwise uneventful hike brought us back to the car and down the road for a much deserved Sharis feast. After breakfast back to the house for rest and recouporation, I don't think I've seen Kona sleep so hard. As always more pictures can be found on flickr. Enjoy!