Climb

My buddy Kari and I went up to Mt. Hood to try and get in a winter ascent. As this was ‘winter’, we purposefully left late at 4am so we could enjoy some sunshine during the climb.
A thick ream of climber registrations showed we would not be alone on the hill.


On the slog up we commiserated about how packing for a climb always takes 3 hours, regardless of how much goes into the pack. The moon lit the way for an hour or so until it dropped below the ocean and we were left with our headlamps.
Despite the top of the Palmer having been moved further north we made good progress up the glacier. We stopped to eat and put on crampons while listening to others plan for their respective climbs. While strapping on the crampons I realized they were adjusted for my ski boots and were a little loose and one of the heel straps was broken. Lame.


At about 9500’ our stoke started to run out. The diagnosis was a case of I-don’t-wannas combined with feeling out of shape. This was Kari’s second outing on her newly repaired knee so she was deciding to top out at Hogsback. I really wanted to top out ten feet below us. We decided to keep going to Hogsback and make another call up there.


Just as the sun poked over the rimed cliffs we got to the Hogsback. Kari called it for herself and offered to schlep the rope back down to the car. The summit was right there so I decided to keep going up, sans rope weight. The Pearly Gates looked pretty easy, even though another guy said it was icy and bailed back over to the Old Chute.


I climbed up nice steps to the left chute of the Gates to see how it was. The right chute looked more promising until a barrage of large ice chunks flew down said chute. I kept going up the left one and talked to a dude ahead of me who was in the steps. About then a large chunk of ice came down and crashed in front of me, breaking into a lot of pieces and bouncing off of my helmet. He said that was it for him and downclimbed to me and on down to the Hogsback. I went up a little further to see how hard it was. It looked super cool, but after seeing my left crampon move around a bit and more ice coming down, I decided it was time to head back down as well.


Rime ice continued to fall as I downclimbed to the Hogsback. Nothing terribly large was dropping so I finally felt comfortable. I saw one piece dropping and thought ‘That looks tiny, no biggie’ as it slammed into my right arm, causing me to scream like a child. That ended my thought of going up the Old Chute as I didn’t want any part of more falling ice.


I stood on the Hogsback listening to others discuss the conditions and whether it was good to bail or not. There were at least 40 people on the Old Chute face, which further sealed the deal. I adjusted my malcontent crampon and headed down. A few hours of trudging got me to the top of the Palmer, where I wished I magically had my skis, or at least my sled that I left at home. Another hour of hiking got me back to the car, where Kari was hanging out with a cider for us to split. I offered up some chocolate and we had a ghetto picnic in the parking lot before driving back home.

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Attempt

Mat and I went down to Bend with the mind to ski from Bachelor to South Sister and do some summitting. We were first thwarted by horrible breakfast at Burgerville, which were slightly redeemed by apple fritters from a quicki-mart. We skied all the way down to the Devil Lake trailhead with little fanfare. No fanfare really.

After eating some granola bars we tromped into the trees for the easy climb. A few postholes later we put the skis back on as the snow was super mush. Our lack of ski ability showed itself on the first uphill portion. We stood around debating the merits of continuing up or running back home. As there was steep snow to climb to even get to the plateau I tried walking on the snow again as we wouldn’t be able to ski the whole thing. I sunk to my waist within three feet.

A few minutes later we were back on the road eating granola bars and discussing the merits of stealing a snow mobile to go back up the hill. Pride won out and we slowly started skiing back to the car. My boots started to act up again, allowing us a few breaks so we could swear about cross country skiing. We determined the only acceptable ski trip is 2 miles (nothing further) if the destination is a yurt with a hot tub or whiskey.

Hours later we shuffled into the parking lot where the sky erupted with a brilliant sunset (announcing our arrival to the Swedish Bikini Ski Team.) A dude in the lot chatted our ears off about the merits of the various ski hills around the area. I think he couldn’t tell we had just sworn off skiing, cross country or otherwise. I ate a squished danish from my pack and judged him in silence.

Burgers and beer from the brewery in Bend assuaged our pain. Clear skies kept with us on the drive home, causing us to stop and stare at stars and mountains on one of the passes. Another pass yielded a large booty of lava rocks for an upcoming pig roast.

Panoramic Photos

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Trip

Rachel and I took an awesome two night trip to Central Oregon. First night was at the really cool Balch Hotel in Dufur. We took the nice windy roads down and over to the Painted Hills for a cheese and cracker lunch like civilized people. The last night was at the Condon Hotel, where we had our own bathroom and they gave us beer once we settled in. More awesome roads the next morning led us back home.

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Crossfit Comp

Rachel competed in a partner crossfit competition with a bunch of other teams from our gym. There were 5 wods, one of which was carrying 2 buckets of water around the track. Everyone did really well and had an awesome time.

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Beach

Rachel and I took the moto out to the beach Friday night, passing by the huge fire plume near Forest Grove (looked like a mushroom cloud). We got down to the beach just in time for a great sunset. Next morning we rode south on 101 to meet up with Dawn and her moto off 26. The weather and roads were perfect; we had plumes of sea fog through the trees and the sun to warm us up. After joining with Dawn we backtracked to home to meet up with Chris, Charlie, Mona and Boomer at McMenamins.

We all played on the beach, some even went swimming, but they’re a bit off. Had a great dinner and a wee bit too much Amarullo. Sunday was another awesome ride out on the Lewis & Clark road to Astoria and then home via the Elk Viewing areas near Vernonia. Super fun weekend.

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Ride

I took off towards Moro for the weekend on the moto (Gwen as Rachel has named her). Spent first night in a RV with some deer and then heading on the awesome roads to Mt. Adams. Jo Ellen was kind and let me crash at her place at Trout Lake, with awesome company, views and Amarullo from Africa. On Sunday I took the awesome dirt roads west out of town home via the Gorge.

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Climb

Went up Mt. Adams with Chris. We had a spectacular moonset hiking up from camp. As it was late in the season I thought no crampons would be kosher, and we all know an extra 8 ounces can slow us down. The snow turned out to be pretty much like ice on the way up, so progress was very slow. Especially when I threw my axe down the slopes because I took my leash off a few weeks ago for a friend to borrow. A nice lady a few hundred feet below caught it in her teeth and brought it up to me. She was going to the summit to get married that morning, which is super dope. I thanked her for the axe, and slipped up the hill to catch up with Chris.

On the top we hung out for a while; ok, I fell asleep on the summit for a long time. After waiting for the snow to soften we headed down on our tukases. The sliding was perfect - it’s always fun to scream down the hill and watch people slowly trundle up the hill. We took a few more glissades before hitting the dust and walking out to the truck. The burgers down at Trout Lake were tasty as usual.

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The Plan

Third year of Bike Tour Mountaineering with Terry. This years plan was the same as last year; bike to Mt. Rainier, climb it, then bike home. We event spent a night practicing crevasse rescue in anticipation of someone else falling into a bottomless pit.

Schedule was for three days to bike to Paradise, three days to rest and climb, then another three to bike home.

Bike to Rainier

After looking at the elevation gain to Paradise, some 18,000’, we decided to ditch the ride up to Crown Point and the old highway in the Gorge, instead taking the smooth and flat I-84 for a while. The freeway riding wasn’t too horrible, in fact there was more room for cars and bikes than anywhere else on the ride, though more nerve racking. We booked through the Gorge on the old highway to The Bridge of The Gods, riding on nice unmotorized roads for a good portion. We stopped in Stevenson for Terry to get food and chat up the local folk. Then the hills began.

It was nice (hot) riding all the way to Old Man’s Pass, our intended camp site. We were informed that there is no water there, so we said goodbye to the biting flies and floated down the 5 mile hill to the Swift Reservoir near Mt. St. Helens (47mph!). Had nice camping with running water and a large tub for us to clean off in. Terry manned up and swam around while I just stood in ankle deep water kindof splashing water on my arms to ‘clean’ up.

As we had done close to 90 miles on the first day, we pushed our second camp to Packwood so our third day would be shorter. There was another pass in the way but we hit it in the morning so it was nice and cool. We got passed by some folks doing supported touring, so their bikes just had water and not 25lbs of crappy food like us. I tried to lasso them to help with the hills but they were too fast. We had an awesome downhill ride along the ridges and had great views of Mt. St. Helens while coasting at 30. After another hill (that I complained about) we had another picnic before heading down the pass. It turned out to be a 20 mile hill with fairly broken pavement. This cemented the idea of us taking a flatter way out from Rainier, as we didn’t want to do a 5 hour bike ride up a stupid hill. Uphill.

We made it into Packwood a few hours after the ‘hill’ and Terry found us a nice camp site just outside of town by a watering hole. We portaged our bikes down a rocky slope and made camp right by a nice river and relaxed until the sun went down.

The next day was all hill all the time. Pushing our bikes back up the slope to the road was the hardest thing we did the entire trip. I pushed first and ended up gasping for air (it was around 1400’ of elevation, so there’s a scientific reason here..) with my hands on my knees. Terry looked concerned as this was his climbing partner looking winded after pushing a bike up a small hill (which would be a runup in Cyclocross). Then he helped push the next bike and ended up wheezing like me. We ignored the signs of being out of shape and started riding up to Paradise Park.

Terry My-Legs-Never-Tire Campbell booked up all of the hills to Paradise, while my slow bike took its time eeking its way up the hill. I tried listening to AC/DC to get inspired and ride faster, but all my iPod would play was Enya, so I was stuck going 0.2mph up the mountain.

We checked in with the Rangers, getting our tent spots in Camp Muir and Ingram Flats (just in case we wanted to do 2 nights up there). We were informed weather was coming in Saturday, so we made a tentitive plan to summit the next day instead of resting a day at Camp Muir. After packing our gear into backpacks and stowing our bikes and other gear behind a secret hidey hole, we descended on the dining room of the Paradise Inn. After being in the forest for 2 whole nights, it was awesome to get real food (huge quesadillas, humus & pita, bacon wrapped meatloaf and blackberry cobbler with ice cream) and 12 glasses of water.

Climb

We got up reasonibly early to destroy the all-you-can-eat-buffet at the hotel. Unfortunetly they didn’t have the super crispy bacon and waffles we were expecting to make sandwiches out of. Pro tip: don’t eat a lot of sausage and bacon right before hiking straight up hill.

We aimed to take our time going up to Camp Muir (5000’ above us), so we would have reasonably fresh legs for summit day. It ended up taking around 4 1/2 hours to get to Muir, how people climb this whole thing in 4 hours roundtrip is beyond me. We shooed away the Paparazzi and made camp above everyone else (one Lords over others by being above, right?). Terry melted and filtered water while I sat with a bag of snow on my knee. Turns out that age/lameness has crept up on me and my right knee had been hurting for a day or so and started to really flare up at camp. We discussed options and decided it’d be OK to have just made it to Muir and go down if the knee didn’t get better. But if it felt good at departure time, we’d go for the summit.

After hours and hours of me watching Terry do work we tried to get some sleep for a 11 o’clock departure time. As it was like 3pm and 80 degrees in the sun it was hard to fall asleep in the tent. As everyone else was leaving at 11:30 or later, we hatched a new plan to leave at 9pm, giving us a two hour headstart. This would be ideal giving our anticipated slow progress, read: the rocks Terry put in my pack would be slowing me down.

We rose at 8:30, and after an hour of screwing around with gear we started up the boot pack to the summit. It was still light out. Good steady progress was made all the way up past Ingram Flats, where the open crevasses started. We came across the first real one that has a ladder and ‘plywood’ to help cross. I stood at the lip of the crevasse (ok, 20 feet back) and realized I couldn’t walk across. Terry mentioned I could go on my hands and knees across. His secret plan was to film it while I slowly crawled across it, muttering “don’t look down” to myself repeatedly. So that was awesome.

After more crevasse crossings and uphill wanderings we made it to the summit rim around 5am, with the horizon just starting to brighten from the sun. We crossed the crater in a cool path among the penitentes (extreme sun cups) to the base of the summit hill. We discussed if this would count as the summit, as lots of people hit the summit rim and call it good. I took a quick rest as did Terry and then decided we should just put in the energy and go to the top. 2 minutes later (why had we balked?) we were on the true summit in a gale, looking at Seattle and screaming at each other how cool it was. Terry signed the summit register for us, hoping to get a TV deal for how badass our trip was. On our way back to the rim we saw the next party just getting settled at the rim. We walked over triumphant at being the first on summit and ready to sign autographs. Funny none of them had paper and pen out for us.

We moseyed down the hill, stepping out of the bootpack for the teams coming up. We took our time going down as were still fairly tired, though the sunrise made everything 100 times better. A few hours later we were back at Camp Muir feeling triumphant. After breaking down camp we started our hike down to the bikes and home. I did a little glissading on the shovel, which worked surprisingly well. The cold snow was really theraputic on our biking parts so it was very welcome.

Bike home

After checking out with the climbing rangers we scarfed a bunch of food and decided what to do for the night. Weather was still supposed to come in the next day, so we figured it’d be best to be off the mountain as no one likes riding down hill in the rain with wet brakes. We started unpacking and repacking everything near the parking lot.

We had originally planned on two full days of biking home, taking it easy and such, then I found out that my little pooch Rocky had just passed. Terry said he could do a century ride the next day so we could be home Saturday so I could see Rocks sooner. We booked down the hill towards Morton for the night. Once there we found out there were no open hotels or campsites anywhere near. We sat around at the Chevron trying to figure what to do. In the end we lucked out by Rachel being kind enough to drive two hours to schlep us to Randle for the night. The next morning we destroyed multiple breakfasts and Rachel dropped us off back at the Chevron so we could ride home. It was hard not to throw our trailers in the truck.

On the epic 128 mile ride home we just stopped at various Chevrons along the way (ostensibly our favorite haunt). After crossing the scary ass bridge in Kelso it was easy riding on Highway 30 all the way home. Minus the flats we both received just outside of St. Helens. We made up for it by scarfing french fries at Burgerville. We ended up the ride with sunset as we rode over the St. Johns bridge in perfect light.

Many thanks to Terry for proposing this dumb idea and for pulling through on the hard ride home.

Profile

Slightly inaccurate mileage, we were closer to 360 total.

Panoramic Photos

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