Sara has been telling me how awesome the High Divide hike in the Olympics are for a few years. I’ve missed out on a few tries, so when there was a high pressure system in the area I threw my sleeping bag into the truck along with too much chocolate and turned north. After a few hours on the road I slept overnight in the Toyota at the icy trail head. Got up at 4am in order to see the Olympics at sunrise. There was no moon and the stars were bright enough to see the ground by in clearings. The hike in was a little unnerving as it was icy in parts and I had my bear bell ringing to not scare any critters.

I had checked snow reports and web cams from a neighbouring (Hurricane) ridge and it looked like there would just be a few inches of snow and thus doable in trail runners. This ridge and trail had much more than a dusting, and turned into postholing a thousand feet below the high point of the hike. Someone had gone up the previous day so I followed his boot tracks until they stopped and turned around. I used my GPS to follow the hidden trail for another mile in an attempt to get a view of the Olympic Range itself. I made it to within a quarter mile but turned around myself as the snow and hill angles got iffy.

There were some animal tracks that crossed back and forth the trail, some looked like bunny tracks, while another set looked like cat tracks. Probably too small to be cougar but I put my sunglasses on the back of my head nonetheless. I hoofed it past the frozen lakes and finally down to the snow free trail. I rolled my ankle on a dumb rock and my hoofing turned into a limping gait back to the truck.

I took the ferry back to Seattle so I could steal a meal from Sara and snag a new midweight puffy from Feathered Friends. Sara obliged with some tasty soup and listend to me complain about rocks on trails and my footwear choice.

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<a href=”http://willprogramforfood.com/photos/olympics-high-divide>

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Morning hike to Mitchell Point to see the sunrise. Forgot a headlamp and real food and ended up using phone for a flashlight which worked quite well.

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Went to Denver for Burr’s funeral. Lost arm wrestling match to Wes.

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Traveled over to the Steens and the Alvord Desert to attempt some night shots. Super clear and cold out.

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First muddy cross race of the year. Still working on our wet weather systems like a shower for Ingrid after the race to get the mud off and some boots for the muck.

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Ingalls climb with Matt, Shawn, Skye, Keevin and myself. Awesome weather and good climbing conditions.

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Blind Date At The Diary #1.

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Ing and I took Sara and Mark down to the McKenzie River area to go climb and sleep in the trees. The forecast was kinda dodgy but we lucked out and got nice temps and no rain. Our sleeping platforms were around 180 feet up, just shy of the 220 feet height of the tree. We didn’t have any wind so there was no rocking to lull us to sleep. Mark and Sara were champs on the climb and even got to use the special orange bottles during the night. In the morning we hooked up the gri-gris and slid down the ropes to the bottom - much faster than climbing up that night. We wrapped it up with bigass breakfasts down the road. Next time we’ll plan on visiting the hot springs that is just over the next hill.

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Ingrid and I went to Whistler so she could get in some good riding. I went to crossfit one day to get beat up and then took the Peak 2 Peak gondola to get in a hike the next. To assuage our aches we went to the Scandinave spa in the woods to soak and relax.

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I took an overnight moto trip out to Eastern Oregon. I was going to do a few nights but thunderstorms were predicted for Friday so I shortened it to one night. The weather and roads were perfect. I tried out powershifting for the first time and it was fun to shift sans clutch - and having just watch the Indy MotoGP race I felt sporty.

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