Ascent

A few days after Mt. Jefferson I headed up to Mt. Adams to try and get in a quick lap up the mountain. I wasn't expecting miracles as I felt drained from the Jefferson trip. I thought I was OK until I found myself out of breath mowing the lawn, with a gas mower, not even a push mower for an excuse.

Last year I got to the summit too early for optimal glissading conditions, so this year I left at 5am to try and hit the freeze and slush time just right. I wore light mountaineering boots and aluminum crampons instead of trail runners, hoping I could get in better glissades with boots and a faster overall time.
On the summit it was still unfortunately cloudy and hazy, so only Mt. Rainier poked its head above the clouds to be seen.

Descent

I hiked back down a few hundred feet below Piker Peak before taking off the crampons and getting into glissade mode. The snow softened up enough by this time to provide fast (and not too scary) glissades down the mountain. I was back at the car at just under 7 hours.

Thoughts

My time up last year was 4:15, with a roundtrip time of just under 8 hours including an hour on summit. This year it was 3:45 up with a roundtrip of 6:50 including half hour on summit. I think with proper rest a time of just over 3 hours to summit is doable.

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Photos

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Approach

I went on a bike tour mountaineering trip with my new friends Terry and Kyle to Mt. Jefferson. I've been itching to climb something more technical and this fit the bill, along with the added adventure/coolness of biking there & back. I spent at least half a day going over food lists, packing and repacking gear and food. Perhaps it was training for Denali in two years. The rules stated we had to carry everything for the climb with us, no using outside help for schelping food or supplies. [This rule was slightly bent when we accepted cheese, water and maybe a spare 16" tire from Terry and Kyle's ladies].

We delayed our start by 12 hours to avoid the un-Oregon-like thunder and lightning, so instead of a 6pm shoveoff Thursday, we got a 4am stumbleoff on Friday. We stopped for a while on the Springwater to wait as the storms passed us to the North. We then booked it the ~90 miles to the trailhead. The route was quite pretty, going along the Clackamas (and over a few more passes than we liked), ending up at a 8 mile downhill to the turnoff for the trailhead.

After hiding our food and bikes out in the forest (away from gnomes and yeti), we shouldered our 50 pound packs and hustled up into the forest for base camp. The plan was to make it to the lakes at Jeff Park, but we fell a few miles short when it got dark and we had lost the trail under six feet of snow.

On Saturday we slept in and moseyed our way over to the lakes to make a proper camp. We had time to eat our tasty dehydrated meals, trading Trader Joes carmel corn for cheese. Kyle, having ridden on his tricksy 16" folding bike, decided to not climb as he was spent from the bike ride, which left Terry being stuck with me for the climb. Luckily he was a good sport and was game.

Climb

We got up at 2am to ensure we got to the bergshrunds before it was too warm and the bridges melted out. There were a few routefinding issues and we went through extra scree fields but we got to the main glacier right in time for the sky to lighten up so we could avoid the crevasses. It was perfect timing.

The snow was in great condition and we breezed up through both of the bergshrunds, lining up with what we thought were climbers tracks but were really yeti steps. Each step was at least twice as long in stride as ours, which logic dictates is the illusive Northwest Bigfoot. No joke, we took two steps for each of these footprints, clove print and all, perhaps they yeti was wearing cloven hoof shoes to throw people off.

After the glacier we hit the Knife Edge Ridge, which was a low fifth class rock climb. Terry let me lead this and we simul-climbed until we got to the next snowfields. It was exciting climbing in mountaineering boots at 10,000 feet with decent exposure. Luckily no one saw me use the hands and knees technique to get across the two foot wide sections.

We hustled over to the pinnacle to finish off the climb properly. This was more fifth class climbing, which the book says is 5.1 and really felt like 5.8, with suprisingly good rock and stances. Terry signed us into the register and we shared a german chocolate candy while gazing at the other mountains around us. We rapped down to our packs and heading back to the North. We ran into a friend of Terry's, who told us the Red Saddle was a safer bet for the descent. Though the fields below us to the East looked OK, we took him at his word and headed back South to the saddle to do some downclimbing.

We lucked out to have gotten the beta as the route we intended on rapping and downclimbing was horrendous. We probably would've ended up rapping off of pickets and leaving some gear and the rope behind. But we went the smart route and trudged across a few glaciers over to our descent chute back to camp. We got awesome clouds swooping by as we got closer to camp.

We got back to camp at 4pm, 14 hours after leaving the toasty warm tents and sleeping bags for the snow. Kyle was whooping as we came into camp, providing us with some whiskey to help offset dehydration. As the clouds were coming in and the temperature was dropping, we quickly ate some food, packed up and headed down to the bikes at the trailhead.

Ride Home

After a good nights sleep at the trail head we took our time drying out gear, repacking it, fixing bike issues and eating. As there are only so many alpine starts in a person, we left camp around 10 to head for home.

After the initial climb from Hades, the majority of our ride home was slightly downhill, allowing us to average almost 14 miles and hour. At the ranger station a local was intrigued by Kyle's funky bike and started chatting with im, in the process telling us of a road that went around our last major hill, saving us a thousand feet of climbing. We definetely owe him a beer!

Once we hit the Springwater Corridor, Terry bought a can of beer for us to share, which anesthetized some of our pains.

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Profile of bike and climb

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Bike & Hike in

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Climb

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Hike & Bike home

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I lucked out and snagged the Bolan Fire Tower in Southern Oregon for two nights. I took a few days to enjoy a drive down the coast before my reservation.

I missed out on both the Crazy Norwegian's fish & chips and the Redwoods, both of which shouldn't be missed when one is in Southern Oregon. I attempted to make up for it by purchasing cheezy-poofs and root beer in Cave Junction.
I made it up the rocky road to the fire tower in time to see the clouds foaming around the Cascade foothills. Mt. Shasta showed itself the first day, before going into hiding behind the clouds.

Both days were spent eating sandwiches, reading books concerning vampires taking over the world or space operas. Time well spent.

Panoramic Photos

Oregon Coast

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Fire Tower

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We put in french doors in the other room and then I put up a deck so we wouldn't fall to the ground. The pooches got a new dog ramp too.

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I went down to Bend to go camp on summit of South Sister like last year. I ended up turning around at 7500 feet as the snow had me concerned. The weather turned for a while also, but mainly the snow making small cracks around my postholes were unsettling on my own. I spent a few hours at the flats taking photos before going back down through the trees back to the car.

Panoramic Photos

Timelapse

South Sister Clouds from Sam Jackson.

Photos

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Ron and I had planned on going to a motorcycle rally in Baker City this weekend. The weather looked like bunk so I bailed and Ron went on his own Friday. The weather turned around so Sunday I saddled up and rode out there for a look. The roads were awesome as usual. Ron and I hung out in the thriving town of Baker City and joked about Harleys and chaps. On Monday we got up early and rolled back to Portland via John Day and Condon. The riding was even better coming back.

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Photos

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Transit of Venus in our backyard

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I left work early to hike up to Illumination Rock and get in some photos and camping. I lucked out with great weather and views. A few guides were already there with a group, practicing for a summit bid. A pair of skiers came through camp and played around on the saddle, lending themselves to more good photos. I opted out of night shots as it wasn't getting dark until late and I thought it wise to get sleep instead.
I woke up early in order to get back to town for work, only to see a near white out. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but I was unable to see down the mountain with visibility at around 20 feet. I took out my map and compass, realizing I should take a navigation course. Luckily the tracks from the previous day were still usable and I followed them down to the top of the Palmer where it was visible again.
It was great to get out for just a quick hike and camp. I had my fastest time to the top of the Palmer - 1:20, which was a nice result. The views from Illumination Rock are excellent and I think my next route will be up Castle Crags, it looks fairly mellow with cool features.

Panoramic Photos

Timelapse

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Ascent

Matt and I climbed Mt. Hood with the idea of camping on the summit. We left Portland at 3 and Timberline at shade before 5. It was fairly cold in the parking lot but ended up warming up to the mid forties by 7500', which did us no favors staying dry and cool department. We ran into a gal and guy who were out hiking and we gave them our two cents about this and that on our mountain. She mentioned she was on Denali last year, effectively shutting us up about Hood. "Hey so Mt. Hood is really tough, like we once, what's that? Denali? Oh, so uh, yeah I saw photos of that, yeah you're at 7000 feet, pretty bad ass, right?"
The temperature dropped down into the thirties by the time we hit the shadow of Crater Rock and started up to the Hogsback. I got to the Hogsback and promptly started shivering as my heat output dropped to nil. It took me a bit to remember the belay jacket in my bag, I blame the altitude. We threw on our crampons, helmets, lights and tried to book up to the summit ridge. Although it looks right there, it took us about an hour to get to the ridge.
We moved over to the summit proper and debated camping there or back a bit on the ridge. The snow was very hard and a fairly steep angle, so back to one of the flatter portions of the ridge we went. This was a good call as it took us around an hour to dig out platforms for the tents. I previously wondered about the legitimacy of alpinists saying they spent hours chopping out a platform. Now I know this is very much true. It took a good hour to beat on the snow and fiddle with the tent.
My original idea was to set up the camera and take super awesome long exposure photos of us setting up tent and the stars and whatnot. In the end I got 3 really blurry photos of the edge of the tents and one of my boot. I thought that was enough and went back to watching the snow slowly melt into luke warm water for dinner. I got one liter of close to boiling water, poured that into a nalgene bottle and tossed that into the bottom of my bag. This is the only way to sleep in the cold.
At around midnight it was time to attempt some sleep, the temperature had gone down into the high teens, my bag was rated to 25 so it was interesting. In the middle of the night I checked out the thermostat and it read around 14. I opened the tent to check out the stars and it was definitely colder outside, I'm guessing about 10. I popped some vitamin-I and went to sleep.

Descent

We got up around 5, just in time to ignore the sunrise and start fiddling with the tents and gear. I was hungry but didn't want to boil water. I trudged over to the summit to take uninspiring photos of the sunrise. Twenty minutes later we were high daggering back down the old chute watching the conga line of people go up the steps we kicked the previous night.
A few hours later we were down at the car eating the customary Cheez-its.

Thoughts

The plan for trying out the new tent, sleeping bag system and lighter pack worked out really well. The cold pushed the limits of my sleeping system, but it was doable and I'll know better what to bring the next time. I had a raging headache while trying to sleep, which I stubbornly didn't take ibuprofen for until it was really bad. I had some nausea as well, making me think I had some AMS, but after the ibuprofen kicked in, all that went away. It was probably a touch of AMS with some dehydration. Next time I will take the pills as soon as I'm at altitude.
It was super dope to sleep on the summit. I thought we would be the only ones anywhere near the top, but I saw another tent further down on the ridge, so much for that. The fitness for this climb was top notch, I only slowed down around 10,000 feet, but I think this was more from lack of eating real food than anything else. I took up a bunch of cliff blocks and no real food like sandwiches or carmel corn. So for next climb; more food and vitamin-I.

Photos

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Evening at home

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