Dirtbags

This weekend i took a trip into the high desert of central Oregon. It was basically a climbing trip for most and a kegger birthday party for others. Annually a handful of climbing buddies get together at Smith Rock and celebrate the passing of age. My friend Zack invited me along for the trip. Although Smith is a well known climbing mecca, i stayed off the ropes and opted for the slightly more sure footed trails of the park. Being back around that scene kind of made me want to don a harness and reconquer the crags (not that i ever actually conqured any crags). Maybe next time. Since i didn't do much more than party and hike. . .i don't have a lot to say. . .or remember. I did take some pictures while on the Misery Ridge hike through the park. So this is what you get. . .pictures (and captions).

Home sweet home for the weekend. Zack slept under the tarp and i took my usual post in the back of the truck.

Entering the park.

This is the actual Smith Rock.

The crew sets up for a day of climbing. Smith is like Disneyland for climbers. The well manicured belay stations are just one example of the park's hospitality.

The birthday boy (Jamie) leads the first climb of the day.

His girlfriend Jody is next to the top.

Zack was the last to go.

I left the group to their climbing and hiked around the park via the Misery Ridge trail. No actual misery took place.

Monkey Face is one of the most popular features in the park. It's also one of the more difficult areas to climb.

I took this just before i started off course. This is looking back toward Monkey Face and the park's namesake.

After my 3/4 mile deviation i had to trek back up a wall of switchbacks. On the way back up there were some good views up the back of Monkey Face.

Once i hit the ridge i was rewarded with some views onto Monkey Face and back into the valley.

This picture was taken from a spot known as the "spring board," a little flake of rock near the top of Monkey Face.

A view from the south side of the ridge just before heading back down to the Crooked River.

When i met back up with the group they were just about to change locations. The cool weather and looming storms kept climbers chasing the sun all day. It also afforded me with some good black and white images.

Jamie and Luis lead two separate climbs. Jamie on a 5.8 called "12 Buckets" and Luis on a 10.b name unknown.

My parting shot of the day was a frustrated climber taking a break hoping the light would last long enough to finish this problem.

I was happy to get away from town for the weekend. While it threatened to rain and actually did at times. . .the weekend was great. Good company, good beer and beautiful scenery.

Soul Sister

I have been quite the busy boy lately. . .try to keep up as dates and adventures are not in exact order. I did something my mother would be jealous of. . .no, i did not have sex with George Clooney, i, now get this, went to see Phantom of the Opera and. . .i loved it. Yes, that's right, i loved Phantom of the Opera. It was showing at the Keller Auditorium and a co-worker asked me to join her. We had stellar seats, just 6 rows back from stage left. My only disappointment was when we looked down into the orchestra pit and found what appeared to be a shortage of musicians. I think one of the dudes had a Casio SK-8 keyboard, you know. . .the one that allowed you to record your own voice/noises and play it back in a variety of pitches. Regardless of the anorexic orchestra the play was fantastic.

Now back to the macho side of life. This past week i found myself at Black Butte Ranch for work. I was there to partake in what senior management calls the sales strategy meeting. Basically, we looked at lots of numbers and then brainstormed on ways to make the numbers bigger. Three-quarters of the meeting consisted of discussions on our group line of business, of which i have no idea about. So. . i payed attention a quarter of the time. Our first night there we participated in a murder mystery dinner at a rather bland restaurant in Redmond. We each had a role to play and mine just happened to be that of Dr. Rusty Blade; a plastic surgeon who botched a job on the local mayor's wife and was forced to treat gangsters and horses. I wasn't overly excited about acting and eating at the same time but after a few pints i was having flashbacks from my drama club days. Before the "acting" even started i was offering my services to one of the actresses. With stethoscope in hand, i continued to offer advice (jovially of course) and told her that i even had my sharpie with me. Hey. . .don't act like you've never seen Dr. 90210. I was pretty well warmed up and in full form when my "lines" were called. I said my provided lines and threw in a couple extras for good measure. My improv seemed to throw off my fellow thespians until they realized it was just going to happen, regardless of how many times they told me to stick to the lines. In the end it turned out that Dr. Rusty Blade was guilty of murdering the godfather's daughter (the same young lady i was offering my services to), a verdict i was quite pleased with. My colleagues enjoyed the dinner and i think my performance may have me invited to more dinner plays in the future. It was back to business the next two days. We finished up our hard work mid day on Friday. While everyone else headed back to the big city, i stayed in the area for the weekend.

A view from Black Butte Ranch's lodge before breakfast. From left to right, South Sister, Middle Sister and North Sister. The darker hump far right isn't much more than a hill it's just a lot closer.

The view after a night at the pub. The pointy mountain to the right is known as Three Fingered Jack.

Bend is by far one of my more favorite cities in Oregon. I spent most of Friday afternoon in Drake Park watching the river floaters stroll in from a day long, drunken (in most cases) float on the Dechuttes River. As the sun went down i spritzed on some Burt's Bee's spray and headed into downtown Bend. I wasn't really fit for the more glamorous places Bend has to offer so i strutted into a sausage filled dive bar. I fired up a conversation with a dude named Rick, who reminded me of my uncle Larry. We chatted, shared a few laughs and when he managed to scare off all 4 of the good looking women in the bar. . .i knew it was time for us to part ways. See. . .the problem with Bend, if one were to say Bend has a problem, is the 6 to 1 guy to girl ratio. The odds of being invited back to a residence to sleep were slim (aside from Rick's invite to stay on his sofa) so i head to the truck and started looking for a place to park for the night. Bend is pretty shiny so i decided to travel toward Saturday's destination, the Cascade Lakes Recreation Area. I pulled off onto a fire road and travelled into the vast wilderness of Central Oregon. Apparently, the wilderness was far more vast than i had expected because i spent the next 2 hours getting lost on fire roads and struggled to find my way back to a spot closer to the highway.

I woke the next morning to a couple of gunshots (not intended from me. . .at least not that i could tell) around 6.30am. I jumped behind the wheel and headed out to summit South Sister, standing at 10,363 feet. South Sister is part of the Cascade Mountain range. She is one of three sisters, South, Middle, and North. South Sister is only 3rd in elevation (by Oregon standards) behind Mt Jefferson and Mt Hood. The hike doesn't require much in the way of technical mountaineering skills but it is long and strenuous. The former fills the trail with anyone and everyone with an ounce of ambition the later leaves most of them huffing a puffing along the last push for the summit. The hike was absolutely majestic! It started with a moderate grade through an old fir forest. After a short but steep climb you pop out on an alpine plain that affords the hiker with rolling hills and views of Broken Top, Mt Bachelor, and South Sister. My guide book suggested that hikers skip a trip to the summit and turn around at Morraine Lake. I opted to tell the author to f' himself and went past the lake and push for the summit. I'll let my captions and pictures tell the rest of the story. . .

The token trail head sign.

My first view of South Sister as i popped out of the wooded start of the hike.

The view of Broken Top from the ridge above Morraine Lake.

A weather beaten tree along the alpine plain portion of the hike.

Another view of Broken Top (there are several).

Broken Top (again)

Another view of South Sister along the plain.

This view appeared on the way up. The gray rocky stuff is actually an old lava flow. It's hard to see but the rubble just left of the bottom center is an old cinder cone.

More of the trail as it heads upward.

A friendly chipmunk that showed up as i reached the false summit. Yes. . .there are such things as a false summit. You think you only have a few more steps and once you hit the top you see you've only gotten to the hardest part.

The view from said false summit. Mt Bachelor is to the left, Morraine Lake to the left-center and several other lakes along the horizon.

The view up toward the top from the false summit. I would venture a guess and say that the water in this little lake is pretty cold.

Those two dots just right of the center are people crossing the glacier. A little perspective.

A view looking back from the trail to the summit. Broken Top to the left, Mt. Bachelor to the right.

Another view of Broken Top on the last push to the summit. Check out that slope, it left a lot of more ambitious than fit hikers sucking wind along the side of the trail. Parts of this section were so riddled with downed hikers that it was hard to get around them.

This is the view looking back down to the false summit. It was all gravel and scree. Center you can see the trail heading up to the summit. Top left you can see Mt Bachelor with Green Lakes at it's feet. To the right you can get a good view of the cinder cone and old lava flow.

This is the view from along the summit's crater rim. Mt. Bachelor to left of center and Morraine Lake just right of center.

Another shot along the crater rim. There is a glacier that makes the crater home. Those little lumps you can see on the far side of the rim are people.

A look across the crater's glacier to the true summit of South Sisters, all 10,363 feet of it. The wall to the right of the pool is probably 100-200 feet tall.

The view from the summit looking north. The closest mountain is Middle Sister, next is North Sister. The picture doesn't really show but next visible is Mt. Jefferson and the day was beautiful enough to even get Mt. Hood in the view.

Another northward view from the summit. Same mountains visible.

Same picture but this time you can see Mt Jefferson just to the left of North Sister peak and if you look real close the white dot to the right of North Sister is Mt. Hood.

A final look back toward Broken Top as i headed back down into the wooded and final portion of the trail.

I think that's it for now. No upcoming adventures. I hope you enjoyed it. It's time for me to crack down at work and save up some time off for another trip.

Scorcher

Portland is known for many things, rain, smelly hippies, spandex clad assholes, i can go on all day, but what Portland isn't known for is stifling heat. That could be because Portland is supposed to be a temperate locale. Now. . .i could join my fellow left-minded, grass burning, bike riding thinkers and go off on a 6 1/2 page rant pointing out all the degrees of separation that can be linked back to Global Warming and Capitalism (aka George Bush). I seriously think that everything bad that happens, people, out here at least, blame good ol' Georgie. Dan and i were discussing, after watching Bob Costas's interview of our ill-famed leader, which president we would like to party with the most. Dan, being a Canadian, has a far better understanding of our presidential history (go figure). I threw out Billary and George W. While i think Bill would make for more stimulating conversation, George W. would be my man, a true drinking buddy. And if i had to guess. . .he's probably packing some Xanax in those cargo shorts of his.

After being on the move nearly the entire month of July, i've been aching to settle back into the Portland scene, local hikes, bars, bike rides, waterfront festivals and the like. My first weekend back in town presented me with just about all the above activities. The Red Bull Flugtag, an event that takes crafty soapbox derby like flying machines and hurls them (that is if they don't fall apart before they reach the end of the runway) off a 30 foot high runway built in the Willamette river . I found out that weekend that showing up to festivals "fashionably late" doesn't work so well. Fortunately, i had a co-worker who set up camp at 5am. I grabbed and ass sized square on the blanket and sat back to enjoy the festivities. There was a wide variety of flying machines but my favorite by far was the Spaceballs Winnebago. Mostly for nostalgic reasons but also for the costumes the participants were sporting, full Spaceballs garb. They even included a reenactment of the Schwartz battle between Dark Helmet and Lone Starr. A real classic. Most flugtaggers plummeted nose first into the river. The more creative types, i.e. chips and salsa, used hang-gliding (the chip of course) type "technology" to attempt something that could be considered flight.

The SpaceBalls Winnie just before "lift off."

The Lego Jet.

Post-launch carnage. Lego's everywhere.

This weekend i moved from aerial soapbox antics to the real deal, the Annual Mt. Tabor Soapbox Derby (sorry no good links with info or pics). My friend Matt had just bit the bullet and picked himself up a fancy new single speed rig for tooling around the city. I figured, what better way to make him question his decision than a ride up our local volcano. We parked at the foot of Mt Tabor and walked the course up and scouted seats along the way. The thing about the soap box derby is that the rides are homemade. This means that the safety equipment, brakes and steering, aren't always up to modern standards. It's wise to always leave an escape route just in case the Optimus Prime soap box car runs astray. I haven't been to the event before but it appears to be an all day affair. We stayed to watch a few runs and then it was off to slurp down some margaritas before our ride to the west side for a Timbers game.

Our view from turn #1.

This guy was cruising. I think he put a bit of effort and engineering into his rig.

This participant decided on a the classic all wood approach. Another speedster.

I have no clue what this is supposed to be but they seemed to be having fun.

A view across the reservoir and onto the finish line. You can also see the cityscape through the haze.

I managed to escape the urban jungle for the real deal last weekend. At the beginning of the summer i decided to do my best to explore my surrounding wilderness. Aside from trips southward, i have stepped foot on a new trail just about every weekend this summer. This past weekend i took a trip back up to Mt. Hood to explore the flame roasted, old-growth forest of Burnt Lake. Apparently, many years ago, the woods leading up to Burnt Lake were the victims of slow moving forest fire. Most of the carnage has long since fallen to the ground or been taken over by new growth but there are still some remains of the historical damage. After my trip in the Olympics, the 7-mile hike seemed like a casual stroll. The hike starts with a winding trail through a dense clover field and moss-lined trees. As i worked my way further into the wilderness the woods became more dense and the toasted douglas firs started to appear. The trail took to a steeper grade as i got closer to the lake and exposed some hints of the magic mountain. I had never understood the reference to Mt Hood before this trip. It's amazing how a 11,000 foot snow covered mountain can appear, disappear and reappear as much as Mt. Hood does. Once i got up to the lake i was ready for a swim. After my 40 degree bath in the White Salmon a few weeks ago, i have been weary of just jumping into unknown waters. I tested the temp and decided against an afternoon swim. I was happy with my decision as, like it often does, the wind kicked up a cool breeze that would have stiffened my nipples to a point of discomfort. Instead, i scrambled out onto a downed log and enjoyed a snack. After taking advantage of a few photo ops and a quick nap in the sun, i headed back down. The downhill grade was perfect for a quick walk/light jog and for some sick reason, i decided to do just that. I was pretty beat by the time i got back to my rig but it was all worth it (if by worth you mean i still had 90 minutes of football to play later that night).

Some clover.

Me in a burnt out tree. I nearly broke my leg trying to get this damn picture.

Same tree, without me, and some sunshine peeking through.

Mt. Hood trying to push through its clouds.

Burnt Lake in color.

Burnt Lake in the absence of color.

So it's back to work for another 5 days and then off to find another place to play. I hope everyone is in good health and taking advantage of whatever living is giving you.