All Things School Related

Trying to find Gladiator Basin...

2010-06-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

Well as this was the first weekend of personal time since being in Alaska, I decided to try and do some exploration of a known area before I venture out into areas that are unknown. AAA runs trips up Kontrashabuna and into Gladiator Basin so I got some insider information on good camping locations and where to start bushwhacking when I reached the end of the lake.

My plan was to leave mid afternoon on friday paddle a ways up the lake, camp over night, finish paddling in the morning and make my way up into the basin in the afternoon/late evening. On Sunday I would come all the way back out and back to Port Alsworth. Unlike a normal trip where you are limited by sunlight, here you do not really have to worry about it ever getting dark, as the sun "sets" around 3am, and "rises" again around 430am.

I was late leaving on friday due to finishing late packing gear for another trip and then a flight came into town with a case of beer on it for us, so I could not leave right before some beer would show up.... While this may seem weird that I waited around, everything has to be flown into PTA, so getting anything "fresh" is worth sticking around for as there is no store or anything of the sorts here.

I was paddling by 9pm and it was gorgeous. The lake was as smooth as glass and the reflections were perfectly mirrored. I camped on a tiny gravel point and went to bed around midnight- it was still quite light out.

I was up and back on the lake by 7am and paddled right to the end of the lake. The lake is 15 miles long and I probably only did 3 miles the night before, so I had a little bit still to go. I took my time and enjoyed the sights.

I reached the headwaters of the lake around 2pm and packed up my backpack and cooked some food, and was hiking by 3pm or so. I was told to stay towards the right when you get into the headwaters and then look for the confluence of the Gladiator river and the main river flowing into the lake-that's the best place to cross. Right away I saw some very large bear prints (I was just told that area is on the path for the large brown bears towards to coast to catch the incoming salmon) and quite large moose antler.

After some time of walking on gravel drainages I entered the brush, and found out why it was called bushwhacking. I spent close to an hour pushing my way through the stuff only to be deadended by a stream which I really didn't feel like trying to cross (probably chest deep); so I turned around and headed all the way back to my boat with the intention of trying to paddle around all this "stuff". This whole time I can see the basin located a few thousand feet above me with a gorgeous waterfall streaming out of it. After paddling far right and up some bradded channels- which all started to form a river- I started to have a feeling that I had gone too far up river and had missed the confluence I was looking for. The river was full of log jams, strainers, and had a fairly swift current, so I figured AAA does not bring clients up this far. So rather than turn around and continue trying to find where to start hours of bushwhacking I pulled ashore and ambled around for a little while. I saw lots of moose tracks, bear tracks of all sizes and what I thought were wolf tracks. It wasn't until a little later that I saw some more human tacks so the supposed wolf tracks might have been just dog tracks (but who knows).

Around 6pm I decide to set up my tent shelter (just the tent fly and ground sheet, no actual tent body) and am casually bringing my gear from the boat to where I am going to sleep for the night. Towards the northwest I started to notice some dark clouds forming so I casually make sure my tent is together and put everything inside of it, but I am no means worried about anything (I'm not even wearing shoes, just wandering like Muir, barefoot). As I am poking around by the boat all Hell breaks loose- and I mean that God bent me over and spanked me- the rain comes in sideways, thunder and lightning start, and the winds... well lets just say that I watched my tent take off and fly down the beach with everything in it flying out.

I finally managed to catch my tent, and throw a few items back inside, and then I stand braced against the pouring, driving rain and wind for 20+ minutes with this thing bending and in full suspension in the air while I hold it. I finally managed to get a guy-cord tied around a shrub (note: always keep guy-cords on your tent, as I do on all of mine, and know how to tie a taut line hitch which is probably the most useful quick knot to tie) and during a quick break from the deluge I got another one tied off, I could finally gather up some more of my belongings from the beach. After that maelstrom I made sure that the tent was bombproof!

After all of that fun I cooked some food and moved the boat higher up the beach because it looked like the river had risen some. I woke the next morning early to try and not spend all day paddling the 15 miles back uplake; but it was raining, so I went back to sleep, and woke up an hour later to more rain, and repeated this a few more times. Finally at around 930 or so it stopped long enough that I thought I could get all of my stuff back into the boat and get off my beach before any more rain came. I didn't have breakfast because I did not want to face cooking while being dry and then having to get into a boat in the rain; i'd rather get into a boat dry and then have it rain. The river had risen 5 or 6 inches by now and was definitely faster flowing, so I wanted to get back onto the lake as fast as possible to avoid having the river really rise on me. This could have potentially been a bad situation on many levels... Many basins drain into this river so flash flooding can and there is lots of evidence of it occurring, there were many stream hazards which I did not want to try and figure out when and where I might find them, and I had a friend's SAT phone which I had to get back to him so if something had happened and I had had to sit tight that would have put a big time crunch on things. But since I am writing this, I managed to get out just fine and as luck would have it, it started raining as soon as I hit the lake! I paddled all 15 miles in a varying headwind, and rain, but still managed to make the trip in 5 hours. I got home by 530pm and had my stuff drying shortly thereafter.

WOOHOO my first Alaska adventure!

Next time I will bring chacos because there are lots of stream crossings and random things where chacos would be nice. Also dry bags and kayaking go together... next time I will bring them. And if you were wondering, headnets are amazing things, as I have no bug bites on my head (but 19 on one hand alone).

Cheers
Thomas

Panoramas

2009-10-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

Pig Roast

2009-10-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

After talking about roasting a pig for around a month; I finally put an order in for one, and the process started. It took 2 days of solid work, and many random trips gathering material, to prepare the grill and the pig before we actually had it cooking. We brined the pig in an apple cider brine overnight, then made an apple cider and pear sauce to pour over the pig while it cooked. We went though just over 50 lbs of charcoal, 5 gallons of apple cider, probably more than 10 cloves of garlic, and many other tasty ingredients before being able to eat our pig. And after four and a half hours on the fire, we were able to eat it! We also had a keg of Ninkasi's Total Domination to go along with our feast.

We had around 30 people show up for our party, and the pig tasted fantastic!!!!

Ice climbing on the Middle Sister

2009-10-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

The first weekend back at school I lead a group of students ice climbing on the Middle Sister, near Sisters, OR. Last year we sat in our tents the entire weekend because a large storm hit us. This year we lucked out with the weather and were able to climb all day saturday.

(I am wearing a yellow jacket)

(all photos M. Strong)

Dragontail: Serpentine Ridge

2009-10-07T17:33:00.000-07:00

The following trip report is from my partner Joe, I feel he hit all the points on the head, and i am just being a little lazy and not wanting to write up my own trip report for this climb.

We climbed the Serpentine Ridge on Dragontail in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area just outside of Leavenworth, WA. The climb is a grade IV 5.8, and was our first alpine climb. We ran into a few difficulties on the climb and had the enjoyment of an unplanned bivy on the summit of Dragontail. All of the photos are mine, except for 3 which are Joes. Also for reference, Joe has a blue helmet and I have a white one.

The drive up to Leavenworth was fine, not much traffic through Tacoma or Seattle, but not much as far as views through most of the pass. Once in 11worth the clouds had cleared, and God is that a weird weird little place! Great brats and beer, but damn, I've never seen (nor have I wanted to)so much leiderhosen (or how ever it is spelled). A beer was drank and a brat eaten and we found ourselves back in the car and on the way to the TH. the TH was fairly empty and we made quick time getting on the trail and good time to Colchuck; about 1hr 40mins.

Views of the mountain are, as I'm sure a good number of you know, stellar. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous places I've seen. We set up camp, had some dinner and studied the topo and the mountain. Sleep was good and we definitely heard some goats outside the tent doing whatever it is those things do. We woke a wee late (on trail by 7am) but made fair time getting to the route and were scrambling up the first ramp by 8:45. God that moraine is steep.

The Serpentine Ridge is the black ridge going up through the middle of the photo. We topped out at the obvious summit point.

We roped up rather early and pitched out the upper 4th stuff before, through and after the gulley. Being rather new to alpine rock, neither Thomas nor I felt entirely comfortably simuling anything that might be a bit spicy. The climbing was easy and we decided on a little mid 5th variation just before the 5.7 OW. Good call that was, a little interesting chimney with a fun internal crack system.

The crux pitches went really well, Thomas took the lead on the hardest crux pitches; his lead head and confidence is quite a bit stronger than my own. I was happy to let him lead, while I carried the back pack and cleaned. The 4-5 pitches of 5.6-5.8 are really fun climbing, a few tenuous moves, a few exposed, but mostly really fun solid locks and jams.

Above the difficult stuff the climb gets, how do you say, interesting. The TRs I'd read had definitely mentioned the difficult route finding, and they aren't kidding. this proved to be the crux of the climb. So, being a bit in doubt of where the climb went I took the "lead" through the easier stuff and followed the two route finding rules I could remember: follow signs of people and areas free of lichen. Keeping this in mind we went up, up and away (from the route).

So turns out that the two reasons that rock might be lacking lichen are, a) people climbing and b) water flowing. Bet you can't guess which one we ended up following. Not only was I following the lichen free rock, I kept seeing relatively fresh foot prints.

In no way would I describe our ascent as fast. Was it efficient? For the methods we chose (pitch most all of the climb out) we were pretty fast, but again, despite the climbing being easy, we weren't comfortable simuling most of the terrain. Everything was going pretty well, until the sun decided to go down. God that made things fun. Then I bonked. And if we needed more encouragement we found brand spanking new rap slings, apparently the party ahead of us was off-route and bailed here. So much fun at this point it was intolerable. Then Thomas called down from the sharp end, "hey dude, it's really steep up here, I don't know where to go." ---- "SHIT! Reallly?!?! Alright dude, set an anchor and bring me up."

Starting to go around the 5.7 OW because I thought the face climbing looked more interesting than the Off Width.

The start of the 5.8 technical crux. A pitch of 5.8 fingers leading into a pitch of 5.7 hands.

(Previous two photos by Joe C.)

I get to Thomas about 20 metres later and find him standing between some flake and a super steep headwall. To the left is a slab that has a big bulge and the only climbable feature (at least for us) is a short OW. To the right is a steep (80-85) flake system...looks even harder. We initially resign ourselves to an on-route bivy; but in the end (about 45 minutes later) I lift my head and say, "fuck it, get me the gear, I'm aiding the fucker."

The crack went pretty well, a little modified French freeing and I was to easier terrain. Then the summit; bliss. I belay Thomas up and we celebrate that we will be sleeping on the summit and not in some God-aweful squeeze chimney. I dunno how much warmer the summit was, but it was nice to be able to lay down. And I know what you're asking yourself, so I'll spare you the curiosity, we took turns playing Jake Gyllenhall: things got REAL cozy in that space blanket. A few hours of uncontrollable shivering and the sun was up. God it was nice to see that sun.

The next beast we tackled was the descent. The Beckey guide just says follow class 3 ledges down to Ass-guard pass, too bad it didn't say which way the ledges were. As the left looked like it would definitely send us over the glacier we elected to go skier's right. After a few hundred feet it cliffed out and we did three raps. Solid slings at the first two and then a 2 stopper and tri-cam anchor at a hanging belay about 30m off the ground. Quick descent from there littered with encounters with hikers asking if we were the headlamps on the mountain last night. Honestly, I can't see myself going up Aasguard for fun anytime soon. We got back to camp and made the best meal I've had in a good long while: TunaMac. So good after no food for a good long while.

All in all, the climbing was fun, the scrambling sucked and I am now a lot more confident in my alpine skills. I don't feel we made bad decisions, our lack of speed was largely due to lack of practical experience. Perhaps we should have selected an easier route, but I'm stoked to have this one under my belt and have put a lot of this year's goals into perspective.

Iowa back to Eugene Via the Badlands, Devil's Tower, and Glacier National Park

2009-10-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

After spending the first month in Iowa watching far too much TV and annoying my sister I finally managed to land a job with a landscaping company. The job was quite fun, and while I worked 50 to 55 hours per week, the days alternated from very boring labor (read watering and deadheading flowers), to 11 hour days of hard manual labor. But like I said, I enjoyed it and it kept me outside for a good chunk of the summer.
When I drove to Iowa at the start of summer vacation, I drove by a few places that I knew I would want to go back to and actually spend some time looking around, so I made sure to leave myself around a week and a half to do the 2,400 mile drive back to Eugene. The three items on my tick-list to see were The Badlands in South Dakota, Devils Tower in Wyoming, and Glacier National Park in Montana. I had planned to meet up with somebody at Devil's Tower to climb with, and then do a climbing road-trip back to OR, but at literally the last minute he called and had to bail back to OR because of family problems; but he said that I could climb with his original climbing partner, so the trip was still on... sort of.

(Please note that all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them)

I split the drive into two days from Iowa city to Devils Tower (842 miles), and arrived on Monday night to a very warm welcome. South Dakota is my least favorite state to drive through, not because it is over 500 miles from East to West, but because of the enormous amount of billboards on the side of the road. It got very tiring to constantly see billboards telling you were only 250 miles away from their attraction. On my way through SD I stopped off to see the Badlands National park, which is a stunning place. The park was created from hundreds of thousands of years of water erosion over the desert like landscape. The following photos are of the badlands, AND of the Helicopter that I rode in for a tour over the Badlands (See previous post for a film from the helicopter).

I also saw the Minutemen National Attraction, which is where during the Cold War Minutemen missiles were housed (all throughout South and North Dakota incase of a nuclear strike from Russia). All of these missiles were launch ready, during the war, and could be fired in 5 minutes time once authorization had occurred. Then it would only take 30 minutes for the missiles to reach their targets in Russia.
After the Badlands I drove to Devil's Tower which is in the North East corner of Wyoming and spent two full days there rock climbing on the tower itself. I met up and climbed with two very nice and interesting guys. The following are pictures of the tower and the climbing on the tower.

The rock climbing at Devil's Tower is amazing, I won't get into details about the climbing specifically, but it is a beautiful place, and if it were not well over 1,000 miles away from me I would be going back very soon!!

After Devil's Tower I drove straight to Glacier National Park (510 miles). I had a quick stop off at Custer's Last Stand National Park again. It was mainly a food and gas stop. In the middle of Wyoming and Montana there are a limited number of gas stations, so you have to predict when you will be hungry.

The following photos are from the drive from Devil's Tower to Glacier National Park. It was a very pretty drive cutting through almost all of Montana.

This is the sun setting behind Glacier National Park:

The views in the morning were OUTSTANDING!!!

By the time I got my food that I needed for a few days of backpacking, the Park was technically closed, and while they have an after hours fee station for just the situations that I was in; I did not notice it because I had just driven 500 odd miles and did not bother looking around too much. So I just drove back up the road a little way and found a place to pull off. I figured this was probably illegal so i set my alarms for 6am. The ranger station opened at 7am, so a 6 am wake-up call was fine.
Well, I got a rude awakening, because I stayed in my tent 5 minutes too long, and a ranger came by and pestered the hell out of me for being in a non-camping zone. But it all got sorted out, and I was at the rangers station by 7am to get my camping permits. With the Rangers help I decided on doing a 35 mile hike from Two Medicine Lake to St. Mary's Lake, and then take a bus back to Two Medicine. This hike was going to include two nights of camping, which would give me the first day to hike 16 miles, 10 miles on the second day, and 8 miles on the morning of the third day to catch the bus in time to get back to my car.

Two Medicine Lake is located in the lower righthand side of the map. The trail I took went through Dawson Pass, Cut Bank Pass, Morning Star Lake, Triple Divide Pass, Red Eagle Lake and finished at the Saint Mary Visitor Center.

The hike was easily the most gorgeous hike I have ever done. You started at the mouth of a valley and hiked out to a mountain pass, then down into another valley, and out of it to another mountain pass. This occurred many times, and around every single corner was something new and beautiful to see. Glacier National Park is known for its Black and Grizzly Bears, and while I was aware of where bears might be I did not yell or clap for 35 miles worth of solo hiking. I actually never saw a bear. I did see a mother moose with two calves, a bugling elk, some snakes, and around 20 mountain goats. One of the highlights for me was getting to Triple Divide Pass, which is where Triple Divide Peak is located. This mountain separates the three watersheds of North America: The Pacific, The Atlantic, and The Arctic. The following photos are from my entire hike in the park.

While on the hike I met up with somebody who offered me a ride back to my car if I hiked out a night early. As I was going to be really pushing it to make it back to Eugene by the evening of the 13th I decided to take him up on the early hike out and ride back to my car. This made for a long second day, 18 miles! So instead of doing 35 miles over 3 days, I did it over 2 days. I was glad to get back to my car a night earlier because it gave me a full day to do the drive back to OR, instead of trying to to it over the night and arriving in the early AM on the 14th.

Well as you can tell from the photos I had amazing weather, which lead to an amazing hike! For a number of years I have wanted to go see Glacier National Park, and it was everything I thought it would be and more! The following set of photos is from my drive along the Going To The Sun Road which constantly is ranked as one of North America's most beautiful drives.

I managed to start driving on The Going To The Sun Road around 8am, and I drove it East to West, so I had the sun at my back the entire way. Also since I was on the road early enough I did not have to deal with traffic. By the time I left the park around 930am there was an enormous line to get into the park on the West side. Once leaving the park, I only had to drive 540 more miles until I was home again in Eugene!!! This drive through eastern Washington and Oregon was a very hot drive as my car does not have working air conditioning. It averaged 109 degrees inside for around 3 hours!!

Eastern WA

Driving into the setting sun over the Columbia River Gorge.

I arrived in Eugene around 1030pm after 2,400 miles worth of driving, and seeing many beautiful sights.

2009-10-04T17:07:00.001-07:00

Oregon -> Iowa via I90

2009-07-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

The following photos are from my 2,250 mile drive along I90 from Oregon to Iowa. I drove through all of Oregon, parts of Washington and Idaho, all of Montana, the north-eastern corner of Wyoming (having driven all of Wyoming on a previous trip), all of South Dakota, 190 miles of Minnesota, and lastly, Iowa.

The first 3 photos are actually of Mt. Rainier, or taken from the high camp on Rainier, Camp Muir.

Driving out of the Columbia Gorge, and then crossing the Columbia into Washington-

Driving through eastern Washington and into Spokane-

Northern Idaho was a beautiful place, but the panhandle is only 50 miles or so wide, so it took no time before I was into Montana. The entire state of Montana was beautiful!

The location of the Battle of Little Bighorn was on my way through Wyoming, and this is where Custer's last Stand was. The prominent white memorial is the actual location of where Custer made is last stand. As you can see in the photos the hill that he was on was quite small, and the country side is rolling hills. The last two photos of of Wyoming.

Eastern Wyoming is quite flat as you will see in the upcoming photo. After spending the night in a park in Gilette WY I took a detour to see Devils Tower. It is a very large basalt intrusion that has been eroded away and is now freestanding.

Also part of my detour, I went and did a quick 6 mile hike up Harneys Peak which is in Custer State Park, which is part of the Black Hills National Forest. Harneys peak (7,244ft) is the highest peak in South Dakota, and the tallest peak east of the Rockies. The rock in the Black Hills NF is amazing! A true climbers paradise. The rock in the first few photos is called the Pinnacles. Oh yeah and Mt. Rushmore!

The last few photos are of the scenery of the last 500 miles or so.

2009-06-10T15:20:00.000-07:00

This is a map that I made for an advance GIS class.

Photo Contest time!

2008-11-11T21:59:00.000-08:00

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Which photos do people like?

Mt Hood 6/1

2008-06-02T14:51:00.000-07:00

The weather was looking good, and my partner, who had never been on snow before was ready for the challenge! So we geared up and drove to Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood. Hiked In friday, hiked a little more saturday, then reached the summit at 7am on suday. Had a great ski back to the car with a very heavy backpack and half of a splitboard which I found in a rock pile.

The above photos are taken en-route to Mt. Hood, and from the parking lot at Timberline Lodge.

This photo is off Illumination Rock, which is situated at roughly 9200ft. It has some intriguing mixed climbing routes on it, and we would have had a closer look at it, but we had not rock protection with us.

Looking down at the camp the night before our summit.

Mountaineering outing and Monkeys Face

2008-05-22T20:28:00.000-07:00

The following photos are from my mountaineering outing to 3 Fingered Jack. The first photo is of Monkey's face. We climbed the West Face variation (5.8 A1). The last pitch, coming out of the monkey's mouth, is the most exposed 5.7 climb in the United States, lets just say it was a pretty burley climb.

Black and White photography

2008-05-22T20:25:00.001-07:00

This is a photo taken of me over Thanksgiving break. Photo by Fred Sproat.
Location: Elliot Glacier Mt. Hood

Assorted pictures

2008-04-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

The following photos are from my last few adventures, they range from climbing on Mt. Hood, to backcountry skiing, to rock climbing in the desert.

Mt. Hood- Spring break

Backcountry skiing on Iron Mtn.

Smith Rock

Mt Hood MLK weekend

2008-01-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

So since the University was closed over MLK weekend, i decided that i needed to take advantage of this 3 day weekend. Leading up to the weekend there had been very high avalanche levels and the weather looked iffy. But the week leading up to the break was nice and calm, so the snow pack settled out, we had constant temperatures, and the weather was looking nice for an attempt. On Thursday before the weekend, there were high winds predicted for the weekend, and some snow precipitation (1-3 inches). This was slightly worrisome, because we knew that if there were high winds, then we would have a very very hard time above treeline. The weather was looking alright on friday night, overcast and the majority of the precipitation occurring on saturday, our hike in day, sunday looked to be clearing and monday looked very nice; so we decided to go ahead and leave early saturday morning. 6am roles around and we are filling up Nathan's car with all of the gear that would be needed. We drove through Portland around 830am, and was parking at the Snow-park around 10am. The hike in was a short 3 miles to a group of cabins (Tilly Jane area), and the trail was fully covered with snow. Normally this hike in is quite easy, but within a little bit, i felt some hot spots developing on the balls of my feet. So i stopped and patched up my feet with a generous amount of Ducktape. But....it was too late, i had already developed a quarter sized blister on my right foot, and it was looking like the same thing would happen on the left foot....NOOOO..... We got to the cabin about an hour and a half after we left the car, and we were faced with the choice of moving on to try and find the stone shelter that is at treeline, or to set up out tent around treeline. To recap out plan: Hike in to either the cabins or to treeline on saturday, wake up at midnight and see what the weather is doing; if the weather is nice, it is a go for the summit, if the weather isn't too nice sleep until 6am and then move as high as possible, and spend the night (sunday night) in a snow cave, and go for the summit on monday.
So midnight roles around, and it was windy enough to warrant us going back to sleep, also since we were in a group cabin, there were many people there, and nobody (besides out group) wanted to go to sleep at 530pm, so we were all awake until 10 or 1030pm listening to them chit-chat, So we also were looking forward to another 5 hours of sleep. We got everything prepared for the next day or two days and were out hiking by 730am or a little before 8am. The hike up to treeline was amazing, we were breaking trail (through only a few inches of snow) so it seemed like it was only the three of us in the middle of a winter wonderland. Once we broke through the trees, it was quite evident that this was going to be an interesting, and possibly a slow day. The visibility was very low (averaged 200m), there was a steady, but light snow fall, and surprisingly there was no wind. Since our goal of the day was just to get as high as possible, we kept moving up, and every once in a while (actually only happened twice the entire day), the clouds would break, and we would be able to see the whole mountain. I should note that somebody at the cabin gave me some blister patches, which worked very very well, my feet were not bothering me at all.
Once we reached an elevation around 7,000ft, it was time to descend down onto the Eliot Glacier , travel across a flat, crevasse free section and onto the other side. We descended down, and then hiked up to this horizontal section, and then we talked about the rest of the day. By that point the visibility was fluctuating between 50 and 150m, and the snow had increased slightly. Also the weather for MLK day had changed, there were now reports of high winds for that day. After a little food and water break, it soon became evident that it would not be a) safe and b)really worth it to dig a snow cave, spend the night, and awake to high winds; so we decided to call it a day and we started our decent. But the day would not be over, we decided that it would probably be a smart idea to take out the rope (which i had carried the entire way up to 7500ft) and practice our crevasse rescue, and how to travel on snow with a rope. We spent a few good hours messing around with it, and playing in the snow, then we made our way back to the cabin. We arrived at 4pm, so we donned our headlamps since the sun would be setting soon, and we hiked out. We were back at the car after dark, and eating a very satisfying Subway sandwich an hour or so later. We were back in Eugene by 10pm on sunday night. Overall this trip has just added another notch into my belt, and has exposed me to different conditions, so it wasn't completely worthless.

Some pictures:

The last picture is from Thanksgiving last year, it is trying to show what the weather was like, but it doesnt really show the correct visibility....

Amtrak: Boston --> Eugene

2007-10-15T19:19:00.000-07:00

The following pictures are from assorted places in the United States.

These are some pictures on the way to Chicago

East of Chicago are many many steel factories, these are some trains bringing coal and other chemicals to these factories.

As you can see there were no clouds in Chicago, and it was a gorgeous day. Although tromping around in hiking boots and a massive backpack were slightly uncomfortable.

Mount Theilsen

2007-10-13T20:33:00.000-07:00

The morning started off a little chilly, around 35 degrees, but with a fantastic view of the night sky. There were reported sightings of meteors, but i never saw any... We were camped at the Trail Head for our hike up the rugged "Lightning Rod", Mount Theilsen. We were situated at 5,400 feet, and our goal for the day would be 9,182 ft. The hike started off at 630, a little late for my likings, but everything turned out alright, Until the sun rose we were just being illuminated by two headlamps (because most people, including me, forgot their's at home), as we marched through the woods, winding towards the base of the volcano. The first hour or so of our hike was shrouded in much mystery, since driving in late at night, and not being able to see th peak from the TH, we had no real idea what we were up for. (The following pictures, including the first picture are before we could see Mt. Theilsen, the last picture is Theilsen herself).

Our first view of Theilsen was as we rounded a switch back, and it was just looming above us! From then on, we started to hike faster, and as we got higher there was more and more snow on the ground!! Once above treeline, we just straight lined right up the side of the mountain, one could not have taken a more direct route than we did. After a little bit of time, our group split apart, and the front 4 went on ahead, and found a nice place to have lunch just below the summit. By this time it was 10am, and it must have been close to 60 degrees with a beautiful sky. If you looked west you could see Mount. Bailey (preivous phots, of a rounded volcano), Craker Lake, and in the distant background Mt. Shasta.

After our lunch break we carefully picked our way uptowards the point where we would attempt the summit. The actual summit was a pillar of rocks around 50 or 60 feet high, but it was a very technical scramble to get up there, of our group of 7, only 3 made the actual summit. I took the following three pictures, the first is of Keith, sitting on the summit (yes, that clump of rocks is the summit), the second is looking down behind him, and the third is a group shot.

After spending quite some time scrambling around, trying not to fall off, we headed back down, it was quite slow, because all of the snow was melting making the rocks very slick, but after an hour or so of "boot skiing" we were back on the trail, saddened by the lack of snow, this was the final look at the mountain.

We were back at our van/trailer by 2pm after a solid day of hiking. But the day was far from over.... Since we were only 15 miles or so from Crater Lake, and it was such a gorgeous day, we decided to swing by and have a look.

Seeing Crater Lake like this was absolutely amazing, this was the third time i have seen Crater Lake, and it was by-far the best experience i have had there. Besides the weather being amazing, the lake was perfectly still, there was no waves or wind to cause disturbances on the surface, because of this; there were beautiful reflections created by the crater. Another fun thing was that there was a fair amount of snow, both on the hike (everything above treeline was snowy) and the rim of the crater was quite snowy. Sadly i did not have my skis, so could not make get any freshies, but my goal is a few runs before November. After leaving Crater Lake we (meaning I) drove back along highway 97 to highway 58, the last goal of our trip was to see Salt Creek Falls, which is a waterfall fueled by a tiny stream, no wider than 20 or 30 feet. After seeing the Falls we drove back into Eugene and called it a solid trip.

Baxter State Park

2007-08-14T19:09:00.001-07:00

After an early start the local orono boys (Ben, Angus, Ryan, and I), and Marci headed towards Baxter State Park on what was to be an epic trip. Upon arriving at the gatehouse we were told that we were the second to last car to be allowed access to the trail head, this fired up the adrenaline alittle knowning our day could have been ruined if a few more cars were infront of us. I think we were all alittle taken-aback at all of the people just lounging around at the TH parking. Everybody was munching on a late breakfast. I signed the group in at 6:36am, our route was Chimney Pond to the Cathedral Trail (summit) then follow the Knife Edge to Pamola peak and down Helon Taylor back to our car.

The trail from the Roaring Brook trail head was fairly easy, 3.3 miles of moderate hiking. We gained about 1350 feet in elevation. Just before reaching Chimney Pond we came across a lookout point, looking across Dry Pond and into the North basin.

Once we reached the Chimney Pond guard house we took a quick rest stop, ate some food, and felt the icy water. From here on up, we would be gaining some serious elevation, 2400ft in a mile and a half. The next set of pictures is from the start of the Cathedral Trail.

The Cathedral Trail involved quite a bit of scrambling over large boulders, and at times there was quite a drop off to our left. I found this portion of the climb amazing, it was amazing just to be able to climb all over these boulders and out onto exposed ledges. Even though this was the hardest part of the trip so far, everybody seemed to be enjoying themselfs. The next set of photos is from the first portion of the Cathedral Trail, with two photos looking back towards Chimney Pond. You can really see the elevation change in these photos.

After about an hour and a half we were making our way up onto the summit plateau, buy this time we were almost completely engulfed in the clouds and it was getting quite cold. By 9:50 we were on top of Maine and we were imagining what the views would be like if we could see them. We found a fairly large rock which we could huddle behind and we ate our lunch. Ryan was very glad that he brough warm pants, a winter hat, and gloves, i was just glad to have brought my rain pants which i was debating about leaving back in the car, the others were just looking cold. We took a few pictures at the summit then headed towards the Knife Edge, which is the trail along the Arete of the mountain. This trail(approx. 6ft wide, and at times 2-3ft) was quite exposed on both sides, with at times, a couple hundred vertical feet of a dropoff to our left.

After a careful hour and a half of negotiating the Knife Edge and climbing the little step we reached Pamola peak, which is where the Helon Taylor trail starts/ends. In the next set of pictures, the first one is looking across the entire Knife Edge with the clouds rolling over top. The second picture shows the average width of the trail. The last two are of me climbing around, the last one in particular is the crux of the entire climb, it was a 50ft dip in the trail, which you had to climb down then back up.

Once at Pamola Peak we had just over a 3 mile hike back to the car, The trail was fairly easy going down, with only a few large boulders to climb over. The entire day we never let down our relentless pace, and we made it back down to the parking lotby 1:36pm. So we managed to hike 10 miles in 7 hours (exactly)!! It was a fantastic day, and a great way to end a summer vacation, and an amazing way to complete a hike that has been waiting for 19 years.