Two colleagues of mine attended a wedding in Idaho last month and, while driving back to Portland, discovered the Snake River frozen over. Like all good-hearted Americans, they decided to pull over and toss rocks at it. The unworldly, echoing sound-effects that ensued are stunning, worthy of both National Geographic and Star Trek.

A quick head's up though. The gent in the "O" hat has quite the potty-mouth on him and breaks out a few Big Lebowski quotes. NSFW? I'll let you decide.

Labels: nature

In the summer of 2009, three friends and I set out at dawn to climb to the top of Mt. Thielsen, AKA "The Lightening Rod of the Cascades."

We failed.

With storm clouds gathering over head, we headed down the mountain in search of shelter. The mountain had beaten us but we vowed to return one sunny summer day for a second attempt.

That sunny summer day came this past July. Bryan, a member of the 2009 expedition, was forced to drop out this time around but another colleague, an unshakable man by the name of Tyler, took his place. My friends Dan and Pete, hellbent on beating this beast, also returned for round two.

And so we set out early after preparing ourselves mentally and physically the night before by....drinking heavily and swimming in the South Umpqua River. With Viso running through our veins and mosquitoes determined to follow us to the peak, we began our ascent at 8 AM.

No photos I've seen of this monster quite capture the "Night on Bald Mountain" vibe of the peak. This photo at least captures the "element of danger." Better yet, have a look at this one of the peak in the middle of winter. Yeah, that does the trick. I really want you to get a feel for how incredibly stupid climbing to the top of a "Lightening Rod of the Cascades" really is before you read the rest of this blog post.

Despite its jagged hell-peak, Mt. Thielsen is a fairly typical Oregon hiking spot. There's trees, rocks and more trees. Once you rise above the timberline, however, the real challenge begins. The final 1,000 feet to the peak are a slow, grueling trudge worthy of Mount Saint Helens' short but vicious final ascent.

As the slope became more treacherous and slippery, Dan, the only father in the group, felt the nagging pangs of responsibility and common sense kick in. "Guys, I don't want to make my 31-year old wife a widow. Also: I kinda like my kid. I'd like to see him again some day," he said before bowing out. Twenty minutes later, Tyler admitted that his sneakers just weren't meant for this journey. Or was it the other way around? Did Tyler punk-out before Dan? No matter. The mountain had successfully body-slammed their broken spirits.

Only Pete and I remained determined to reach the top. We handed Tyler a few provisions to tide him over, a copy of Rolling Stone with Lady Gaga on the cover and a Cliff Bar, and kept climbing.

As we neared "Chicken Point," my own sense of self-preservation started tugging at my shorts. We had conquered the slopes but what remained was a 3-story climb up a jagged incline with a few crevasses along the way. I began fretting that I would end up like that guy in 127 Hours...if I was lucky. Pete, who had reached the peak with a group of Fire Ranger pals in 2005, was not about to turn back. I'd come so far and my innate, dunderheaded masculine instincts began kicking in. I couldn't let this mountain think I was a pussy, now could I? Even if continuing onward might result in a grueling death? Wouldn't you have done the same?

I ditched my backpack, kept going and reached the peak. I threw my arms skyward. I felt ecstatic. My sense of self-worth shot through the stratosphere. I had conquered the "Lightening Rod of the Cascades." I was obviously now an official member of the GOD AMONG MEN Diners Club. Once I returned to civilization, anyone who had not climbed to the top of Mt. Thielsen would notice a halo around my head, which would magical instill in them instantaneous admiration for how awesome I had now become. Many men would quake at the mere sight of me. Meanwhile, a mere gaze in my general direction would cause women to have orgasms and, if they didn't immediately leave the room, become pregnant. With triplets. I was, simply put, now The Most Interesting Man on the Planet. By comparison, the Dos Equis Guy may as well have been an overweight house cat.

And then Pete immediately insisted that I peer over the edge on the other side of the tiny peak. The view? A 1,000 foot drop straight down into a small glacier. That boost of self-esteem? It immediately evaporated and a twinge of vertigo slapped me harder than an belligerent yeti. I literally started shaking. Up on this tiny, jagged peak in the dead center of nowhere, the same thought started playing over and over in my head: "Shit, I might actually die today."

Pete quelled the terror pumping through my soul with a large, rusted container someone had left up there. Inside were dozens of notes that other climbers had left behind, some dating back as far as the late '80s. I broke out my iPhone and we recorded what I was hoping would be the first of many Podcasts for this blog. Sadly, that recording was lost to the ages when my phone died a few weeks later.

The real fun began when we started our descent. A girl joined us up there while her boyfriend waited down below with their dogs. They had taken turns reaching the peak. She was petrified of heading back down and begged me to guide her after Pete bounded down the side in no time flat like the world's most death-defying billy goat. The drop-off beneath us as we clung to the side of Theilsen? At least 20 feet to a patch of jagged rocks. When it became obvious that I was just as scared, she took the lead.

My masculinity was crippled but at least I wasn't. I can't remember her name but I'm eternally thankful that this woman was able to suppress her own terror long enough to get us both off the peak. With her obligation fulfilled, she joined back up with her boyfriend and they bounced down the mountain, leaving me to sloooooooooooowly work my way back to the timberline. I've always had a hard time on slippery slopes like the ash field that leads to the crater on St. Helens or even my street when it's icy. I lose my sense of balance somehow and my legs are as useless as one of those giant robo-tanks on the Moon of Endor in Return of the Jedi.

On my descent, I slipped and caused a minor avalanche. Down below, Pete saw the rock slide and panicked. He ran back up the slope, assuming he'd find me buried beneath a bolder. Once he spotted me teetering down the mountain like an elderly woman on a staircase, he headed off in search of Dan and the beer in his backpack.

Making it back to the timberline took what seemed like a million years. I cursed myself, the mountain and everything in sight- the trees, the rocks, my shoes, nearby Diamond Lake, the sky and Teddy Roosevelt for creating the National Park System. Tyler snapped a photo of me dumping rocks out of my boots once I made it back to "base camp." The image may as well be the definition of "pissed-off."

But the important part: I'm still alive. Which is at least half the battle, right? And, having reached the peak, I will never feel even the slightest twinge of desire to go anywhere near Mt Thielsen ever again.....a mountain I TOTALLY BITCH-SLAPPED THAT DAY! BOO-YAH! HOORAY FOR ME! IN YOUR FACE, NATURE!

Labels: hikes, nature, stupidity

Han Solo and his faithful Tauntaun set out against the stark ravages of SE Oregon's Alvord Desert. With dusk fast approaching, the beast, more accustomed to the frozen wastes of Hoth, collapses from exhaustion, dehydration and the sudden, lethal onset of a nasty case of crippling apathy. As Han struggles to carry his Tauntaun to shelter and safety, what dashing rogue will swoop in to lend aid?

Ok, what can I say? These photos were taken while killing time and waiting for the sun set on the desert floor this summer. I can think of fewer places in the world better to watch twilight descend and a nearly full moon rise. After dark, you may as well be on the lunar surface.

If you ever get a chance to make it out that way, I suggest a dip in the Alvord Hot Springs, watching the sun set and then jumping into your vehicle to race across the desert and back into sunlight again. If you time this right, you can actually watch the rays roll towards the hills and enjoy multiple sunsets. My personal record is a mere two.

Labels: nature, pirates, star wars, travels

One of the benefits of my membership in Portland's not-so-exclusive unemployment club is that I can attend events like free admission day at the Japanese Garden in Washington Park. It fell on Veterans Day and, while I wasn't officially out of a job yet, I utilized a soon-to-expire sick day to spend the day doing chores.

I found out about the event on Twitter late in the afternoon and headed up as what had been a gorgeous fall day was beginning to turn. The sky was growing dark as I started hiking up the hill to the gardens' gate. I made the decision not to go back for my umbrella, thus ensuring, through some obscure statute in karmic law no doubt, that a storm would roll through at any second.

Thirty minutes later, idyllic landscapes like the one above were getting bombarded with hailstones. I sought shelter inside the pavilion next to the Flat Garden with a few dozen others. The garden was shutting down for the night but no one was willing to weather the storm and the staff was reluctant to kick us all out into the elements.

So there we all stood, awkwardly staring at cells phones while a few kids idly drew diagrams with their feet in the fallen hail. The orange autumn leaves and the rain created a view from the veranda that was equal parts intimidating and real durn purty. It was the sort of odd, random experience people remember forever but, once a baby started wailing and shattered the serenity in the air, I decided to blaze a trail back to the car. Soaked to the bone, I turned my car towards downtown as a rainbow shot up and over the tennis courts.

Labels: nature, the weather

The whole thing seemed like such a great idea back in February. "Hey, let's climb a volcano this summer." This plan first emerged as a few friends and I were working our way through a third pitcher of Henry's at the Goose Hollow Inn. Usually plans conjured up at the tavern wither and die by the time we pay the tab but this one took flight. Within a few days, the number of people on board for the "expedition" had gone from three to a dozen.

Six months and numerous day hikes later, the twelve of us met on a trailhead on the edge of Mount St. Helens. I'm not old enough to remember its epic eruption in 1980 but I was in town back in 2005 when it started rumbling again. If you had asked me back then if I would ever one day climb up to the crater and peer inside I'm sure I would have said, "uhhhh, no flippin' way."

The volcano was obscured by fog and clouds but we all knew what we were up against. Four hours of shin-busting scrambling along trails and boulders followed by a final 1,000+ foot slog up a pumice and ash covered incline leading to the crater. How much were we all paying for this lovely little nature walk? $22 a head for the climbing permits.

Within an hour, those of us who had spent the summer training for the hike had already been upstaged by those who hadn't. The four of us who were supposedly well-prepared for this adventure opted to go the "slow and steady" route, stopping to take photos, chug water, eat Scooby Doo fruit snacks and, for reasons probably too pointless to explain here, perform impromptu kabuki. Dan, if the whole law thing ever sputters out, I think you should consider a career in live theater.

Once we cleared the boulders, we caught up with a group of women in their 50s all hellbent on conquering the volcano. Regardless of age, the final, cruel ascent to St. Helens' crater has a way of equalizing hikers as they lose their footing in the ash and slide a foot for every five feet of elevation gained. It's like climbing up a giant sand dune.

I found myself marching alongside a gal from Michigan. She had spent the summer on a Stairmaster preparing for this and wasn't about to let anyone else in her group beat her to the top. We each had to stop about every 10 yards to catch our breath and cough up dust. Despite decades of hiking she had never subjected herself to anything like this. I finally decided to blast up the final few hundred feet, despite my burning knees. I never did find out if she won her race.

The rest of our group had reached the crater a good 45 minutes before my fellow stragglers and I. By this point, we had climbed above the clouds and could see over them all the way to Mt. Hood. I'd seen photos of the crater before but I was still half-expecting to find a black hole filled with lava. Instead, the interior of St. Helens is more like a gigantic canyon with a lake and a steaming dome.

The edge of the crater was also much smaller than I had predicted, maybe ten feet from the incline to the drop-off. Our group leader, who had been up there before, advised us to stay away from the edge because of the possibility that the ground could give way underneath us at any given second. The casualness of all of the other hikers up there gave us a false sense of security that inevitably led to a photo of my sister pretending to toss me into the volcano. Ahhh, cherished family memories of wanton recklessness. Right after we took the photo a loud rock slide began on an opposite wall of the crater, a not-so casual reminder of how dangerous the edge of a volcano tends to be.

The ascent had been difficult but the worst part of the hike had yet to come. Getting back down over the boulders was an endurance test that led to a substantial amount of frustration. And by "substantial amount of frustration" I mean "lots of swearing while nimble teenagers on a church field trip blasted past us at 50 million miles an hour." Lousy kids! Get off my lawn! Er, volcano! Mumble....mumble....The Price is Right hasn't been the same since Bob left....where's the clicker....mumble....mumble.....

Around the time I slipped and busted a gallon-sized jug of water in my backpack I swore that I would never, ever set foot on a hiking trail again. Of course, this vow was immediately forgotten once we reached the treeline and marched back to the car past acres of wildflowers glowing in the late August sun. There's already talk of heading up South Sister sometime next year and we still have yet to make it to the top of Mt. Thielsen.

And to my knees I apologize in advance.

Labels: nature, stupidity

Head south along highway 230 in southern Oregon and you'll come across Mount Thielsen, an extinct volcano that rises up like a gigantic, raggedy arrowhead over Diamond Lake. When I first saw a photo of its peak what sprung to mind was the last ten minutes of Fantasia. Thielsen definitely looks like it might serve as an after-hours hang-out for a classical-music loving demon and his undead entourage.

My friend Pete, who currently works for the US Forest Service, managed to make it all the way to the top of this bugger back in 2005. As intimidating as the mountain looks from the highway, a path leading to the peak is considered one of the best day hikes in the state. This is odd, considering that Thielsen's nickname is the "Lightning Rod of the Cascades." Bolts hit the peak so often that many of the rocks up there have melted into lechatelierite.

Oh, and I should mention that one side of the peak is a sheer cliff face with a several thousand foot drop.

It should come as no surprise that I thought it would be a brilliant idea to call up Pete and have him lead myself and two colleagues, one of whom suffers from mild vertigo, up the mountain. We set out early one morning during the heat storm at the end of July. The first thing that greeted us on the trailhead were roaming packs of mosquitoes that seemed to follow us for the first mile or so.

To call the hike "strenuous" would be an understatement. "A major pain in the ass" is probably more befitting. By 10 AM the temperature was already in the 80s. A series of winter wind storms had decimated large stretches of forest, leaving us exposed to the unforgiving Douglas County sunshine. Once we reached the timberline, the air temperature had dropped but the trail disappeared. The terrain quickly turned into a steep incline covered in slippery rocks and pumice.

At the two hour mark, the sky overhead was growing dark. Two ominous clouds, one over Diamond Lake, the other coming in from the north, seemed to be headed on a collision course over the peak. Undaunted, we kept going for another hour but finally decided to turn back once the winds picked up. Heading down after conquering roughly 90% of the mountain was a bitter disappointment that only beer and the promise of a spaghetti dinner could wash away.

Safety first. After all, a 300,000 ton lighting rod is nothing to mess around with. A couple coming up behind us bagged it too, not because of the weather but because of altitude sickness (yikes). As we were coming down we encountered a middle-aged man dressed in a yellow spandex shirt and biker shorts. He had the determined look of a half-crazed pioneer. I asked him if he was shooting for the peak and he said he would only turn back if the weather turned truly nasty. As we hit the timberline, Pete surveyed the peak. Sure enough, he had made it to the top. We could see a triumphant, yellow spot darting around up there. I took this photo of him:

And so we trudged back to a swimming hole near Pete's homestead in the little town of Tiller. We'd been shown up by a guy probably 20 years older than us. On the plus side, none of us were struck by a bolt of lightning that afternoon.

Until we meet again, Mount Thielsen.

Labels: nature

I haven't been able to get this song out of my head since it was posted on Blogtown a while back. It's a remix of some sort of promotion that William Shatner made for the fifth Star Trek movie. In a few weeks, I'm supposed to be heading up Mt. St Helens with a dozen people, all of them who will no doubt have to listen to me sing horribly out-of-tune excerpts the entire way up.

Or not. I figure I'll be shanked no more than 200 yards from the trailhead.

Labels: nature, nerds

It's officially midsummer, which means things around here have slowed to a crawl. Updates are less frequent, comments have dropped off and all the posts I do write tend to focus on beaches and hikes instead of people, places and things around town. Sorry about that. I know, I know. Some Portland-centric blogger I've turned out to be. Still, what can I say? The annual gravitational pull of the outdoors and day trips makes it difficult to seek out topics centered within the urban growth boundary.

This post, for example? It's going to be about Tillamook Head, a hiking trail that can be found on the edge of Seaside. It follows the same route the Lewis and Clark expedition took as they went in search of whale blubber. A viewpoint that now overlooks both the Pacific Ocean and the "Terrible Tilly" lighthouse is supposedly the furthest spot west the expedition reached before they turned south and wound up buying blubber from Native Americans at Cannon Beach.

Back then, the conditions were probably as muddy, if not more so, than the ones we faced a few weekends ago. Many parts of the trail were reduced to slushy bogs. 30 minutes in, my shins were covered in mud. I was with a friend visiting from the east coast and his tennis shoes were no match for the trail. While they'll live to see another day, his socks, sadly, did not survive the trek.

A few miles in there's a creepy circle of cabins in the woods. Without context, we felt like we were descending into a hidden settlement of monster-fearing colonialists. A sign explained that the cabins are actually available for backpackers looking to spend the night along the trail. Still, one mystery remains: why didn't any of the cabins have doors?

Another highlight of the trail is an old World War 2 bunker buried beneath a hillside near the Tillamook Head viewpoint. Its moss-covered lookouts and ventilation system are completely empty now but, back in the day, the six room concrete structure was used to house a radar installation. While we were there a group of backpackers were camping on top of it and singing along to random tracks from License to Ill.

What if a time quake or an out-of-control DeLorean had come along to send these campers 60 years into the past? I wonder what the soldiers stationed out there would have made of them all yelling "WHAT'S THE TIME? IT'S TIME TO GET ILL!" on top of their bunker.

The viewpoint was fogged in so I was only able to capture a blurry iPhone photo of a few waves. While the hike's payoff was obscured, we did get to watch a pair of eagles duck in and out of the clouds.

Labels: nature

A few friends and I recently hiked along Eagle Creek. It's one of the dicier but most picturesque hikes to be found in the Columbia River Gorge. The trail is notorious for its vertigo-inducing cliffs and cable hand railings. While it's hardly as crazy as these two, accidents and even deaths have occurred along its steep drop-offs. The New York Times "Frugal Traveler" also wrote an article about the area back in May.

On a sunny Saturday though, Eagle Creek doesn't have much of a "Suspension Bridge at the End of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" vibe. While we were up there the trail was littered with hoards of backpackers, families and kilt-clad school groups.

We never did figure out what was up with the kilts.

Still, these photos may make the area seem empty and serene, especially the one of Punchbowl Falls. It served as the inspiration for the back cover of a Styx album in the '70s. A few hundred yards down from the waterfall there was an area deep enough for cliff-diving, not that any of us took the opportunity to give it a shot. We stood across the way while one swimmer took around five minutes to summon up the courage to take the leap.

The trail goes on for dozens of miles. We made it as far as Tunnel Falls before turning back. The 120-foot waterfall drops past a man-made cave. Passing through, it seemed like the walls were going to give way at any second and water was leaking through cracks in the ceiling. Exciting? Hair raising? Eh, maybe a little bit.

Labels: nature

It took me two trips to finally cross the "saddle" of Saddle Mountain and ascend its second peak. The first attempt with my friend Dan resulted in the two of us turning back once we encountered heavy wind gusts, drizzle and fog up top. We headed back up the first peak's rocky trail just as a rain-soaked woman and her genuinely terrified yellow Labrador Retriever were coming down it. Her male companions were about two hundred yards ahead and determined to conquer the mountain. I still wonder if she managed to catch up and talk some sense into them.

Saddle Mountain is a cruel joke on your shins. The last few miles of trail consist mostly of rocky terrain and steel grating. Once you pass over the top of the first peak and down into the saddle you find yourself up against a few hundred more feet of winding, slippery inclines. If you make it all the way to the end of the trail your reward is a breathtaking view of the western horizon and the Oregon Coast Range.

Not that I would know. On my second attempt I made it up the second peak but clouds rolling in off the coast obscured all but 120 of the 360 degree view.

Saddle Mountain is one of the more epic hikes I've been on in Oregon and it's a photographer's paradise. It's covered in wildflowers, boulders, jagged cliffs, forested vistas and trees that lean at odd angles. My Canon PowerShot A710 couldn't even begin to do the place justice but here's a Flickr gallery regardless.

When I go on a hike I tend to bring along a backpack filled with water, food and a change of clothing. As I was coming down the second peak I felt like I had just conquered Everest. My aching legs were covered in dust and my leather Crocodile Dundee hat was soaked with sweat. Then I ran into a woman in her 60s, her daughter and the daughter's adolescent kids. They were all dressed like they had gotten lost on the way to the Seaside Outlet Mall. The grandmother was casually drinking a can of Sprite as if climbing Saddle Mountain was about as difficult as a walking from her living room to the refrigerator.

And maybe that's the trick to beating Saddle Mountain with ease. Just act like the 2.5-mile, 1600+ foot elevation gain is like walking from a mini-van to the Dressbarn.

Labels: nature

Last week I had to spend a day out in Troutdale on a work-related field trip. After pulling off I-84 I immediately got lost and wound up in the parking lot of Edgefield. It's good to now know there's a 74-acre sized bar just up the street from one of my company's offices.

I detoxed underneath the manor's water tank after work with a plate of jambalaya and a pint of Rubinator. I wound up taking the incredibly long way home afterward. Here's an iPhone photo of the setting sun taken from Crown Point. The phone's lens turned the vista into some sort of eerie moonscape. Is that the Columbia River Gorge or is it the surface of some strange, alien world? I'll let you decide.

And, if you're curious, here's how Multnomah Falls is looking these days:

With the sun easing into the hills as I was driving back towards Portland, the Columbia was soaked in a sort of "fried gold" hue. I should have probably pulled over and taken a quick snapshot. Sorry, internets. I've failed you.

Labels: McMenamins, nature

I first read about Abiqua Falls on a local blog called Go West, Young Tex. The impression I was left with was that it was a "secret waterfall," both difficult and treacherous to reach. A friend living in Silverton claimed it could only be found by bushwhacking one's way through private property. Further investigation on his part revealed that this wasn't the case.

While reaching the falls this time of year doesn't require a machete and a Sherpa Guide, it's hardly pooch, kid or Mini Cooper friendly. Getting there requires a hardy, gas-guzzling vehicle. The road leading to the trailhead is rough, rocky and, on a busy day, an oblivious dirt biker lies around every blind corner. The trail down is roughly a mile but it's both steep and slippery. It leads up to a slick, 45-degree slide down a muddy path between two fallen evergreens. If you make it past this you're in for another 1/4 mile hike along a rocky creek bed. Your reward for all of this? A gorgeous basalt bowl and a vista that's a few hobbits short of being a Tolkien fever dream.

While the climb back up definitely qualifies as a "total pain in the ass," the falls are worth both the effort and, in my opinion, being given the black and white treatment in Photoshop. While the road and trail may keep the crowds away, the secret is out. The day I was down there, several fisherman and a family had overtaken the place. This didn't stop three teenagers from attempting to recreate a few of the early passages from Lord of the Flies though.

Further information and directions? You can find them over here.

Labels: nature, nikes

I recently spotted this insect on the fourth hole at the Eastmoreland Golf Course. My guess is that it's some sort of stick bug but I didn't know we had those around here. Maybe it's a Praying Mantis but aren't those much larger?

Labels: nature

Somewhere off the windy curves of US-20 near the town of Toledo there lies an old logging road that will take you to the crest of a hill overlooking a valley. If you head down into the valley along a series of mud-clogged trails and bridges overrun with stinging nettle you'll find yourself at Drift Creek. Why would you ever want to head down there? Because there's crawdads in the creek. Huge ones the size of a baby's arm that grant wishes if you managed to catch one.

Ok, so they're not as big as a baby's arm and I doubt any of them will grant you anything beyond a welt. Regardless, there sure were a lot of them in the creek when I was down there over the weekend.

Now hiking down to the creek isn't easy if you're anything like me, i.e., out-of-shape, clumsy and not used to walking down 60-degree declines with a 40-pound bag strapped to your back. Twenty minutes in to the two hour descent I tripped over a root and fell backwards into a bed of ferns and nearly impaled myself on a sharp branch, which sucked. Sometime later I had my first encounter with stinging nettle, which causes your skin to break out in white, itchy spots that take anywhere from two to twelve hours to go away. Long story short: I was the last member in our crew that deserved to wear a Crocodile Dundee-style fedora but I did anyway.

But at least I didn't purposefully rub stinging nettle on my arm like my sister's boyfriend, who was eager to find out if it was really as bad as the rest of us had described. His verdict: "this sucks." I washed my arm off in the creek. He decided to clean off his own rash by licking it. What probably should have led to further hilarity at his expense worked instead. The lick trick worked faster than creek water but I wasn't about to give it a shot.

Drift Creek was chock full of crawdads on Saturday. In one spot we counted two dozen of them lounging around and, yeah, some of them were very large by crawdad standards. "BD," who took these photos (I left my own camera sitting on my coffee table), managed to catch one and go three rounds with it. This photo was taken five seconds before the crawdad grabbed that stick and used it as a spear.

Ok, that didn't actually happen. Instead, BD took a few photos before gently tossing the crawdad back in the water. The crawdads didn't raid our camp in the middle of the night so I can only assume they much prefer posing for photos over getting tossed in crock pots. Our dinner consisted instead of pasta, a max-size Lunchable and a lovely '08 32-ounce bottle of Miller Hi-Life. Or, to be more specific, I drank the Hi-Life. Everyone else stuck with Pabst.

The hike out of the valley the next day was about as much fun as hiking four miles uphill with a heavy backpack.....yeah, you get the picture.

Labels: nature

A colleague and I failed to heed the time-tested advice of T-Boz, Left Eye and Chili and ran around Silver Falls over the weekend. There's some stunning and downright nature-ific beauty to be found within its borders. Please enjoy these snapshots in all their 7-megabyte glory....

This one is called Frenchie Falls, named for Roland "Frenchie" Lecompte, the assistant manager of Silver Falls State Park in the '60s. Why did he land the smallest waterfall in the place? No idea but my guess is that the then manager wasn't a big fan of "cheese-eating surrender monkeys." Note: I do not approve of this sort of nationalist name-calling because I am quite fond of cheese-eating surrender monkeys and their native culture. Crepes rock.

Also: there were chipmunks.

Labels: nature

I spent part of the weekend camping alongside a creek somewhere outside of the unincoperated town of Carson, Washington. As we crossed the Bridge of the Gods, either myself or my traveling companion remarked, "We've reached Twin Peaks country." Sure, the real Twin Peaks is upstate somewhere but something about the area screamed, "watch your step or you're going to find yourself bickering over rent control with the owner of the Black Lodge."

The weather was hit or miss and the billion or so people we were camping with rendered our site a mud pit by Saturday afternoon. Besides all that, we were able to engage in activities not limited to eating undercooked bratwursts, building a makeshift beer cooler in a creek, learning how to cook corn-on-the-cob over a campfire, walking on logs over a river, ducking BB pellets and watching this dog eat a live mouse.

Meet Moose. He and a mouse jumped into a bush. Only one of them returned. I'll spare you the details. Here he is actin' all like Daniel Day Lewis in Last of the Mohicans. According to his owner, this is the least of Moose's gastrointestinal accomplishments. Apparently, there's nothing he can't ingest up to and including an entire squirrel.

On Saturday we all went on a hike along Falls Creek. I strongly recommend giving it a shot, if you're into this sort of thing. Trail # 152A is possibly one of the most majestic I've hiked around here, although it could use more out-of-sight spots for pee breaks. Some of us packed beer instead of water and this led to a substantial amount of "awkwardness" involving two middle-aged women and a full bladder.

Nothing my camera can capture does the trail justice.

This snail showed up around the time we decided to abandon camp on Sunday.

An early morning rain shower turned our campsite into what I'm pretty sure would qualify as a bog. Heading back to town seemed like the right thing to do when even Moose seemed more content to hide in a tent than give this French culinary delight a shot.

Labels: dogs, nature, the weather