Mt. Thielsen and Diamond Peak

On my family's trip to Crater Lake, I noticed a wicked looking mountain as we traveled. It even ended up in the background of some of our pictures. It's Mt. Thielsen and a few weeks ago, I climbed it with the Santiam Alpine Club. It's the second technical peak I've climbed and one of the most fun.

Here's a picture of the mountain showing the gnarly summit. The entire hike toward the mountain, you are just looking at the steep summit block, wondering how you could possible climb it!.

We traveled along the ridge on the right side of the picture up to the summit block.

The summit block doesn't require very difficult climbing, but we did protect the last pitch with rope because there was quite a bit of exposure. Just the week before we were on the mountain, a climber had been rescued after falling and breaking a leg and arm and injuring his head. Here's a picture of the summit block. We climbed the pitch on the left, just above where all the people are standing.


Mt. Thielsen was a lot of fun to climb and since it was such a far drive from Portland, we decided to do two mountains that weekend. On Sunday, we climbed Diamond peak, which isn't a technical mountain, but was nonetheless a lot of fun. In contrast to the clear blue skies we had Saturday, there were low, scattered clouds on Sunday. The clouds made the already pretty hike even more interesting, because we climbed up into them.

This was the view of the mountain from my tent Sunday morning.

The climb to the top of Diamond Peak was mostly a hike, with a few areas requiring two-handed scrambling.  But the view of the mountain and surrounding area were awesome and made the hike a lot of fun.

The summit is just off my left shoulder in this picture.

By the end of the weekend, I'd racked up over 20 trail miles and 7,500 vertical feet. It was a great weekend. Check out the rest of my pictures form the weekend on flickr.

Ice Climbing

After the crevasse rescue class a couple weeks earlier, I was really looking forward to the Santiam Alpine Club's ice climbing program  in the middle of September. We were again on Elliot Glacier and it was incredible to see the changes that had occurred in the snow and ice since I had been on the glacier a month before. The snowfield that we had camped on during the crevasse rescue program was now a rocky and crevassed mess.



We spent the day Saturday and Sunday on the glacier, learning and practicing techniques for climbing vertical ice walls. On Saturday, we found some small, 10-20 foot ice walls that we could walk right up to and practice climbing. I became addicted to ice climbing very quickly. We belayed each other up the ice pitches, then rappelled down them, to squeeze in as much climbing as possible. We also practiced placing ice screws for anchors, using the skills we had learned during the crevasse rescue program. Here's one of the other climbers on one of the ice ledges (I haven't gotten the pictures of me from other people, yet).


Saturday evening, we returned to the campground a couple miles below the glacier (we didn't camp up on the glacier this time) so that we could cook a big group meal. One of the couples that were in the class cooks professionally, so they prepared us an amazing fajita burrito dinner, one of the best I've ever had and the perfect meal after a long day of climbing.

We spent Sunday rappelling and lowering each other 30 feet down into a crevasse and climbing back out of it. Unfortunately, because we had gotten a late start Sunday morning, we only got to spend a few hours on the glacier. I did get some video of me rappelling into and climbing out of a crevasse. I'll post it as soon as I get a chance to edit it.

Ice climbing was a ton of fun and it's definitely something I plan on doing in the future. There's a waterfall across form the cabin in Colorado that I've had my eye on for quite a while now...

SAC Luau

Over Labor Day weekend, the Santiam Alpine Club (SAC) holds its annual luau. The luau is a always in a secret backcountry location with access to climbing. This year, the Luau was in the Three Sisters Wilderness,  a gorgeous area in central Oregon with four volcanoes. I hiked in to the secret location with a couple of other  SAC members and our adventure started earlier than we'd expected it to. Because the location is kept secret and meant to be secluded, it has a history of being hard to find. Maps and GPS coordinates are given only to SAC members attending the Luau, only a few days before the weekend.

Our camp was about a half mile off of the nearest trail, but where to leave the trail wasn't clear. Fritz, Sue, and I thought we'd found the right spot, but it turns out we left the trail a little too early, putting a series of cliff bands between us and camp. Since we are a climbing club, of course we decided to go up them, rather than around them. It took a bit longer than we'd expected, but we reached camp around dinner time Saturday evening (after leaving Portland Saturday morning). It was the sound of the donkeys that finally led us in the right direction.

Donkeys? One of the great and unique things about the club's luau is that a couple of the members own donkeys. Each year for the luau, they load a few donkeys with gear and food for the weekend so that we can live and eat luxuriously in the backcountry. Here are two of the donkeys crossing a creek on our way out  of the wilderness.


Our camp meals were comparable to the meals you receive on a guided raft trip. Here's Byron, one of the club's leaders, cooking burgers Saturday evening.


Our camp was just off the ridge line of one of the mountains, Broken Top, which we climbed Sunday. Because we camped only a couple of hours from the summit, we got to sleep in, eat a good breakfast and have a nice, leisurely start to our climb. Here's a picture of Broken Top from our hike in. You can see the Northwest ridge (to the right of the summit), which was our ascent route.


Broken Top was the first technical peak I've summited, having class 5 rock (vertical sections) with high exposure (it's a long was down, if you fall). We protected the really exposed portions with rope. It was a great experience and a ton of fun. Here's a panorama that has the summit of Broken Top on the right and several other volcanoes in the background. From left to right are the Three Sisters (South, Middle, North), Mt. Washington, Three Fingered Jack, and Mt. Jefferson. You'll here more about those mountains as I climb them.

There are a couple of people from my climbing group on the summit and you can see there is quite a drop from anywhere on the summit block.

The views form the summit were awesome. Check out my flickr stream for the rest of the pictures from the luau.

Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue

It's been quite a while since my last update because a lot has been going on. I can't remember the last time I spent a weekend at home! I've been packing as much as possible into my weekends before the the weather in the PNW turns south (it's been gorgeous here since June).

In the middle of August was the Santiam Alpine Club's (the club I took climb school through this spring) annual Glacier Travel and Crevasse Rescue class. The class was on Elliot Glacier on the north side of Mt. Hood. We climbed up to the glacier early Saturday morning and spent the day practicing traveling in rope teams on ice, snow, and rock, learning and practicing crampon and ice axe technique and rope management. We also learned and practiced installing ice screws and setting up climbing and rappelling anchors in ice. We spent the night up on the glacier. I didn't use a tent and just slept in my sleeping bag inside a bivy sack. As opposed to the last freezing night I spent on a glacier, when climbing on Mt. Hood in the spring, I was plenty warm that night. With the exception of a little bit of rain and having to cover my head with my jacket, I slept pretty well. Here's our camp. My bivy is the dark green one on the far let of the picture.


We woke up with the sun on Sunday (I have more, incredible pictures of the sunrise on flickr). Here's the view from my bivy sack.


We spent Sunday practicing using pickets to set snow anchors and learning and practicing how to setup rope and pulley systems to pull fallen climbers out of a crevasse. I got to rappel 30 feet down into a crevasse and relax as my team members pulled me out. Here's one of my teammates rappelling into the crevasse.


I have a GoPro video of me rappelling into and being pulled out of the crevasse that I'll upload as soon as I have a chance to edit it.

Check out the picture of our camp above, then take a look at where Gabe's tent (the orange and gray one) was when we returned to camp Sunday afternoon. Luckily there was no damage.


I learned a lot that weekend and had a great time. I was looking even more forward to the Ice Climbing class a couple weeks later!

Mt. Washington

The last summer climb I got in before the rain started was Mt. Washington, two weekends ago. Mt. Washington is another technical peak with a couple of good pitches to climb and pretty significant exposure. Here's a view up the ridge toward the summit.


The hike to the ridge went through a significant recent burn area. I didn't take any pictures while we were hiking through it, but this picture from the summit gives you an idea of the extent of the burn. I'd estimate that more than 60% of the trees all the way around the mountain, within a 10 mile radius were burned.

Click here for the full size. You'll see smoke on the right side of the picture from a fire that was burning in the Three Sister Wilderness while we were on the mountain.

The climb up the ridge toward the summit block was a lot of fun, and a good warm up, with a lot of scrambling and exposed rocky sections. When we finally reached the saddle beneath the summit block, Our first team already had all the ropes set up, and had already summited (SAC had a large group climbing, so we split into three smaller groups and staggered our departure times to avoid congestion on the summit. I was in the middle group).

He's a view up the most technical section of the climb.

You can see one of our climbers roped up and about to climb. The rope generally follows the route and you can see the heads of the belayers at the top of the pitch.

Here's a picture of me, just past the crux on my way up. The people below me are where the above photo was taken from.

Below and to my left, the mountain drops away for a couple thousand feet.

Here I am after summiting, rappelling off the edge of the pitch in the picture above.


I got a bunch of video climbing up and rappelling off of the summit block and I'll post it as soon as I have a chance to edit it.

We had great views of Three Fingered Jack (on the left, which we were planning on climbing this weekend, but cancelled because of the rain) and Mt. Jeffereson. They're both on my list to climb.


Here's a picture of a couple of fulgurites on the top of the highest rock on the summit. Fulgurites are glass tubes that form when lighting strikes the rock.


Even though we split into three groups, the last two groups ended up summiting and descending together. Having so many people on the top of the mountain slowed us down a bit and we ended up descending just before sunset, hustling to get off the mountain proper and back on a trail before dark. We had to hike the ~5 miles back to the car after sunset, but the full moon lit the trail well enough to hike with our headlamps off.

I did get some amazing pictures of the sunset. Here's a couple, but check out the rest on flickr.

Crater Lake

The last stop I made with my family before we had to part ways was Crater Lake (after Crater Lake on Monday, I had to return to work and my family continued up to Bend for the rest of the week). I've seen pictures, heard about it, and even have it on my license plate, but I wasn't at all prepared for how incredible Crater Lake would be. For those that aren't familiar with it, it is basically a giant lake in the crater of what was once a very active volcano. It's five miles across and six miles wide and over 1900 feet deep, the deepest lake in the US and one of the deepest in the world. Since it's in the top of a mountain, no streams flow into it (none happen to flow out, either) so the water is amazingly clear and deep blue.

We drove and hiked to different areas around the caldera to get different views of the lake (it's so big, you really do need to see it from different places). Here's a pretty good picture of my parents at our first view of the lake.


This is one of two islands in the lake, known as the phantom ship. It may look small, but it's actually 170 feet tall and 500 feet long. This picture gives you a sense of how blue the water is.


Trey, Carsten, and I hiked down from the rim to the lake (there's only one trail that goes down to the lake, about 700 vertical feet). We went for two reasons; 1) to see the lake from up close, and 2) to jump in. The water was freezing, but we wanted to be able to say we swam in Crater Lake. Here's Carsten taking the plunge.

Here's the view we had standing on the rock before we jumped in.

Check out the large version to fully appreciate it.

Because Crater Lake is in a volcano, there are many other cool geologic features around it. The Pinnacles are large, hollow columns where steam vented up through and solidified ash on the mountain. As the surround ash eroded, only the Pinnacles remained. The one in the middle of this picture is over 160 feet tall.


The rest of the pictures we took at Crater Lake are definitely worth checking out on my flickr page.

California Redwoods

Since our rafting trip was in southern Oregon, we decided it was well worth the drive to northern California to see the redwoods. We spent a day in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park and were absolutely in awe at the size of the trees. Trey, Carsten, and I went on a hike through an area that the park ranger told us contained the tallest trees in the world. They were impressively huge, some well over 300 feet tall and 20 feet in diameter.

We also went swimming in a tributary of Smith River, with water so clear you could see the rocks on the bottom more than 30 feet below. We didn't get a good picture of how clear the water was, but my dad got a picture of me swinging off of a rope hanging from a bridge over the water.

Below is a video of a little adventure we had in the redwood forest. My dad joined Trey, Carsten, and I for the first couple miles of our hike. He was supposed to meet up with my mom at a campground by crossing a bridge over the Smith River. When we got to the right location, though, we discovered that the seasonal bridge wasn't there. There happened to be a small raft on the beach that a family had used to cross the river then left while they went for a hike. Trey and my dad commandeered the raft to cross the river, hurrying to finish before the owners returned. My favorite part of this is how hard Trey was laughing after they got into the raft.

Rafting the Rogue

My mom and dad, Trey and Carsten came to Portland last week for the family's summer trip. The first stop on our trip was a four day rafting trip on the Rogue River in southern Oregon. It was an awesome trip and everyone had a lot of fun. We saw a lot of wildlife, including a mink, otters, bears, deer, and many more.





There were 19 customers in our group and five guides. We had four oar boats, where we could just sit in the front and relax while the guide rowed, and one oar boat, where customers could paddle as well, and seven duckies (individual rubber kayaks) with us, so there was a good mix of relaxing and paddling through the whitewater. I've got tons of video from the trip and I'll post more as get them edited.

We also had incredible weather for the whole trip. It was sunny and in the 80s and 90s during the day, then cooled off at night. The water felt great to swim in. Trey, Carsten, and I slept outside under the stars all three nights.


The food was also amazing. We had fresh fruit at every meal, incredible camp cooking, and delicious dutch oven deserts every evening.

I won't go into a play-by-play of the entire trip, but here are some of the highlights:

We stopped at a few jumping rocks along the river, but the first one stands out a little more than the rest. Our mother, who is terrified of heights, jumped off of it. It took a little coaxing (ok, a lot of coaxing from a lot of people), but after several minutes near the edge, she did it. We even have video proof.

I cut out the first five minutes of the video while she's nervously looking over the edge, terrified to jump.

Though the video didn't turn out great from this incident, it was one of my favorites of the trip. Carsten and I were in duckies when one of the guides told us where a large hole was in the rapids. We both headed straight for it. I watched as Carsten got tossed out of his ducky, then the wave swallowed the bow of my ducky, flipping me forward and out of it. There was enough force involved to rip the rubber strap from my sunglasses. You'll see them dangling from my neck before the water pulls them away from me and I lose them completely.
(Video to come soon. I haven't had a chance to edit it, but I wanted to get the post up, since it's been a couple weeks.)

There was also a pretty scary moment on the trip. Before we entered Mule Creek Canyon, one of the guides had warned us about a few of the rapids in it. For the first one, we were told to go to the left of two rocks that mark the entrance of the canyon, known as Jaws. We were warned several times not to go to the right of the rocks. Carsten and I were in duckies and listened closely to the instructions.

In the last set of small rapids a few hundred yards upstream of Jaws, one of the men in our group flipped out of his ducky. I grabbed his boat and flipped it right side up for him while another duckier helped him over to where I was. The swimmer struggled to get back in his ducky and didn't get in until just above Jaws. I was the furthest down stream in the group of duckies, and by the time the man had gotten back into his ducky, I was too close to the rocks to get around to the left of them. I pointed my ducky to the right of jaws and started paddling aggressively, hoping I could power through whatever might lay beyond the first two rocks. As I passed around to the right of the two large rocks, I saw another medium sized rock about 15 yards down stream of the first two. I knew I couldn't make the sharp left turn to stay above the rock and rejoin the main flow, so I headed for a narrow channel of water (about three feet wide) to the right of the lower rock.

The strong current forced the left side of my ducky against the rock, lifting the left tube and forcing the right tube down. I threw all my weight to the high side, trying to keep the ducky upright, but the force of the water was too great. it quickly swallowed the right tube, pulling it and me under an undercut rock. The tubes of the ducky sandwiched against legs, pulling them with it under the rock. The huge amount of force from the water rushing around the rock had wrapped my ducky around the rock, beneath the water, pulling me under. I managed to keep my head above the water by grabbing onto the top of the rock.

While all this was happening, I had seen the rest of my group float by. I knew there were no good places to stop in the canyon and that the steep walls would prevent anyone from being able to make it back up stream to me. Self rescue was the only option. I pulled hard on the top of the rock and wrestled my trapped legs out of the wrapped ducky. The water flow pressed my torso hard against the rock and pulled my legs under it, but I was able to hoist myself on top of the rock and to relative safety.

I was no longer at a risk for drowning, but then came the question of what to do with the ducky. It was sandwiched and wrapped around the undercut rock, almost completely submerged. I braced my back on another rock and push with my feet against the stern of the ducky, but it wouldn't budge. The force of the water hitting it was way too high.

Carsten and another duckier, Alex, had managed to stop on a rocky beach 40 yards below where I'd been stuck. They worked their way to near where I was and Alex crossed over to the rock I was on. The two of us were able to push the back of the ducky out from the rock enough for the water to flow behind it and force it out from under the rock. Carsten stayed down stream to catch it when it floated free. My paddle was trapped under the rock by the rushing water, too, but after the ducky was freed, the paddle gradually moved downstream until Carsten was able to reach under the water and pull it out.

I paddled the rest of the mile long canyon very conservatively, avoiding any large waves and holes. I'd had enough excitement for the day.

We all managed to survive the rest of the trip with little more than lost sunglasses and sunburns and I think everyone had a great time. Check out the rest of the pictures from the trip on flickr.

A Year Long Dream

Trey and I spent the last two days of our Colorado trip exploring abandoned mines. On Saturday morning, we went to the largest mine that Matt and I had explored when he was in town on the previous 4th of July (Matt's Visit Part I). Trey and I spent over an hour underground exploring all the tunnels of the two level mine. We experienced the same location of bad air that Matt and I had found the previous year. When we climbed over and down a pile of rocks, our candle went out and wouldn't re-light. We had to turn around there, but my curiosity is still piqued about what might be beyond that section of bad air. I'll have to save that for another adventure.

We spent the rest of the day searching for other mines in the area that we could explore. Unfortunately, we didn't find any. The ones that we found that hadn't collapsed had been gated by the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety (don't get me started on them). Next time we'll have to search a little further from the beaten path (the rental Fiesta limited us to decent roads).

We had decided to save the biggest adventure for last. Sunday morning, we woke up early to head up the mountain above the cabin. I've known about a vertical mine shaft near the ridge of the mountain for a long time now. Almost exactly one year ago, Matt and I tried to climb down into the mine using a rope ladder and safety systems that he and I had made. We made several trips up and down the mountain between the cabin and the mine over the course of the week, one of them lugging our 80 lb rope ladder to the top, before finally attempting to climb down into it. I only made it about 20 feet down into the mine before deciding that our rope ladder just wasn't a safe system for climbing down into a vertical mine shaft.

Over the past year, since failing to climb down into that mine shaft, I've thought about it almost every day. I've spent a lot of time researching and planning the right way to explore vertical mine shafts. Since moving to Portland, I've gradually been collecting the proper equipment, learning the necessary skills (part of the motivation for my mountaineering class was that some of those skills would transfer to vertical mine exploration), and practicing climbing up and down a rope from my back porch. I knew I'd finally have the opportunity to use these skills when Trey told me just a week before the trip that he was coming, too (I wasn't going to explore any mines by myself).

In the days leading up to Sunday morning, however, I questioned the sanity of my plan. Was rappelling 100 feet into an abandoned mine shaft really a good idea? Would we dislodge rotting timbers or loose rocks that would crash down on top of us, or worse, cause a collapse? If something went wrong while we were down there, would there be any hope for rescue? I certainly didn't consider it to be safe, but I couldn't make a decision until I saw the mine again.

When Trey and I reached the ridge of the mountain Sunday morning and examined the entrance to the mine (there was a short horizontal tunnel before the vertical shaft) and the collar of the vertical shaft, I still had doubts about whether we should rappel down into it. I decided that if I didn't, I would regret it as soon as I left Colorado and I would continue to think about it every day until I actually did it.

So, Trey and I began to set up our anchor system, tying lengths of rope and webbing to two different trees outside of the mine (unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of our anchor setup). We then divided the climbing rope into two sections, one about 150' long to drop down into the shaft and rappel on and a second about 50' long as a safety rope for the person at the top of the shaft to attach to (we'd decided that we shouldn't both be in the mine at the same time, that someone should remain at the top, in case something did go wrong). Both sections of rope were attached independently to the power point of our anchor system. Here's a view of our climbing ropes going out the entrance of the mine to our anchors.


After double checking each other's harnesses, the rope, and the anchor system, I slowly lowered myself over the edge of the collar, into the vertical shaft. I took my time lowering myself down, examining the collar and the top of the shaft as I went. About 20 feet down, the shaft opened up, into a large cavern, following a vein to my left and right (I was expecting this, having gotten this far the previous year). I continued to lower myself another 20 feet, until I meet the steeply sloping wall (the first 40 or so feet of the shaft were vertical until it met the angle of the vein, which was at about an 85° slope). By this point, it was clear that we weren't really in a shaft, which would have been used simply as a secondary entrance or air shaft, but that we were in what appeared to be a stope. The cavern continued further than I could see in either direction and there was much more rock missing from underground than could be found in any of the nearby tailings.

Using my feet and knees to keep myself away from the wall, I continued to lower myself and in another 30 feet was out of sight of the top of the shaft. From there, I could see what appeared to be the bottom of the shaft 30 to 40 feet below me. I lowered myself the remaining 30 feet to a point where I could take my weight off the rope, where the angle of the rock had decreases to 60-70°. About 15 feet below me was the bottom of the shaft, full of rock and wood. To my left, the stope continued further than I could see and to my right, a small horizontal shaft ran beneath the stope. I disconnected from the rope and climbed into the shaft.

The shaft only traveled about 20 feet before it looked like it had been back filled with small rocks (they were too level to have been a collapse). I left the small candle that I had with me burning at the end of the shaft (more on that later) and returned to the rope. I didn't spend long looking around the bottom of the vertical shaft before I decided it didn't go anywhere and started my climb up the rope. Climbing up the rope at altitude, pressing against a slick rock wall was much more difficult than hanging from my porch, but after ten minutes, I'd made the 100 foot climb back to the top of the shaft.

After climbing out of the mine and back to safety, I told Trey that it had been both the "dumbest and scariest" thing that I had ever done (even more so than skydiving) and that I didn't think he should do it. Of course, the decision was his, and he decided the adventure was worth it. I helped him attach the descender to the rope and climb down over the edge of the collar, then watched as he slowly lowered himself into the darkness. I took lots of pictures.


Here you can just see his light about 70 feet down, just before he disappeared below the sloping roof of rock. There's still another 30 feet to the bottom of the shaft.


We had been communicating during his entire descent, but when he explored the small horizontal shaft near the bottom, I called his name several times with no response. I had a brief moment of dread, fearing the worst might have happened, and started planning my rescue.

Luckily, a louder yell from me elicited a response, and I relaxed, knowing that he was back at the vertical shaft, ready to make his way back up the rope. Apparently, I took enough pictures of him climbing up to animate:


Now that we'd both been able to explore the mine and made it out safely, we had to hustle down to the cabin to get it cleaned and pack for our flights that evening. Our trip to Colorado had proven very successful, and I'd accomplished a year long goal. And I have new plans for my next trip...



For those still curious about why I left the candle burning in the horizontal shaft at the bottom of the mine:
There is another abandoned mine with a horizontal shaft almost exactly 100 feet directly below the entrance to the vertical shaft. When Matt and I explored that mine the previous year, we discovered that at the furthest point back, there is a collapse. However, there is a small gap in the rocks through which you can see that on the other side of the collapse is a large opening (Trey reminded me that this might simple be the void left by the collapsed rock). There is also a strong breeze blowing through the gap, both of which add up to convince me that the horizontal shaft connects to the vertical shaft.

Trey and I went into the horizontal shaft on our way down from the vertical shaft we'd just explored and turned our headlamps off when we reached the collapse, hoping to see the soft glow of a burning candle through the gap in the rocks. We didn't. I'm still convinced that the two shafts were part of the same mine. I might not have placed the candle at the right opening. There was much more space in the vertical shaft than we could see or safely explore.

Update: I finally had time to go through my GoPro footage. It's not great because it was way too dark in the mine for the camera. I wish I had brought a still camera down with me.

Colorado for July 4th

My brother, Trey, and I went to Colorado for the 4th of July. Since it was just the two of us, we decided to pack in as much fun as we could. We arrived very late on the evening of the third and it took us til almost three am to get groceries, get to the cabin, and get the cabin opened (turn on the gas and water). We spent the 4th in Georgetown, a small mountain town two miles from where the cabin is, at their parade and barbeque. Because of the very dry conditions, there were state-wide fire and fireworks bans, so we didn't get to see any fireworks. Instead, we went for a hike above the cabin. I taught Trey my single rope climbing and rappelling system and we practiced rappelling down some cliffs near the cabin. It was a successful day and set us up for the rest of the week.

On Thursday morning we loaded the Ford Fiesta rental car with all of our camping and fishing gear and set off deeper into the mountains. When we stopped at a fly fishing shop to buy fishing licenses and mentioned our planned destination, one of the guides told us that when he went to Boulder Lake last year, he "didn't see a single fish." Trey and I were a little dumbfounded about what to do, as our plans for the next two days had been instantly shot down. Luckily, the guy that had just sold us our fishing licenses was a local and had a great recommendation for a place we could go hiking, fishing, and camping and as a bonus, do a little off-roading in our Fiesta.

The salesman sent us to Mohawk lakes. The Mohawk Lakes are a series of pristine alpine lakes that lie in a valley just above tree line. After some pretty sketchy road conditions and passing many larger vehicles in our little rental car, we made it to the parking area for the Mohawk Lakes trailhead. Trey and I claimed our camping spot, then hiked up the trail, with a goal of exploring the area that we would be fishing the next day. We brought our ropes and climbing gear with us, just in case we found anything to rappel down. The many hikers we passed on their way down the trail assured us that there were tons of great places (though the park ranger we passed questioned us, and informed us it wasn't a great area for climbing and rappelling). After a short hike through the woods, we got our first glimpse of the series of waterfalls that cut straight down the steep valley we would soon be climbing.

We did pass another two guys that had climbing gear, who informed us that the rappelling was indeed great, that they'd just rappelled down through the waterfalls, at one point hanging behind one. Of course, being fed by alpine lakes, the water is near freezing and they had used wetsuits, something Trey and I were unprepared for.

When we got closer to the waterfalls, though, we knew why the fishing shop guide had repeatedly asked us if we'd brought our cameras. The views were gorgeous. My pictures don't even begin to do this area justice.



After gaining 1000 feet over a two mile hike, we made it two the first Mohawk Lake, a shallow alpine like right at tree line. It is a gorgeous lake, and I plan on returning to camp there one day (there were many people camping and fishing on the lake by the time we arrived mid-afternoon).

There were breathtaking vistas in every direction. Check out many more pictures and panoramas on my flickr page (and see the larger versions).

It was late in the afternoon, but the weather was still good, so Trey and I decided to do some rappelling. We found a small cliff above a couple of small abandoned mines and set up our rope. I used my GoPro to take some videos of Trey rappelling, but unfortunately, the moisture in the camera housing had condensed and pretty much ruined the video. At any rate, here's a video of Trey rappelling down the cliff.

There was a neat crack running up the face and Trey decided to try and climb it. I set up a belay from on top of the cliff and despite his less than ideal boots, he made a successful attempt on it. It doesn't look like much in the videos, but it was a 25 foot cliff.



Just as Trey made it to the top of the cliff, we heard thunder on the other side of the ridge and had to make a hasty getaway down the mountain. Luckily, we made it down the mountain with little more than a few rain drops.

Dinner that evening proved to be another challenge. We'd brought hot dogs, baked beans, and a Coleman stove (we didn't bring real meat because of the fire ban). By the time we made it back to camp, Trey and I were both starving, and ready for a warm meal. Upon assembling the gas stove, however, I noticed the O-ring on the gas tank adapter was very cracked and dry. The first attempt to light the stove sent a large fireball right at my face. We tried a couple more times to light only the furthest burner from the leaking O-ring, but each time, the leaking gas eventually made it to the lit burner, igniting and making a secondary flame under the stove. Without a spare O-ring, it looked like we were going to be eating more PB&J sandwiches.

But we didn't give up without a fight. I carry dental floss in the emergency kit of my backpack and decided the waxy floss might suffice as a makeshift O-ring. I removed the dried, old O-ring and wrapped the O-ring track with dental floss until it protruded from the connector about as much as the O-ring had. I carefully slid the adapter back into the stove and crossed my fingers. After connecting the gas tank, we couldn't hear any gas leaking (when we hooked the tank up before, we could hear the gas hissing out). It turns out that dental floss makes a great O-ring in a pinch, and we were able to use the stove for the next two days with no problems. It's a good thing, too, because cold oatmeal didn't sound appetizing.

The next morning dawned warm and clear. We grabbed our fishing rods and set off, back up the trail to the Mohawk Lakes.


We stopped only briefly to admire the first, shallowest lake, then continued up to the next lake, higher than we had hiked the previous afternoon. Our goal was the first of the upper Mohawk Lakes; a deep alpine lake that supposedly held large fish for the taking. With determination, we cast our lines, willing the fish to bite onto the flies tied to the ends. The fish, however were completely oblivious to our flies, and we caught only one measly five inch fish in the two hours we spent ate the lake. The story remained the same as we spent the next couple of hours hiking to progressively higher alpine lakes. We could see the fish, but they wouldn't bite our lines. After spending an hour at the highest of the lakes and again watching the fish glide apathetically by our lures, we decided to head back down the mountain, stopping at each of the lakes one more time to try our luck.

When we arrived at the inlet of the second highest Mohawk Lake, we finally found what we were looking for. We'd found a spot where the fish were practically jumping out of the water to bite our flies. Withing two minutes of arriving at the lake, both of our fishing lines had been broken by aggressive fish (we were only using 5lb leader). As we were tying on new flies, we heard the thunder. This time, we could see the storm rolling through the valley perpendicular to ours. It was a tough decision; stay and finally catch the fish we'd been searching for all day and risk getting caught above tree line in a storm, or get down the mountain, having only caught two fish the entire day. A loud roar of thunder made the decision for us and we packed our poles, once again hurrying down the mountain to a safer elevation. We stopped to fish a lower lake, but again had no luck.

By the time we got back to the car, it was raining steadily and we still had to pack up camp. We did so hastily, as I wasn't looking forward to the rough, wet road ahead in our little Ford Fiesta. Luckily, with only a few bumps and scrapes to the underside of the rental, we made it back to paved civilization.

Though this adventure hadn't proved to be quite what we thought it would and the fishing was less than stellar, we had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the beauty of our surroundings. And the next two days would more than make up for the lack of adrenaline....

Practicing Single Rope Climbing

Over the past month, I've mostly been trying to climb Mt. Hood. The weather has been pretty bad, so I've only made it to the mountain once. The one time Ben and made it to the mountain since our first trip, we climbed about 500 vertical feet and the wind became so bad we turned around. The wind was gusting up to 40 mph and blowing hard snow and ice crystals, driving them into our faces. We decided to scrap that trip and try again later. Unfortunately, we haven't had good enough weather to try again.

I've added another piece of equipment to my single rope ascent/descent system, an ascender. In my previous post about rope climbing, I used a carabiner with a loop of rope in stead of a mechanical ascender. My new ascender makes the system easier to use, more versatile, and much quicker for climbing rope. Here's a picture of my ascender (a Black Diamond nForce Ascender) and my descender (a Petzl Grigri).


And a short video of me using it.

Mt. Hood Practice Climb

Friday, the 18th,  I set off with a friend I met through climb school for a practice climb on Mt. Hood. Our plan was to leave Portland after work, climb part way up Mt. Hood Friday evening, camp on the Palmer snowfield, then wake up early Saturday morning and climb as high as we could. Neither of us had summited a technical peak before, so it was largely a practice and learning climb, and we weren't sure if we'd make a push for the summit, or not.

We arrived at Timberline Lodge (a historic lodge and ski area on Mt. Hood that is the starting point of the standard route up Mt. Hood), geared up, filled out our wilderness permit and were on our way up the mountain by eight o'clock. From the parking lot at an elevation of 5,800 feet, we had a two-and-a-half mile hike up a snow field to reach our planned camping elevation of 8,600 feet. This portion of the climb parallels the upper ski lifts of Timberline Ski Area. Hiking up a partially groomed trail made the hiking easier in plastic mountaineering boots and a 30lb pack. About halfway to camp, the sun was setting and we'd reached the less protected area of the mountain, where the wind was gusting up to 20 mph.


We stopped for our first break to put on shell jackets and warmer gloves. From there on up, each time I stopped for a Clif Bar, the wind swept every bit of heat I'd worked up off into the night, so as to constantly prod me to keep moving. In the darkness, it seemed as though we were walking aimlessly, never getting closer to our goal.

Finally, after a three hour slog, we made it to the top of the ski lift (no camping is allowed in the ski area, so we had to get above it and into the wilderness area before we could find a place to camp). By that time, it was after eleven o'clock, the wind was howling, and we were searching by headlamp for a place to camp that was protected from the wind. There wasn't one. The snow was frozen solid, so digging a snow cave was out of the question; all we could do was use our ice axes to level two spots in the snow for our sleeping pads. We knew the sky would stay clear and weren't planning on sleeping for long, so we opted not to pitch a tent and just sleep under the stars. That turned out to be a mistake. It was my first time sleeping under the stars, without a tent, and when I cinched the mummy sleeping bag tight around my face, all I could see was a pitch black sky with thousands of stars glowing against it. I even saw a shooting star. When I rolled to my right side, I could see the lights of the city glowing in the distance (Hood is by far the tallest mountain around Portland). It was definitely the best view I've ever fallen asleep to.

That was the last time I smiled all night. Despite having a base layer, softshell jacket, down vest, down sweater and hardshell jacket on, and being wrapped in a lofty, winter-weight down sleeping bag, I froze my ass off all night. Shortly after we climbed into our sleeping bags, the wind shifted directions and cut straight across my sleeping bag, easily blowing through the thin fabric of the bag. I estimate the overnight temperature to have been in the low twenties, with a wind chill near zero (I was too cold to reach out of my bag and check the thermometer on my watch).

When we woke up at 3 am and saw a string of lights from the headlamps of other climbers making their way up the mountain, neither Ben nor I had the slightest motivation to leave the relative warmth of our sleeping bags and put on freezing cold boots to get the early start we would need to reach the summit. I just cinched the draw string on the mummy bag tighter and turned my face away from the cold air pouring through the face hole in a vain attempt to get a little sleep.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the sky started to lighten and the miserable night had ended. The prospect of sun gave me the motivation to slide my feet into freezing cold boots and leave the protection of my sleeping bag. Ben cooked breakfast (read: boiled water to heat up freeze dried meals) and by 7.30 am we were packed up and ready to continue our climb up the mountain. Here is our "camp" after the freezing cold night.


Helmets, harnesses, and crampons on and ice axes in hand, we began our trek toward the upper reaches of the mountain. The great weather meant there were dozens of other climbers on the mountain, so finding the route up was not difficult. The good weather and the hot breakfast helped to make our progress quick. By 10am, we'd climbed to over 10,000 feet, just over 1,000 feet below the summit.


We had decided by that time that it was too late in the day for us to attempt the summit. We could already see congestion near the top of the route and the sun had started to noticeably soften the snow (climbing becomes significantly more difficult in soft snow and the dangers of rockfall increase as the temperature increases). Despite knowing we weren't going to make the summit, we decided to climb another 500 hundred vertical feet to see some of the prominent features of the mountain.

We stopped just below the Devil's Kitchen for a rest (named for the hot, bare rock in the foreground, the steam venting from this fumarole lends a strong odor of sulfur to the air).

On the left side of this picture is the Hogsback, (a snow saddle that runs from one rim of the volcano to the other) where climbers gear up for the final summit push. That was our final destination for the day.

From our vantage point on the Hogsback (~10,500 feet), we could see dozens of climbers making their way up the last section before the summit (this congestion is one reason we opted not to push for the summit that late in the day: the large concentration of beginner climbers has caused accidents on Mt. Hood before). In this picture, you can see the route above us with lots of climbers heading toward the old chute.


After relaxing and enjoying our view from the Hogsback, We started to make our way down. When hiking 14ers in Colorado, I truly believe that going down is harder than hiking up. I found the opposite is true when it comes to climbing snowy peaks. Glissading (sitting on your butt and sliding down the mountain, using your ice axe as a brake) made the thousands of vertical feet we had climbed up in the past 13 hours rush by with little effort on the way down.

Despite the long, cold night and not reaching the summit, our climb was very successful in that I learned a lot. It was my first time walking with crampons, sleeping under the stars, and climbing on a glaciated peak. Ben and I also got to scout the route up the mountain and after learning from our mistakes, we'll be more prepared next time and are confident we'll reach the summit. I'm very excited to have a new hobby, as my climbing career is just beginning...

(as usual, the rest of the pictures are on flickr, and these are definitely worth checking out)

Climb School

Since I moved to the west coast, which is full of glaciated mountains, I decided to pursue a long time interest of mine; mountaineering. I signed up for a mountain climbing course several months ago through a local climbing club, the Santiam Alpine Club, and had been looking forward to it ever since. The first weekend of May was the outdoor portion of the climb school and was probably the most fun I've had since moving away from Colorado.

We camped along the Columbia River Friday night and woke up at 5.30 Saturday morning to get ready for the rock portion of the class.


At Horsethief Butte, we learned about rock climbing anchors, practiced belaying other climbers, practiced rappelling, and practiced many other climbing techniques. The day culminated with a 95 foot rappel from the top of Horsethief Butte (I brought my GoPro to film it, but unfortunately, the battery was dead). Here I am about to step off the edge.


And here I am rappelling down it.


We got to "sleep in" til 6.30 Sunday morning and after breakfast set off for Mt. Hood and a day on the snow.


We practiced walking on snow in rope teams, learned about snow anchors (such as a bollard, as seen on the Man vs. Wild episode with Will Ferrell), practiced catching a partner's fall while on a rope team, and at the end of the day, practiced self arresting if you fall and start sliding down a snow field. Here I am at the beginning of the day practicing walking with an ice axe (I'm on the far right).


One of the best things about the class is that I met a lot of people with similar interests. I've already done a practice climb part way up Mt. Hood with one of the people I met (more on that in the next post). The class has also opened up some other opportunities for me. I'm signed up for a glacier travel/crevasse rescue class and an ice climbing class later this year through the club.