Archive for 2008

Tired of pictures from Oregon yet? Great, me neither!! On Thursday, we took the whole day and drove the scenic route, through the Columbia River Gorge, into Portland.

There’s pictures in the gallery.

View Larger Map

The day was sunny and beautiful, and we got great views of distant volcanoes and mountains before descending into the Columbia River Gorge, which we followed into Portland. We had lunch at a great diner at The Dalles (you have to say the “the”), and then meandered down the river, gawking at kite surfers and windsurfers for about an hour.

Just before Portland, we pulled off the interstate and drove the scenic by-way for a while, stopping to check out a few waterfalls along the way.

We stopped at the classic Multnomah Falls also, which is advertised as being the second tallest year-round waterfall in the US. This fact, I’ve sense learned, is widely disputed. In any case, it’s near 600ft tall cascade through the dense, lush foliage of the Pacific Northwest rainforest was incredibly beautiful. Even the crowds weren’t too bad. Though, Bruce did spend an unfortunate (for him) amount of time bending over his camera in front of mine. :)

We arrived at Mark’s aunt Mary and uncle Bill’s house right on time at 6:30p, had a great taco dinner, and then wandered over to my uncle Jerry and aunt Jean’s house for bed.

My favorite part of climbing has almost always been meeting other climbers. We are a group, a community, and it seems everybody who pursues the sport has an interesting story to share. On our second day of climbing at Smith Rock, we met a fun fellow climber named Menno.

I think I was getting tied in to climb and clean The Outsiders, when Menno, being a very nice helpful person, ran and grabbed my shoes for me. I’ve been climbing in Montrail Zealots for the last year or so, and when he brought them over, he asked how I liked them. I know Mark and I have been climbing a lot of trad in recent years, and these shoes are considered “aggressive” and best for sport or bouldering. But I love them. I buy them a bit too large, and they fit me great. They have flexible soles that work well on slabs, and tiny toes that work great for edging and thin cracks. I expounded on the virtues and wonderfulness of my shoes to Menno as I tied in.

“That’s great,” he said. “I owned the company that made them.”

That’s when I noticed that Menno was wearing a Montrail jacket, a Montrail hat, and Montrail shoes of his own. Menno is Menno van Wyk, the former CEO of Montrail. About a year ago, they sold the company to Columbia, and the climbing shoe line has since been discontinued.

“Oh,” I said. “Wow. So, that’s why I keep getting them on close-out for super cheep.”

He laughed. He told me the person who designed my shoes was from Oregon, and often climbed at Smith Rock. My shoes were designed with technical, edgy, routes like those at Smith Rock specifically in mind. It makes a lot of sense, and made me immensely happy to be climbing in the birthplace of my shoes.

Menno said he had quite a few pairs of shoes left over, and as he headed out for the day, he took Mark’s card, with the casual promise that if he had any more size 5 Zealots’s laying around, he’d get in touch with us and send them my way.

Great guy, that Menno. Too bad my shoes are discontinued.

Wednesday was our last full day in Bend, so we took advantage of some beautiful weather and headed north for Smith Rocks. This time, we left early in the morning, with the intention of getting in as many routes as possible on our last day to climb. The park was much less crowded, and we managed to get on some fantastic, classic routes. Definitely check out all the cool pics in the gallery.

We started out the morning on Cinnamon Slab, a section of the Dihedrals. We had a very popular 2-pitch climb to our left, but nobody seemed interested in our fun, super-easy warm-ups.

We climbed Easy Reader (5.6), Right Slab Crack (5.6), and Lichen It (5.8) in the morning. While we were working on Lichen It, a fellow named Menno wandered up. His partner had enough climbing the day before, and he saw our group of three and wondered if anybody would be interested in partnering with him. We explained that, as Bruce is a newer climber, we couldn’t really break up the group, but offered him a climb on our TR. He graciously cleaned the route for us, and ended up climbing with our group for the rest of the day.

After our warm up, we wandered back over to Morning Glory Wall, and, miraculously, the most popular climb in the park was open! We tied a rope on Mark and tossed him up 5 Gallon Buckets (5.8).

This put us in line for the rest of the moderate routes on Morning Glory. After we all took a fun trip up the gi-normous pockets, pods and huecos on 5-Gallon, we got to enjoy them again when we climbed up the route 6 feet to the right, The Outsiders (5.9).

Mark’s parents came up to Smith Rock for a bit in the afternoon, and they enjoyed watching us climb up the hugely pocketed wall. Mark’s mom hiked up to the base of the wall and quizzed us on the climbing process, safety gear, and our techniques. She seemed satisfied that we weren’t going to die any time soon, and enjoyed watching everybody climbing.

At the end of the day, Menno offered to lead Light On The Path (5.10a). We got the first bolt stick-clipped, and he worked on that direct start for a good few minutes before figuring out a path. It was tricky. After all of that work, and the climbing all day, he was pretty tuckered out when the pockets ran out and the crimping started. He took a few good lead falls, and then lowered and decided to call it a day.

Mark pulled the tricky start with a high, possibly gratuitous, heal-hook and monkey’d up the bottom of the climb. He finished out leading thin top section in good style, leaving Bruce and I with the assurance that the climb wasn’t too hard. Bruce had a heck of a time with the start, but we got him on the route. He climbed to failure in the buckets and then lowered down. I took a few tries to figure out the bottom, myself, and then happily cruised the rest of the climb, stopping frequently to shake out my hands and arms. It was a great climb to end the day on, with huge pockets, mono pockets, pebble pinching, crimpy ledges, and even a soft-ball sized rock glued into the volcanic rock of the wall, which you can sit on to clean the anchors!

We hiked out in the growing dark, happy with a day VERY well spent.

On the day after the snow and the storms, we piled the family into the rented Cherokee, and headed south to check out Crater Lake National Park. I was really excited to finally be able to visit this park. For years, I’ve had an inherited poster on the wall of my office, that describes sonic mapping of the volcanic caldera where the lake is located. Now I would finally have a chance to see the lake for myself.

The lake is almost 6 miles across, and at 1,943ft deep, it is the deepest lake in the US. The lake fills the volcanic caldera when Mt Mazama collapsed more than 7,000 years ago. This is the first time I’ve ever been to a place that a mountain used to be. Mt Mazama, once 12,000ft tall, is no longer in existence. Instead, a deep, lovely blue lake sits at 6,000ft. One of the most interesting things about this huge lake is that there are no inlets or outlets. It is filled with local rain and melted snow, and water does not overflow the caldera because of evaporation and seepage through the walls of the crater.

There are, of course, a bunch of photos in the gallery.

Crater Lake national park is about three hours south of Bend, or Sunriver, OR. The park mostly consists of just the lake and the surrounding ridgeline. A road runs all the way around the crest of the crater, weaving in and out of the edge of the crater, and providing a myrid of beautiful spots to stop and view the lake.

On our visit, the wind was blowing cold and bitterly over the edge of the crater. The lake below was rippled, blue, and beautiful. We arrived just before lunch, and took in several views before stopping to eat very tasty meatball subs and chilli dogs at the visiters’ center on the southern rim of the crater.

We spent the afternoon driving all the way around the lake, and stopping frequently to enjoy each new view. There were volcanic islands and rock features, old growth forests, waterfalls from ancient seeping springs, and amazing views in every direction. We all had a great day, and probably, as a family, took close to 1000 pictures in the course of the day.

Every turn of the road revealed a new profile or secrete of the lake. And the most astounding part of the day: we were nearly alone in the park. Throughout the day, we saw only a few other cars and a hand-full of families at the visiters’ center. For a park that receives millions of visitors each summer, we were very lucky to be there on a beautiful, sunny day, when the crowds were completely gone.

On Monday, the weather forecast looked awful. The skies were clear over our condo, but all of the weather sites promised that we were wrong, it was actually cold, raining and snowing outside. Mark and I relaxed for a while, but eventually we decided to get out for as long as we could. The rest of the family had arrived the previous Thursday, and had already done some local sight-seeing. Mark and I decided Monday was as good of a day as any to enjoy the local Oregon features.

I wandered around the resort at first, taking pictures of the lovely yellow aspens and the clear blue skies. There’s a lot of photos from the day in the gallery.

We then drove a few miles south to check out Newberry National Volcanic Monument. This area of mountains, forests, lakes and rivers contains a huge portion of the regions surrounding Sunriver, but we wanted to see some Oregonian waterfalls and the Big Obsidian flow.

The Obsidian flow was all it promised to be. A huge mountainside covered in sharp, glossy black obsidian and pumice rocks. The flow was a mere 1200 years old, and I wondered what it might have been like to be living in the area when this volcano erupted. The rocks were sharp, and beautiful. It looked like great stuff to make knifes and arrowheads out of, but none of the local museums and Indian stores carried obsidian replicas. Too bad.

On our hike off the flow, the sky darkened, and we started getting snowed on. Regardless, we hiked out to see the waterfalls at the mouth of the lake. The dark, overcast skies made for perfect waterfall shots, and I worked that camera until my fingers and face were numb.

And now, one more shot from the day. Mark caught this sign on the way into the monument. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it until Mark pointed it out to me. Looks like Oregon is getting good work from their inmates!

On Sunday morning we moved slowly. Mark’s aunt and uncle from Portland were down visiting for the weekend, and it was nice to spend time with them. We all went out to a nice, long lunch in the afternoon, and then headed up to Smith Rock late in the day.

Mark was completely shocked when we pulled up to the huge volcanic extrusion in the middle of the Oregon desert. In his mind, we were going to climb in Oregon, which was a quiet place, covered in pine trees. He imagined sport climbing to be more like the Needles in South Dakota. Instead, we were faced with one giant rock, crawling with people all over it. From the trail, we could see nearly 100 people hiking and climbing on the cold, shady side of the rock.

Once we hiked over to the sunny side, we were confronted with the CROWD. There were people everywhere. People climbing routes, set every 4ft, along the wall for the next mile or more. It was loud, and crazy, with babies crying and dogs barking. Mark’s parents stayed down near the river and we hiked up to the wall looking for a moderate or two to get on.

It was fun to talk to the climbers at the base of the crag. I don’t mind a crowded belay station, especially when everybody is friendly and having fun. On Sunday, we kept quizzing people as to what they were climbing as we hiked down the wall. I’d ask “Hey, do you know what this route is?” And the response, over and over again, was “I dunno. Go ask that guy…” or “I dunno. It’s a 9, I think. Or something.”

Eventually we made it over to the Peanut, and Mark roped up to lead Hop On Pop (5.8). It was a great route for the afternoon. Long, fun, knobby, thin, balance-y, my kind of route. Mark was officially freaked out by this time, finding the rock to be a conglomeration of cemented pebbles, and not the usual solid-feeling volcanic rock we’ve climbed on. He also forgot all of his climbing pants, and was leading in blue jeans. He took his time, tested every pebble before pulling on it, and got a good redpoint. He came down happy to have it over-with.

Bruce worked his way up, and found the climbing to be slightly tougher than his last trip out to Joshua Tree. I climbed the route, and loved it desperately. I moved the TR to Peanut Brittle (5.8) for the second climb of the afternoon, and then took a quick lap on the very nice climb. Bruce seconded and Mark cleaned the route. By the end of the afternoon, we were all feeling much more comfortable with the knobbies and pebbles that cover the slabs of Smith.

The sunset seemed to come early again, and we headed out of the park looking for dinner. After tasty brats on the grill at the condos, Mark and I soaked in a hot tub and finished off a near-perfect day of vacation. Yeah, life can be really good.

Mark’s parents got very lucky this spring, and managed to get their hands on two (yes TWO) condos in Bend, OR, for a week of vacation this October. Mark and I were completely excited to finally have a chance to visit the Pacific North West, and to get in some climbing at the legendary Smith Rock.

So, we packed and planned. With our climbing gear, flying would be very expensive. The easiest, and cheapest way out was to simply drive the Prius, and hope the 1000 miles went by quickly. We planned to camp along the way, and try to get out to Oregon as fast as possible.

View Larger Map

On Friday after work, we dropped off Liv at D-Liz’s house (her vacation home) and headed northwest into Wyoming. Even though we are still on daylight-savings time, the sunset came early, and we found ourselves driving across the inky dark desert of Wyoming just west of Laramie. We ended up camping for the night at a KOA set directly next to the interstate in Rawlins.

We set up the tent in the pitch dark, and Mark woke up at 6am, in the pitch dark. He made coffee and set up the tent heater for me. I woke up because my head got hot and the tent smelled like bagels. We had camp broken down and were on the road before sunrise on Saturday – around 7am.

The drive across the western states was beautiful and long and boring and lovely. We saw mountains and deserts, waterfalls and rivers, the Great Salt Lake, the Oregon Trail, and a lot of road. We didn’t stop much – we didn’t have to, really. And we rolled our tired but happy selves into Bend (and then Sunriver, where the condos were) at about 8:30p local time Saturday night. We spent $75 on gas in the Prius and $20 on camping. Not too bad for a long day on the road!

As mentioned in a previous post, I won a cool watch as a semi-finalist in the Timex Return to the Outdoors contest. After getting many requests to see the aforementioned essay, I finally got a copy back from the people at the website. Here it is!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m STUCK!” I scream out to anybody who is listening. I can hear my friends laugh out loud and then begin yelling encouragement back to me. The situation does not seem as funny to me. I’m wedged in the teeth of a giant crack in a granite boulder that is, quite literally, older than dirt. My right hand is wedged deep in the darkness before me, and the crystals of the granite are slowly, excruciatingly, tearing the skin on the back of my hand. My left hand is braced against the edge of the rock in front of me, pressing my shoulder and back into the sharp crystalline rock on all sides. My feet kick helplessly as I try to find some way to move. Up or down, it doesn’t matter at this point, I just need to move. I wiggle my knee into the crack and flex my thigh, the muscles expand and bite into the rock on either side. Or maybe the rock is biting me. It gives me enough purchase to slowly ooze up another 6 inches, and reposition for the next move.

I am climbing a wide crack in Vedauwoo, Wyoming, and it is one of my favorite things to do! The rock is old, and it knows better than me. I am little, and the mountain is big. When I finally make it to the top of the crack, and then the top of the rock, I am exhausted in all ways. I sit on top of the rock, bleeding a little, feeling the wind on my face, and feeling utterly content. On all sides of me are huge rock formations. The wind is howling through the aspens below, making them glitter in the sun. I can see a hawk gliding overhead and a herd of antelope grazing on the plain to my south. The air smells like dust, rock, sagebrush and sweat. My friends are chattering a hundred feet below me. And I am truly happy. Vedauwoo is a wild and special place. It is secluded and exposed at the same time. The climbing is painful and exhilarating. The wind blows and I feel full of life. I will come back to this place again and again. I hope to return often for the rest of my life, bringing family, new friends, and eventually my own children and their children. My house may not be in that wild valley, but it is my home.