Skiing at Mt Hood Meadows, Feb 16th

Ah, another fun day skiing at Mt Hood Meadows. Although I already wrote about going to Meadows last time I was there, again we had a fantastic day up in the mountain. The weather has been incredibly warm and sunny making it perfect for skiing. Just look at the views and sum to that a nice compacted snow and temperatures above 50 degrees. We arrived really early so we were able to enjoy the morning sun from the top of Cascade Express, the tallest lift in the mountain. After a full day of flying down the slopes and leaving Marci eating my dust, we enjoyed a light, late lunch in the car before heading back to the city.

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Camping at Cape Lookout, February 9th

Only in a few places you can go camping to the beach in the middle of the winter and still enjoy it. This trip was to a place called Cape Lookout. It is a park located in the Oregon coast at about one hour from Portland. Being low season, there was almost nobody camping in tents. Campers were staying in RVs or park’s huts. Since we were car camping, we made the trip in stages. Marci and Chris were the first ones to get there to set up the Condo (that’s the name of the tent we took), Jeff and Lisa with her dogs followed and later me with Amanda and Shia. Later on Tom and Chris joined us although they camped in their own tents. The trip there and arriving was under heavy rain, so there aren’t many pictures to share from the experience but the tent was already set up and decorated with all sorts of accommodations like music, decorative lights, food and a mirror ball! The only problem was that it rained the whole night. So much was the water that I ended up getting in the tent and inundating parts of it. Luckily we had enough padding to stay mostly dry. I was sleeping on an inflatable bed completely dry and ended up sharing it with Shia when her bed got wet. Saturday morning was a bit chilly but ran had finally stopped. We did set up a table for breakfast in a small, close by building with the bathrooms and a small hall. Midway thru our breakfast we received a visit from a park ranger to check if we had paid for our camping spot and cars and also to tell us that dogs needed to be on a leash. Upon seeing that our tent was all wet, he offered the hall. This hall is usually rented out for 25$ a day and can only be used until 10 PM, but being low season, the ranger gave it to us for the whole weekend without extra charges. The hall, apart from being considerably big and having chairs and tables, had a kitchen, sink and a heater! As you can imagine, everything we had in the tent was moved in minutes to the hall. Then we hanged everything to dry with the heater. After getting stuff ready, we went out for a short walk. We took a route going towards the coast. Weather was cloudy but not very cold. After that first, short walk, we head back to the hall to have a little lunch, pick up some stuff and head out again with the intention of getting to the view point. The trail was incredible bordering the coast line and going up the hills with drops and cliffs all the way down to the sea. The views of the coast with all the clouds moving in from the sea were amazing. Tom and Chris surprised us at the view point with a bottle of wine that we drank. That was not enough to keep us warm, maybe another type of liquor would have done it. We then headed back arriving back at camp when it was already dark. During dinner we enjoyed a delicious chicken with apples made by Amanda and very soothing massages given by Marci. Sleeping in the hall was clearly and improvement from sleeping in the wet tent. On Sunday we woke up, had breakfast and head out, this time towards the beach. The first part of the trail was the same we took on Saturday, but after it veers of, goes up the mountain and then back down to the beach. Once we made it to the beach we encountered some surprises. First off, it was completely desolated. All the extension of the beach was only for us. Besides that, weather was much better than the previous days with 61 degrees. Obviously the first thing to go was the shoes. From there Marci and I took a long walk on the beach taking pictures. You’ll see there was a lot to be entertained. At some point we found algae that resembled a whip. Marci started playing with it and obviously ended up hitting herself, still, there are some really cool pictures there. After that, Jeff and Marci entertained us with a pole fencing duel. We then had a small lunch before heading back to pack and head back home. On the way we made a stop at a Mexican restaurant were we enjoyed a nice meal and Marci took the final funny pictures of the day.

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Hike to Angel's Rest, February 3rd

Finally I went to Angel’s Rest! This is a hike that, although being near the city and very popular, I had not done yet. Maybe the reason is that it is a relatively easy hike, so my plan (which still stands) is to go to Angel’s Rest and then continue to Devil’s Rest. That combination would make the hike very interesting and much harder. In any case, we didn’t have any plans for Sunday and after the hike on Saturday, with Amanda’s rescue and all, we needed some activity. Jeff, Chris and I got together and decided to go to Angel’s rest. This trail is at the beginning of the 84 highway entering the Columbia River Gorge. It is a 2.5 miles trail that takes you up to a view point where you can see the river in both directions. Finally I used the YakTrax, that made it easy to go over the snow and ice we found on the trail. In the pictures you’ll see that the weather was very interesting threatening with rain all the time and very windy. That gave us constant clod cover changes with incredible light changes and reflections on the river. Certainly an easy hike with beautiful scenery honoring its name. Now I need to do Devil’s Rest so I can compare.

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Snow Shoeing at Tyee Lodge, February 2nd

The original plan was to go to Mirror Lake, but since we had a lot of snow in previous days, plows had no other option than to block the parking lot to Mirror Lake and hence access to it. Now, when they say a lot of snow it means that, at the time, there was more than 140% of the normal snow. At lower altitudes, the problems were even bigger with some locations exceeding 300% of the normal snow. Since we could not get to Mirror Lake, we decided to go on to Tyee Lodge for the day (the same lodge we went to for snow caving). From the trail head it was pretty clear the amount of snow. Just the wall where the access point is was about 12 feet high. Above that, we noticed that there were at least 2 or 3 feet of new snow on top of what we had when we went snow caving. All this snow was new and non-compacted. I was wearing my 30” snowshoes and with that, I was sinking up to my knees! As you could imagine, the scenery was spectacular. It was very hard to see how much new snow there was until we got to see a good reference like the entrance to the lodge that was completely submerged or the power lines just a couple of feet above us. After digging out the entrance to the lodge and rest for a bit, we went out to play in the snow. First we went up to another close by lodge used mainly by campers that go there just for fun. After watching them slide down in tubes, we decided to go look for slides and tubes at the lodge so we could do the same. Luckily there were a couple of slides and a tube at the lodge, so the only thing needed was a clear path to slide. The fun part started shortly after. The highlight of the day happened when we were sliding and Amanda just disappeared, literally, in front of a tree. We already knew about this danger and actually talked about it on the way to the lodge. For those of you who don’t know what a tree well is, it is just a hole filled with very soft snow right under (or around the trunk) of trees with low branches (pine trees mostly). These holes are formed because the branches prevent the snow from falling under. The problem is falling in these holes since you would sink in snow. For skiers and snowboarders this is particularly dangerous since they mostly fall head first. If there’s nobody near to help dig the person out, the possibilities of survival is around 10% and the person can suffocate or drown in snow. If there are people around, chances are better. Falling on the side or standing up or even trying to grab onto anything so the head is up when falling increases the possibilities of getting out without a problem (obviously avoiding trees with low branches helps). So Amanda was sliding down and fell into a tree well. In the pictures you will barely see her head and one arm sticking out. Check out the video as well. Luckily we were all there and rushed to dig her out without major issues. After that we continued sliding and having fun. Nothing like spending a day with deep snow and practice our rescue skills and knowledge of the dangers in the mountain

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Snow Caving at Tyee Lodge, January 12th

This was probably one of the most fun trips we’ve ever done. After discovering the Trails Club of Oregon during our holiday adventures, we decided to visit the other club lodge. Tyee lodge is in Mt Hood close to the route that goes up to Timberline lodge. It’s very close to the road even though is not marked in any map. After parking and getting ready, we took the trail to the lodge that did not take more than 15 minutes. The lodge itself is spectacular and even with more services than the lodge in the Columbia Gorge. This one has electricity and central heating! After we got there and had some nice hot cocoa and help a bit with weekend set up, we went out to play in the snow. The idea was to dig snow caves and learn a bit about it. We learned that digging a snow cave is laborious but not as difficult as it would seem. Not only that, we found to be incredible that you can dig a big hole in the snow without having it collapse on you. Since we were a big group, we divided in small teams to build the caves (caves must be built by at least two people for security reasons). The resulting caves were incredible. One had a couple of “beds” on the sides, another one had a bed at the end, another was build with a division simulating two rooms and another was just big. We also found out that while being inside you’re really protected from the elements and not as cold. Besides that, if the day is clear enough, light will pass thru the snow giving the interior an amazing blue glow. For a while we thought it was because the cave ceiling was thin, but after we measured and it was at least 2 feet thick. With all this experience we are now ready for a night out in snow caves which will happen soon. Obviously after the caves were done, it was time for some fun. In the pictures you’ll see that it was a great day.

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BTW Most of the pictures in this album (the best ones actually) are courtesy of Marci Dru.