Coastal hike, aquarium Halloween party and kayaking, Oct 25th

If you got the idea from the title that we did a lot of stuff this past weekend, you are absolutely right. In the hiking group I lead, we encourage people to become hike leaders. Part of that process requires that they organize and lead a couple of events with our help. This time, I helped Laurie organize this weekend that she decided to pack with multiple adventures. First we drove to the coast and did a hike to Harts Cove. This is a promontory that overlooks the ocean. It’s a short/easy hike to a beautiful meadow where, weather permitting, you can sit, relax, have a bite and enjoy the view, which we did. She even opened this event for dogs so we had plenty of four legged friends. After the hike, part of the group headed back home while with the others we went to a nice restaurant to have diner. From there, Laurie took some of us (the overnighters) to the aquarium where she is a volunteer diver. She gave us a behind the scenes tour and took us up to the diving platform. That night was the Halloween party so not only visitors were dressed up but divers were also wearing costumes and diving in the tanks with all the little critters. Once Laurie went in, we went down to take pictures from the other side. It was packed with people but we had a great time. Later that night, back at the bed&breakfast where we stayed right in front of the beach, we got in the hot tub to soak for a while. I guess it doesn’t get much better than that. On Sunday we had a great breakfast and then headed out for another adventure. We stopped at a place to rent Kayaks and went paddling for a while. For me it was a real adventure. Although I’ve been in kayaks and canoes before, I’ve never done it with Shia. It took me a while to get her in the boat but after a while she was fine and even falling asleep while I was doing all the work. In the pictures you’ll see we had amazing weather conditions considering it’s the end of October, and we certainly took advantage of it.

Hike to High Bridge in Eagle Creek, Oct 19th

Being the leader of the Hiking Meetup group, I’ve been getting emails recently requesting shorter, closer to town, later, easier hikes. Knowing I was going to be a bit tired after the 25 mile bike ride on Saturday, I decide to finally go to Eagle Creek and take a group up to High Bridge. Eagle Creek is, next to Multnomah falls one of the most visited trails in the Columbia Gorge. Unless you do this trail in the middle of the night, you can be certain you will see other groups of people. Not only that, this trail offers the opportunity of making it as long or as short as you want and you still can get beautiful views. For this group High Bridge sounded like a perfect distance and elevation gain. So we started at around 11AM doing a nice stroll alongside the Eagle Creek. Soon after starting, we noticed that the trail is actually carved from the hillside rocks. As you climb, there are portions of it with a cable hand rail and sheer cliffs that overlook the gorge formed by the creek. One of the big features of this hike is Punchbowl falls which you can descend to. Once down at the creek level, you can admire the rock formations on both sides and the waterfall up ahead. This waterfall is also visible from above. Continuing on, you get to High Bridge which is a bridge (duh) that crosses the gorge. Once you look down from it, you’ll realize where the “high” comes from! It even makes you wonder how where they able to put it there. This bridge just hangs from both side of the gorge which is formed by two vertical rock walls that drop a couple hundred feet to the creek down below. In one of the pictures you’ll see the bridge on the top part and the creek all the way to the bottom. Really impressive. After a lunch break we headed back to the cars doing the same route.

Mountain Bike Ride along the McKenzie River, Oct 18th

There are a couple of really interesting things that I wanted to see along the McKenzie river, one was a couple of really beautiful waterfalls, and the other is Tamolitch pool. This pool was formed thousands of years ago when lava coming from a volcano cut the flow of the river. Now the river disappears under the lava flow and reappears from underneath in this pool. Problem with organizing this was that doing the whole trail to see them all, required walking about 26 miles one way. Add to that the drive to get there which takes about three and a half hours and it becomes clear that is not an easy thing to do. Doing a bit of research, I found that the same trail can be used for mountain biking. Furthermore, if you take it in one direction, the whole thing is downhill, so I thought that it could be doable as long as we had one car at the end and another at the start. So that was the plan. Well, I learned that 25 miles downhill on a trail is a lot longer than 25 miles downhill on a road. Now don’t get me wrong, the trail is fantastic with ups and downs and turns and twists and rocks and roots, but 25 miles of it is a lot. The one thing that makes this trail even more difficult is the beauty of the place. It is almost impossible not to stop every so often to take pictures and see the river, the waterfalls and all the fall colors. The only bad thing about this day was that at some point, we missed the trail and had to get on the road for a couple of miles and missed Tamolitch pool. Oh well, nothing is perfect. I guess I will have to do it again

Hike to Cast Lake, Oct 11th

Another trip that was supposed to be a backpacking trip but it wasn’t. Still it was a great scouting trip and now I know I can camp out there. The only problem of doing this in a single day is, well, that you have to do the whole thing. In this particular case, that translated to 13 miles and almost 3000’ elevation gain, certainly not an easy hike. We started on the Cast creek trail going up on a very dense forest so much that, for a while, we did not get any sun and the temperature was rather cold. After a couple of hours of grueling ascend, we finally got to a clearing with a magnificent view of Mt Hood. This time it looked much better because we got some snow a coupe of days ago. From that point on, we started getting some snow on the trail all the way to the lake. The lake itself is in a basin which shelters it from wind. It was not surprising that the temperature was a bit higher there. The lake itself is really beautiful with a small peninsula in the middle that almost divides it in two. We circled the lake to get to a sunny spot where we stopped for lunch and then continued around to get back on the trail. For our return, instead of doing the same trail, we all decided on the longer route just to complete the loop. I guess nobody was expecting that we would be climbing even more before heading back down. Luckily, for me I guess, we got to a couple of very nice view point near the summit of ZigZag Mountain. The views we got from there was a nice reward for our effort. After that, it was a long descent into the deep forest back to the road and to the cars. A very long hike that ended at sunset, just in time to get dinner.

Hike to Lemei Lake, Oct 4th

I was originally planning on doing this as an overnight trip but weather didn’t allow me to do it. Up to certain point, I’m glad it didn’t. Not only was it raining all day but all trails were flooded and al campsites where muddy. Still, it was a great adventure. Even with the rain, we were able to enjoy some really nice fall colors, eat wild berries and cross numerous streams. This hike was in the Indian Heaven wilderness, a place that always surprises me with its beauty and the number of lakes. In the almost 8 miles we did, we passed by a couple of ponds with no names, Junction lake, Lemei Lake, Clear Lake and Bear Leak (I think). Sum to that about 7 or 8 stream crossing and you get the idea. I think the pictures will tell this story better than I can.

Walk with the dogs at dog heaven, September 28th

When you get a beautiful, sunny and warm day when it is supposed to be cold and rainy, you have to get out. So we took our fellow four legged friends to Dog Heaven for a long walk and swim. It was a fantastic day, dogs had a lot of fun playing in the river and we got a long walk. It was very interesting to see the water level a couple of feet below normal. We walked a long section of the river that’s normally under water!