Timberline Lodge and Eagle Creek

This past Saturday, I set out to do a difficult hike in the mountains near Mt. Hood. It was called vista ridge or something equally scenic sounding. The trailhead is located off of a tiny little, one lane National Forest road. It took me a long time to find it, and even longer to climb the mountain on the tiny little track, every now and then slamming on brakes and pulling halfway off the road to avoid colliding with oncoming traffic.

I never made it to vista ridge. As happened last time I tried to do something in the mountains, snow got in the way. This time, the road leading to the trailhead was snowed out. I thought that by late June the snow would be gone. Most of it is, but apparently good mountain hiking doesn't start until at least July, more likely August. In lieu of Vista Ridge, I decided I would go back to Timberline Lodge and see what it was like on a clear day.

Timberline Lodge is built on the south slope of Mt. Hood at an elevation of around 6000 feet. It was built in the 30's as a Works Progress Administration project. It's a bit of a drive to get up there, but the view is phenomenal.


First off, Mt. Hood is only a little over 11,000 feet, so Timberline Lodge is over halfway up the mountain. The views south to Mt. Jefferson were gorgeous, as you can see below.


The snow is still deep up there, so there were a lot of people out skiing and snowboarding. The most fun I had though, was sitting in my car and using my binoculars to watch the climbers nearing the top. The Lodge is a good place to begin an ascent, and there were a lot of people climbing on Saturday. When I was watching, there was a pair of climbers pretty close to the top. There was a large camp with at least twenty or thirty people further down, as well.

Timberline Lodge was pretty neat. I stopped briefly at Trillium Lake on the way back (that's where the first picture in this post was taken), but I had to be home by 6 to watch the Gold Cup Finals (as disappointing as that was), so I only had time for about a thirty minute hike.

I stopped back in at the place I had hiked Memorial Day weekend. As you can see in the picture below, a lot of the snow has melted. Once I rounded a bend and was back on the north face everything was inundated with snow again, but there has been some improvement. This path had at least 5 feet of snow on it a month ago.


My brief hike on Saturday was not enough to sate my desire for exercise, so I woke up with the dawn on Sunday to go to Eagle Creek.


Eagle Creek is an incredibly popular trail, and this was a nice weekend, so I decided to get there early. This plan worked out perfectly. I was on the trail by 7 am (it is about an hour away), and didn't see another person for the first three miles of the hike. After three miles I came upon the area where everyone camps, so there were a lot of backpackers waking up, but it was still quiet and peaceful. They were more interested in breakfast than anything else.


Part of the reason Eagle Creek is so popular is the number of waterfalls it offers. I skipped a few, but I had read about the Punchbowl falls and wanted to check it out. Apparently "punchbowl" is a type of waterfall in which the water pours into a large basin, but these waterfalls were also named upper and lower punchbowl falls.


Here's a shot from above that gives you a better idea of the punchbowl nature of the falls:

The hike was good. It was chilly when I started, but warm when I finished. I was on the trail early enough that I could enjoy the falls all by myself. By 9 am I had walked about 6 miles and made it to the line where the trail turns into a wilderness area. This seemed as good a stopping point as any, so I stopped there to break my fast.

On the way out I passed a ton of people. The parking lot and the sides of the road for a half-mile after were full by the time I got back. Definitely glad I got an early start. It may have been a bit chilly, but the solitude and quiet was well worth it.

Deschutes Brewery

On my trip west, Deschutes was one of the first Oregon beers I tried. I believe Becca ordered one at a bar in Denver. During the time that I spent traveling around before my internship started, I bought a couple of six packs of their pale ales: Mirror Pond and Red Chair. They were not particularly well suited to my tastes.

I listened to a podcast recently in which they described the Deschutes Mirror Pond pale ale as being perfectly balanced. To me, they had too much emphasis on malt and lacked the hop character I look for in a pale ale.


So, for a while I avoided Deschutes altogether. Eventually, I ended up at an interesting little bar in The Dalles called "The Barbecue." This is a local joint occupied, it seemed, exclusively by old guys who wanted to talk to us about fish; this sort of person prefers their beer cheap and flavorless, so our options were limited. As far as local brews, they didn't have anything on tap, but the barkeep did have a Deschutes Black Butte Porter in fridge. I took it. It was my first week in The Dalles, and I can only justify drinking so much Rainier (for those of you unfamiliar as I was, Rainier is essentially the natural light of the Northwest).



The Porter was good. Not the best I'd had (that distinction belongs to the Legend Porter), but pretty good. Since then, I think I have tried everything they had on offer, and there are a few I am pretty fond of.

The Inversion IPA is even hoppy enough for my tastes. In the podcast I mentioned previously, the head brewer at Deschutes said that each batch of Inversion is made with eight pounds of whole-cone hops and then topped off with some additional hop oils.

The Twilight summer ale is my favorite, though. I believe it is categorized as a bitter, but it is just a really nice, light, well-balanced beer. Perfect for consuming on a warm summer day (which we've even had a few of now).

So, in conclusion, if you like a hop-forward pale ale, I wouldn't suggest picking up a Deschutes. The Mirror Pond, Red Chair, and Bachelor ESB all disappointed me in hoppiness. If, on the other hand, you prefer a well balanced pale ale with a more subdued hop character, then these beers are perfect for you. I'll stick to the Inversion IPA.

State of Work

Work has been incredibly slow the last few weeks. The majority of the juvenile salmon outmigration is over, and it shows. In the last three days of observation I have not seen a single attack. I could probably count the number of gulls I've seen on one hand. It has not been terribly exciting, but I am getting a lot of exercise walking from zone to zone over and over again.

At the height of the season, when the yearling juveniles were migrating downstream, there were constantly fifty or more gulls feeding. My highest count was over a hundred. This highest count happened on one of the days that the lamprey were also outmigrating (it only takes them a couple of days).

Things slowly petered out after that, and aside from a small spike when the second wave of lamprey migrated past, there has been little action since. Right now the only fish moving downstream are the year zero chinook. They are very small and the spill is very high, so they make hard prey for the gulls it seems.

It is unlikely to pick up for the remainder of the season. According to previous research, the majority of the fish should be done. The only remaining species are sockeye, and they migrate out much later and in much smaller numbers. Particularly when compared to the smolt-storm that is the simultaneous outmigration of all the other species.

That's alright, though. More exercise and more time to listen to my podcasts, right?

Also more time to take pretty pictures of sunrises, even if they all have a dam in them.

The Wedding

I apologize for my recent absence. I was busy preparing for, and traveling to, Nathan and Gillian's wedding. The trip from Oregon to Florida is a long one. It took me about 22 hours on the way there (there were some delays), and around 13 on the way back. I am totally exhausted from the long weekend and will be going to sleep as soon as I finish writing this on Tuesday afternoon.

The wedding was a blast. It is always great to get together with the family, and you can't beat south Florida as a location, or your brother's wedding as an event for such a get-together. There was a great deal of eating, drinking, and merry-making, as would be expected. Lounging on the beach was particularly enjoyable, serving as a break from the still frequently chilly weather here in Oregon.

I did not take many pictures. What I do have are a few pictures of the Sundy House and Del Ray Beach. A large portion of my readership was at the wedding, but for those of you that weren't, I'll include some photos.

The Sundy House had some nice features: an impressive tropical garden, a chemical-free freshwater pool with fish to keep it clean, and a smaller pool with siamese algae eaters who enjoy nibbling the skin off your feet. This last feature was a bit strange, but people have been known to pay a great deal of money for this treatment at ritzy spas. It is a bit unnerving. Despite sitting there for probably twenty minutes, I still involuntarily kicked every time one would start chewing at my toes.

This is everyone enjoying the pool full of siamese algae eaters.


The fish crowded to Tim's feet en masse. Occasionally, one would come over to me, but Tim had a consistent six or seven at all times. His flesh is apparently the tastiest of our lot.


And here's a bunch of us enjoying the fine Florida weather.

A Bit of Football

Last weekend the Rapids came to town. With them came Jon and a whole herd of supporters. Ryan and I drove into the city to meet up with them and watch the match.

Portland's first game in the MLS was apparently in Denver, and the local supporters groups had thrown them a nice tailgate. They returned the favor when Denver came to town, so there was a tailgate for us with free food and beer. Not a bad deal.

After the tailgate we headed over to The Bitter End to watch the USMNT play Panama. Lizzie Strohmeyer joined us there. Had a few drinks, most notably the No Pity Pale Ale, the official beer of the Timbers, brewed by Lucky Labrador in Portland. If you missed it, the Panama game didn't go very well.

The Rapids v. Timbers match started shortly afterwards. We had a good time in the Rapids supporters section. There was a good crowd and we were loud. The Rapids put one away in injury time to win it.

Afterwards we went back to The Bitter End. I had cut myself off during the game, because I had to work the next morning. We hung out in the bar for a few more hours, enjoying the camaraderie of the surprisingly friendly Timbers fans. Almost all of them were nice even though we'd just beaten them.

Eventually, very late in the night, we headed home. I snagged a meager hour's rest before waking up for the AM shift. I am still recovering from that, but it was a good time.

Update: Here's a picture that turned up on the BSG facebook page. It is Ryan, Jon, and me singing a Rapids tune in The Bitter End after the match.

Full Sail

Full Sail is one of the closest breweries to The Dalles. It is located in Hood River, only about 25 miles away. It is also one of the breweries I was most familiar with when I first arrived in Oregon. Their Session Lagers have a pretty wide distribution, and I am pretty sure Jon and Ian were the first to introduce me to those on a trip to Colorado.

This picture shows all of their year-round beers:

The LTD in there is a limited series Lager. Year-round, they create these small batch lagers with slight differences. I am not sure if they cycle through a set recipe list or if they just come up with a new recipe each time. I've had a couple, and they tasted pretty much the same to me.

I've tried all the beers they have on offer. For my Roommate Ryan's birthday we took him to Hood River to check out Full Sail and Double Mountain. The Full Sail beers are good, but none of them really impressed me. They are drinkable, but they lack flair.

Which is perhaps why their Session Lagers are so popular. Here's a definition of a session beer as taken from beeradvocate.com:

"Any beer that contains no higher than 5 percent ABV, featuring a balance between malt and hop characters (ingredients) and, typically, a clean finish - a combination of which creates a beer with high drinkability. The purpose of a session beer is to allow a beer drinker to have multiple beers, within a reasonable time period or session, without overwhelming the senses or reaching inappropriate levels of intoxication. (Yes, you can drink and enjoy beer without getting drunk.) "

Their lagers are exactly this. They are very drinkable (read: not too flavorful), and not too alcoholic. And considering they go for about the same price as PBR around here, I have had more than a few of them.

Their other beers seem to have been dragged down along with these lagers, though. According to Nathan, one of my bosses who is into beer and homebrewing, the Full Sail beers used to be more exciting. They used to be really flavorful, high quality beers, but as their size and distribution grew, the quality declined. This is a pretty common occurrence as breweries grow in size.

So, in conclusion, Full Sail makes drinkable beers. They are not the most exciting or flavorful beers. They might be good for someone new to craft beers, and they are definitely good for a barbecue. I am pretty fond of the Black Lager as a session beer.

McCall Point

Last Saturday was one of the first really nice days of the year. The sky was clear, the wind was soft, and it was warm. Almost too warm. It felt like summer finally. So, I wanted to go for a hike. I picked McCall point because it was close and I didn't feel like driving too far.

McCall point is located on Rowena Plateau, which I have posted about before. It's no more than about ten minutes away from The Dalles. McCall point doesn't open until May, so I had been unable to hike it on my previous visit.

When I had gone to Rowena Plateau the first time it had been sort of unpleasant. The wildflowers hadn't shown themselves yet, and the wind was fierce and cold. This time around though, it was warm with a soft breeze and many wildflowers. The reptiles were also stirring. I saw two snakes (a racer and a western terrestrial garter) and a lizard that some scared hikers had misrepresented as a snake after seeing only its head in the brush (southern alligator lizard).

The hike isn't all that long. The trail runs around 1.8 miles up to a meadow with an elevation gain of 1070 feet. After that, there is another, fainter trail that continues on for an undetermined length up to another crest, ending at a barbed wire fence denoting someone's farmland.

It wasn't a long trail, so I hustled on the way up and ran a lot on the descent, intent on being sore the next day. It worked.

The view from the top was beautiful. Rowena Plateau is already pretty high up, so stacking another 1300 feet or so on it makes for some nice vistas. From the top there was a great view of both Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams.

So, here are some pictures of those vistas. I apologize for the dark patches in the pictures, there is a piece of lint on the inner lens of camera that I cannot for the life of me remove. Anyone have any ideas? It's not the outer piece of glass, it's on the smaller lens behind that, which is impossible to get to.

This is the view west toward Hood River. Hood River would be right where the river turns there.


Here's Mt. Hood across a field of wildflowers.


And this is the view north across the gorge toward Mt. Adams.

Memorial Day and Mt. Hood

I had a good Memorial Day weekend. I laid pretty low. I had just finished a 10-day workweek making up for the days I took off for Becca's visit, so I was ready to relax. Everyone else in the house was either off visiting friends or had family flying into Portland to visit. This made for a nice weekend spent doing a lot of reading and relaxing in a large, empty house.

On that Sunday I drove to Gresham, just outside Portland, to get fitted for a tuxedo for Nathan's wedding. On the way back I decided to drive through the mountains. I had talked to a fellow at work who suggested that Timberline Lodge was a very pretty place. It is on Mt. Hood at around 6000 feet. He told me to go on a clear day for maximum vista enjoyment. There is a ski slope there, and during the summer you can ride the chairlift up to the top. I asked him how late in the year I would have to wait for that and he told me "could be tomorrow."

The day was overcast. Definitely not ideal, but I have driven 84 to and from Portland a number of times, so I figured I might as well go through the mountains anyways. It would at least be something new.

At around 4000 feet it looked like this:


It was rainy and there was a lot of snow still on the ground. As I climbed, I passed in and out of clouds. At times there was even blue sky. Timberline Lodge, however, was seated in a nice cloud of drizzle. I decided to come back another day.

As I continued on eastward through the mountains, the clouds quickly broke. I stopped at one of the sno-parks and went for a brief hike. There was still several feet of snowpack, but it was dense enough that I could walk on it fairly well even without snowshoes or skis.

I didn't go too far. While it was possible to walk, the difficulty took away my desire to do a long hike that day, as I'd hoped to. But I did enjoy hiking for a while. I've never been to a place where you could go snowshoeing in what is practically June. It was pretty neat. Here are a few pictures:

Late Spring

I am told this has been an unusually wet and cold spring. The Rose Festival happened over Memorial Day weekend, but none of the roses had bloomed yet. Apparently it was not folly for Becca and I to attempt to go to the garden during her visit. Last year they started blooming in early April. Though that was the earliest on record. This year is the second latest so far.

The security guard at John Day told me that typically by this time of year we would be having 90+ degree days. I don't think it has climbed out of the 70s yet (as of Memorial Day Weekend)

On top of the cold, there was been a ton of rain. Water levels are very high. On our way back from Prineville, Becca and I had to take an alternate route because the John Day river was too flooded for smaller cars to pass. When we did cross the river later on, you could see the tops of trees sticking out of the river.

I suppose one of the nice things about the dams is that they work very well as flood control. The water levels in the Columbia are higher than usual, but no one is in any danger. They are just spilling a lot more than usual. Which actually helps the salmon smolt get downstream, though it also increases the gulls' chances of nabbing them.

The picture below is of the nav-lock peninsula at the John Day Dam. This is one of the areas that we do our observations from. When I was setting up this post I noticed that I don't have a good comparison picture to show you how much higher the water is, so I will just have to try to explain.


See those rocks sticking out of the water on the left side of the picture? Typically those stick out about 8 feet. There is normally a nice wide beach there as well. But it isn't a big problem, because we can just stay on the concrete wall that the picture was taken from.

As I said, it is not a big problem and no one is in danger, but unfortunately that is not true for my shelter. In the pictures below you can see that there is a bit of a stream running through the shelter. It had also taken a bit of a beating from waves by the time these pictures were taken.


Since these pictures were taken I am told all but the outside supports has been washed away. But that's also not such a big deal. Pretty soon it should be summer here (or so I hope), and we won't want to shield ourselves from the wind anymore. I am looking forward to rebuilding. It will be a lot easier if I am not worrying about the wind. It is no mean feat to build a windproof barrier using only oddly shaped pieces of driftwood.

And here's a picture of Becca taken at Prineville Reservoir. They also had a bit too much water there.


EDIT: I first wrote this post on Memorial Day. This past week I worked at John Day again. I took some more photos. These new photos are as of 6/5. The water has gotten a lot higher and I hear it hasn't peaked yet.

Compare this photo to the first photo in the post. They are taken from basically the same spot. This is the increase on the already very high water level. It has destroyed all the plants that used to make up that little cove.


Many of the native fishermen's platforms have taken a beating. Some were built high enough, but more than a few have floated away.


The shelter isn't such a great place to sit anymore.


At this point, it is totally gone, replaced by extremely fast growing seaweed.


Here's a picture of the little catwalk I have to walk down with a wave breaking over it. Most of the time they just spray upwards, but occasionally they hit at an angle and send a lot of water over the top. I almost got creamed by a wave last Friday. On Sunday I got sprayed pretty thoroughly.

Fortunately, to the left of the catwalk is mostly solid ground. There is one section with water on both sides that makes me nervous every time, though. Also we wear life-jackets at all times on the navlock peninsula, so I'm pretty safe. It's my electronics that I worry about.

Chipmunks

At Prineville Reservoir, there is a friendly community of chipmunks. They came around every day at mid-morning to nibble bits of marshmallow off of roasting sticks and climb into the trash bag.

I tried not to feed them much. I am guilty of giving them a couple almonds. And I did not shoo them away from eating the crumbs of my breakfast. The upside of this is that I was able to get some pretty cute photos. Whenever I lowered my camera to get a good angle they would run up as if it was a food item. Anyways, here are the best ones:



This one is my favorite. Those cheeks are stuffffffed with s'mores crumbs.

Double Mountain Brewery

When I first arrived in Oregon I was a little disappointed. I had been dreaming for months about all the amazing new beers I would find. It is hop country, so I expected to find the best pale ales and IPAs I'd ever had. But for the first few weeks, I just wasn't having as much luck as I expected. Don't get me wrong, all of the craft breweries I had tried were good, it just took me a while to find a really amazing brewery (and then a few more after that).

Enter Double Mountain. Double Mountain is a constantly full little brewpub in Hood River. Hood River, if you don't remember, is like the cool version of The Dalles. It is the windsurfing capital of the northwest and has lots of cool shops and restaurants as well as two breweries (Double Mountain and Full Sail).

The first Double Mountain beer I had was their India Red Ale or IRA. It was fantastic. Since then I have tried every beer they have on tap, and have been blown away by most of them (Their IPAs are good, but not up to par with the rest). The IRA is still my favorite, but they also make an amazing Kriek. A Kriek is a Belgian style lambic made with cherries. It's sour and tangy from the cherries and the brettanomyces bacteria that it is inoculated with. This particular Kriek drinks almost like a wine. It is really delicious, I am bummed that it's no longer on tap.

Unfortunately, I think they are out until the cherries are in season. They use locally sourced bing cherries, so they only make it once a year. I guess they either make a lot or age it a long time though, because I had a glass in April.


They also have, as it turns out, amazing pizzas. Becca and I stopped there for dinner on the way to the airport. The pizza pictured above is the "truffle shuffle." It is a white pizza with green onions and portobello mushrooms that have been marinated in white truffle oil. It was just as delicious as it sounds and looks.


The pictures in this post can be credited to Becca and her nice new camera. Thanks, Becca!