After spending the night in Portland with Nate's uncle (I got some great cuddle time with their cat, Buddy), we were off to South Sister, a 10,000 foot volcanic peak in south-central Oregon. The plan was to ski to the summit and then back down. Unfortunately, the road was still closed so we were going to have to ski 6 miles before we even got to the trail (which was still under many feet of snow anyway). We tried to pick the lock on this thing, but my thieving days are long behind me now.

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WanDilson > Back out to Washington again to visit Nate. This was my fifth trip, and this time I'd be spending two full weeks there. We decided we'd spend the first week in Oregon, which was cool because I had never been there. We had to stop in Portland to visit Nate's uncle John, whose lakehouse we would be staying at after the first leg of our adventure. But before we stopped in Portland we wanted to do a dayhike in the Columbia River Gorge. This picture was taken on a trail in the gorge; turns out it wasn't the trail we wanted. Rather, it was a two mile trail that apparently everyone in Oregon knew about and decided to visit that day. It was pretty though, aside from all the people.

WanDilson > After that trail we found the correct one, which was a slightly more difficult 12-mile round trip hike. The name of this waterfall escapes me, but it was at the end of the hike. It was pretty big. Oh, it just came to me. Tunnel Falls. Because the Indians blasted a tunnel in the bedrock behind it so white people like me could go under it. That was nice of them.

WanDilson > This was a good warmup trail, but I didn't get many great pictures on it. Thanks to hiking the wrong trail first, we ended up doing a little over 14 miles this day, which was pretty grueling for somebody as out of shape as myself. Little did I realize what was in store for me...

WanDilson > After spending the night in Portland with Nate's uncle (I got some great cuddle time with their cat, Buddy), we were off to South Sister, a 10,000 foot volcanic peak in south-central Oregon. The plan was to ski to the summit and then back down. Unfortunately, the road was still closed so we were going to have to ski 6 miles before we even got to the trail (which was still under many feet of snow anyway). We tried to pick the lock on this thing, but my thieving days are long behind me now.

WanDilson > Per the usual, nothing ever goes exactly as planned for us. First we had to stop in a town called Bend and pick up some food and detailed topo-maps of the area. That went off without a hitch. Then we took off down the wrong road out of town, so we had to turn around and go back to Bend. That ended up being about a 40 minute detour, and unfortunately not our last trip to Bend that day. We finally found the road we needed and drove about a half-hour down it to where the road was closed and proceeded to gear up for the start of our trip. As Nate was putting on his avalanche beacon, however, we realized that mine was in a bag of gear I had wisely left behind in Seattle. Given that this area had received several new feet of snow over the previous couple weeks and it was warming up rapidly, avalanches were more than a minor concern. So we headed back to Bend yet again to rent one from an outfitter. The guy that helped me asked how I liked Bend. I said, "Oh, it's great, this is my third trip here." He said something along the lines of "Yeah, its a great place to visit", and I said, "No, I meant TODAY." Anyway, around 4:00 we finally got started (our goal had been 1:00). That's me on my skis with South Sister in the background.

WanDilson > This was my first time skiing like this, and I was actually using something called a split-board, which is a snowboard that comes apart so you can ski up with it and snowboard down. You might be wondering how one skis UP a mountain. I wondered the same thing. Turns out, there are these things called "skins" that you put on the bottom of your skis that allow you to do this. I don't know what they're made of, but the material lays down flat when the ski slides forward but then sort of raises up and keeps you from sliding backward (to an extent). Anyway, it was a bit awkward at first and I fell a couple times along the road. Nate was nice enough to photograph this.

WanDilson > That's South Sister again. We were told that the road hadn't been plowed at all, which turned out not to be the case. You'd think that would be a good thing, but we were planning on being able to just ski up the road, but instead were forced to the sides where the snow had been thrown. This made for much slower going than we had anticipated. On a side note, this place was freakin gorgeous.

WanDilson > This picture was taken around 7:30. The next picture was taken the following day. The reason for the gap in picture taking was that, at this point, we still had a couple miles of road to do and then start up the mountain, where we would gain around 1200 feet in about a mile and a half. So we had to get moving. Around 9:00, just as the sun was starting to set, we finally made it off the road (after passing up the trail first, of course). We debated on whether we should continue tonight, but we had a GPS, a compass, a detailed map, and headlamps, so we decided to stick to our credo: "It'll probably be all right." So we continued up the mountain through forested slopes that got continuously steeper (as it was getting dark). Luckily for us, there was a full moon that really lit things up, which turned out to be rather useful since it's fairly difficult to navigate in a forest when it's pitch black, even using headlamps. So onward we marched through the forest in the dark, stopping periodically to take compass readings to make sure we were still on the right track. I learned fairly quickly that there's an upper limit for the degree of slope that the skins will make it up, so I had to do some traversing. Unfortunately for me, my particular skis don't hold an edge as well as regular skis, so traversing proved difficult as well. So I fell a few more times. The first two times were ok, but on the third I slid down about 20 feet that I had just gained. At this point the novelty had worn off and I was fairly pissed. Then, about a half hour later, I fell for the fourth time, sliding down even further than I had before. I flew into a rage, weaving a tapestry of profanity that under normal circumstances I would have been proud of. I then went completely silent, trying to collect my thoughts, take some deep breaths, and calm myself down. I thought, "Hey, things could be worse. My pole could have also collapsed or something." Then I realized my pole HAD collapsed and I wasn't able to fix it at that point. So I was completely exhausted and EXTREMELY pissed off, not to mention I was in a forest on a mountain skiing uphill at night (how freakin stupid are we, anyway?). It's hard to explain the level of exhaustion and frustration I felt unless you've been in similar situations, but suffice it to say this was probably the low point of all my backcountry adventures, which is saying a lot. But as luck would have it, we were only a few hundred yards from the plateau where we had planned on camping that night, so I took off my skis and hoofed it the rest of the way.

Oh yeah, where was Nate during all of this? Well, he wasn't in much better spirits. His ski boots had turned his heels to hamburger after about three miles on the road, and he was probably just as exhausted as I was. He was ahead of me, and after I fell for the last time and went silent he called down to make sure I was ok. I told him I was fine and to keep going, I would catch up later. He's the one that discovered we were almost there and called down to tell me about it. I replied that I was glad, because I wasn't going any farther.

After spending the night in Portland with Nate's uncle (I got some great cuddle time with their cat, Buddy), we were off to South Sister, a 10,000 foot volcanic peak in south-central Oregon. The plan was to ski to the summit and then back down. Unfortunately, the road was still closed so we were going to have to ski 6 miles before we even got to the trail (which was still under many feet of snow anyway). We tried to pick the lock on this thing, but my thieving days are long behind me now.