It had come time for Emily and I to take a break for ourselves and do a hike that my mom couldn’t manage with us. Emily came home early in the morning from Carrie’s bachelorette party at the Edgefield McMenamins and we packed up Leo and headed out to the Coast Range to climb Saddle Mountain again. The first time we did it was a few years ago in the clouds with Jason, Jenn, Scott and Daniel so we were excited to see the views on a nice crisp, clear day. Read on…
Today Emily and I took my mom and Leo out to the Gorge for a hike up Wahclella Falls. The whole hike is just over 2 miles round trip with less than 400 feet of gain so we thought it would be a good first step for my mom. read on…
This week I headed to the Trimble office in Westminster, CO for an Advanced Inpho Training course. At QSI I was recently promoted to lead up the Advanced Imaging Team in the Portland office and I felt it would serve the team well if I were to get some more advanced training in the software that we use to process the imagery. There’s not much to say about the training except that I ate well, actually was able to feel snow fall on me this winter, and got to spend the weekend after hanging out with my totally awesome aunt and uncle Roger and Catherine and my cousins Cherie, Adam and Asia. Always a fun time catching up with them! Oh… and I got to see some bunny rabbits around the pretty cool hotel I stayed at - Drury Inn, which provided two drinks tickets for me each night of my stay.
Today Emily and I drove out to Sauvie Island to check it out. This is an island created by the split of the Willamette River into the Multnomah Channel and it’s entrance into the Columbia River. It’s small at about 26,000 acres and has only about 1200 residents but it is less than 10 miles from our house. We had heard that the island contains a lot of wildlife, especially birds, so we decided to drive out in the winter when the leaves aren’t on the trees to obstruct our views. Read on…
Emily and I went to the Annual Columbia Chapter of ASPRS meeting at the Bridgeport Brewery. It was the first meeting I’ve attended and I thought it might be dry and just a bunch of industry talk but instead it was really great. There were general announcements of office position changes but then we had an amazing presentation by a master brewer about the history of beer styles. We got to sample some amazing beers and also get a walk-through of the entire brewery. 
Emily and I were able to meet a bunch of people in the remote sensing industry and had a great meal as well. I definitely plan on getting more involved in the chapter going forward, especially since one of their main focuses will be the emerging drone acquisition market. 
Chris Holm had come up the night before to hang out with us and catch up. We were all excited about doing a bit of skiing on Sunday and were planning on heading to Cooper Spur to skin up and ski some of the Eliot glacier on the North side of the mountain where we figured there might be some snow. Read on…
This weekend was supposed to be our Annual Maiden Hut backcountry ski weekend but with this winter being one of the worst snow seasons in Oregon’s history it wasn’t possible. In fact we could have hiked in to the hut but where’s the fun in that? So far this year Ski Bowl only opened for about a week and Willamette Pass and Hoodoo haven’t opened (they would never open this season - I wrote this in July :). So yeah, I had pretty much written off any snow activity for the year. Read on….
After taking a the first weekend of the year to catch up on "life things" around the house we decided to get away this weekend for something. The original plan had been to head to Bend to visit Aaron Hartz but unfortunately that got cancelled and the weather didn't appear to pleasant for skiing anyway. Instead, we headed off into the Gorge on a rainy Sunday to check out the Herman Creek to Casey Creek trail. Read on...
This weekend Emily and I spent a terrific weekend on the coast with Holm, Paris, and some friends from work including Drew, Lennie, and even Chris Miwa along with a bunch of others. We were invited along the weekend before by Chris and Paris. We stayed with James Lawonn at his place in Netards. James took over Lindsay Marcella's job on the coast when she left and we had met him before at an Easter Party at their place earlier in the year. I definitely recognized him as soon as we saw him. We spent the weekend SCUBA diving, raking clams, mushroom picking and clamming and feasted on all that we successfully hunted and gathered. Read on for more photos.
Today Emily and I headed out to Cape Horn on the Washington side of the Columbia River. This area is closed in the spring due to Falcons nesting along the cliffs so for a beautiful fall day it was the perfect hike nearby for us to check out. We got there early afternoon and it turned out to be a pretty hot day for October. Read on...
Today, Arley, Katie and Ryan invited Emily and I out to the Base Camp Brewing Octoberfest. We had expected Nicole and Jesse James to come up for an afternoon hike and stay over with us but although she said she’d be here by noon we hadn’t heard a word from her. We waited until 2pm and then decided to just go to the Briefest and meet up with her later if they actually came up. Read on...
Tonight Emily and I had our 2nd movie night in Portland. Our first movie night was a week ago where we ordered pizza and watched Old School which Arley hadn't seen before. This week we invited Conrad, Ryan, Arley, Katie, and Anna over to roll some Sushi and watch the new Godzilla movie. Ryan of course brought his amazing cooking skills and helped teach the half of us who had never done it before how to do it. Emily and I had done it with Jason and Jen before but I think Ryan knew how to cook the rice better this time. We made a bunch of rolls and ended up having too much to eat. 
Godzilla was of course amazing despite Ryan falling into a food coma during the 2nd half of it. Not sure how many movie nights we will have as we all have busy lives but this one was certainly a success. Plus, its just so damn fun making sushi!
This Saturday Emily and I woke up early to run in the 5k Race for the Cure to raise money for Breast Cancer research. Emily had signed us up a month before and I was a little nervous as I hadn't been running in weeks. But, as it turns out the 5k really wasn't that hard and I had a really fun time running it. There were a ton of people and I got the same feeling as tree skiing darting in and out of them trying to make my way further up in the pack.... Perhaps I'd actually like running more races! 
We were part of team GP who had a booth set up there but Emily and I got there too late for the team photo. After the run we grabbed some free food and water and hung out for a bit before jumping back on our bikes and biking home. We had run with Amy written on our number tags and one of Emily's relatives who also had a form of cancer. Hopefully, science will find a cure soon! We got back home by the time we'd usually get up on a lazy Saturday anyway! 
This weekend Eric Porter joined Emily and I for great day of biking down Gunsight Ridge on the flanks of Mt. Hood. Gunsight ridge is pretty much the northern section of the same ridge that Surveyor's Ridge is on that we had done earlier in the summer but it is a bit more technical in places. We decided to take both the truck and Prius again to do a shuttle so we could ride down the fabulous Dog River Trail at the end. 
This Labor Day I was able to go on an amazing backpacking trip with Anna and her boyfriend Nate to the Lakes Basin are of the Eagle Cap Wilderness in far Eastern Oregon. We had at first planned a very ambitious 40 mile loop but instead cut out one pass and a lake to make it a more relaxing 30 mile loop over 4 days. I decided to climb up Eagle Cap one early afternoon so I totaled out at 34.5 miles for the trip. We didn’t see too many animals but I agree with everyone else that has been to the Wallowas, that it might be the most beautiful place in all of Oregon. Read on to see more photos and details.
On Sunday I finally, after 6 years, got to go up for an acquisition flight in one of our company's Cessna Caravan's with our UltraCam Eagle camera. We were acquiring 3 inch resolution imagery for the entire Portland Metro area and I will be the project lead for the data when it is all acquired. That, and the fact that it is now the city we live in and our house will be imaged with both LiDAR and hi-res photos, made this flight even more special. 
Dude's Night Out... This was just plain epic. Aaron, a friend from work, who's last name I'll leave blank decided it would be a fun time to invite Eric and I out for a dude's night out at some sketchy bars along North Lombard Street in Portland. Eric bailed and after several of his friends called off I was ready to bail too but he was determined and said he was going out regardless at 8pm to the MouseTrap and that I should meet him out... Challenge... Accepted!
When I got to the bar I found Aaron with about 5 friends.... including a heavily inked girl whose name for the night I was told would be "Steve" I believe... All of them were great people. A couple were co-workers and a couple were his old bandmates. They all welcomed me warmly to the drunkfest. Game on! 
I'm not going to go into details about what happened because what happens on Dude's Night Out stays there. Some highlights though.... skeevy bars (Mouse Trap, Sweet Home and The Perch), scary drunk old men, massive amounts of arm wrestling (which I won until the 250lb Karoake WWE wrestler dude finally beat me), stolen shopping carts, really, really bad karoake skills, and steering Aaron on his bike into a bush. Thankfully, besides my dignity, I didn't lose anything and actually made it home by 3am all the way from St. Johns which I don't even remember biking too. Needless to say my Saturday was a total waste.... but worth the epic memories.... perhaps.... :) Oh, and although we were drinking all night and had many many many beers and cocktails I don't think any of us spent more than $30... yeah, those kind of bars....
