North Santiam River

Today we all went rafting down the North Santiam River from Packsaddle park to Mill City just like we did last fall around the same time. This time we took a 6 person inflatable raft though with my roomate Jason Killian and Kristen Splinter as our guides. In the boat were Brendan, Eleanor, Kristen, her sister, Jason, and I. In Kayaks with us were Chris Gabrielli, Cheney Vidrine, Abby? (forget her name), and Toshi the white-water samurai shredder. It was a really fun time and we even got to eat pancakes at Kristen's house before we left with my truck, Gabrielli's Tacoma, and Kristen's new xB. The trip took us about 4 hours or so and we even stopped at a big rapid to jump into the whitewater upon Chris' suggestion. According to Hodak I was "stupid" enough to pull a backflip into the rapids off the rocks. ha! The only one who didn't jump was Toshi. Hodak and I especially had a great time fooling around in the boat the whole way probably to the annoyance of Jason who couldn't for his life control my paddling pattern (the river wasn't serious enough to really be too concerned). Highlights included seeing several Merganzer ducks (to which Eleanor was greatly amused) tons of Geese, many Salmon on the "verge of death and rotting" according to Jason, many fish bones, soggy PB&J sandwiches and frito's, me falling out of the raft every 30 minutes and many laughs. Can't wait to go boating again... and I think we finally fired up Jason to get out with us more hopefully... we'll see. Afterwards we went over to Kristen's for some of her amazing chilli, but afterwards I was so full of chilli and corn bread that I started to fall asleep so I cam home to write this up quick before a nap. Click the title for a slideshow as always.

Logan's Crazy House Party

Logan, Toshi, and Levi threw an amazing party last night. I had planned on going over for just a few drinks because of the rafting trip today but instead I ended up getting pretty drunk and leaving around 3:30am. It seemed like everyon and their sister was at the party. It was great to see old friends like Eva who have moved back to the area. It seemed like all the new COAS students made it to the party as well. The roomates had cleaned out the basement and bought a brand new pool table as well so it was totally pimped out down there. We all went through 2 quarter kegs pretty quick so more beer had to be bought. Chris Holm was kind enough to purchase a couple tall-boy PBR's for me to continue my night. I found a brick of mozzarella cheese in the fridge and began cutting off slices for people. You'd be amazed at what girls will do with each other for a slice of cheese when they are drunk. ha! Anyway, it was a killer party and I had a great time. Highlights were Caleb Fenner completely trashed, Tori falling off the front porch, Evan and his friends showing up at 3am out of no where, Luarel and her 1$ sunglasses all night, Logan topless on the coffee table, Anna pounding a 40 of PBR, and delicious cupcakes with TMNT rings. Click the title as always for a slideshow. Peace!

North Umpqua River Trail

Continuing my streak of hanging with the bodacious (yup, used bodacious) couple Chris and Tiff, or "skeevo's" as I refer to them I ended up traveling down to the North Umpqua River which drains down from the Crater Lake area. It is an amazing river with scattered waterfalls and hot springs down the length of it, along with what MTB.com calls the most EPIC single track bike trail of the entire Pacific Northwest! So, of course the three mountain bikers in COAS had to check it out. We drove down Saturday night in two vehicles and stayed overnight at a trailhead when Tiffany began to fall asleep on a twisty road (yeah, wierd right!?). Those two spent a steamy (no shit, the car was all fogged) night in the back of Dirty's car while I slept in the freezing back of Tiff's truck where once again I wasn't warm in my sleeping bag and got little sleep (need to get a new one). Instead of waking up at the ass-crack of dawn we slept in until 9am or so and didn't finished shuttling the cars until 11:30am when we started off on the ride.
The single track was really amazing! For the most part (until the grueling end) the trail was pretty much downhill and fast for us. Tiff was sick and Chris was on a hard-tail so for once I felt like we might all actually be pretty even on the trail with my non-biking legs and heavy freeride bike. The trail was amazing, especially with 6 inches of travel that made for a fantastic ride for me. Chris had trouble on the hard tail he wasn't used to and Tiff was just weak from her flu or whatever the hell she had. We quickly made our way down the 26 mile section of the 80 mile trail we were doing. When we got to the Umpqua hotsprings where the trail crosses the river we found the bridge to be washed out so we had to forge the river ourselves with our bikes over our backs. Then we had to forge our way around and through a bunch of naked hippies around the hotsprings as well before re-joining the trail on the North side of the river. From there the trail went uphill nearly a thousand feet and our tired legs certainly felt it as I began popping down GU packets. It was the first time that I'm sure we all were equally as tired which made me feel good about efforts. About a quarter mile from the end I snapped my chain in half... said, "the hell with this", tore it off and thankfully was able to bomb downhill the whole way back to car, only pushing myself a few times to get going (what luck right?). We got out of the woods at about 6 pm right before dark. We stopped at a pizza place in Roseberg on the way home and wolfed down a Giant Hawaiian pizza. Tiffany ended up taking off at 80mph to get home wearing sunglasses... don't ask, long story. I can't wait to go back and finish off the sections of trail we weren't able to get to this time, but definitely will shuttle it again as biking up the trail would have been crazy! For a slideshow click the title of this entry.

Surfing in 'PC'

I use 'PC' instead of Pacific City because I want to sound like a veteran surfer.. ha. Actually, I'm no where near a veteran surfer as I got thoroughly thrashed while there with Chris Holm and Tiffany Gregg. We spent the morning there surfing some 10-12 foot waves (well for me it was trying to surf. Of course I went paddling right out to the big ones with Chris and tried to tackle the same ones he did.. unsuccessfully. He said it was a bad day to learn because there were a lot of quick "closeouts" of the waves. I did manage to catch one and get my feet planted on the board briefly going down the face of it before completely losing my balance and flying off. When I came to the surface with my hands above my head to protect me from the board leashed to my foot I got slammed by 2 more big waves in the set. After getting beat up a few more times I headed into the shore to get some videos and photos of Master Holm rippin' it. Tiffany soon joined me as she was getting cold. The three of us then got some lunch at a local sandwich shop and I got some oyster shooters and ice cream as well.... yeah, weird combo. It was a great day and I can't wait to get back out and do some more surfing! Check out the colorful dory boat that powered itself onto the beach. Click the title of this entry for a slideshow as always.

New COAS Kids Kickoff Party!

Let me start this by saying that in my year here in Oregon I have yet to bear witness to a party of so many people THAT bombed! I decided to throw the party at my house this year which meant Jason took off with McKenzie for the night. I bought a keg of a local Wit microbrew which was completely kicked by 10pm. Chris Holm and I then took my truck with Tiffany driving to Fredy's and picked up about 170 more beers.... I woke up the next morning with 20 left. This meant that over two kegs of beer were drank that night... and I'd say there were only 30-40 people throughout the night at the house. Divide 300 beers by 40 and that's 7 a piece... and I'd say about 10-15 people weren't really drinking or were drinking hard alcohol instead. This = a lot of drunken people. Tori and Cassidy ended up in my Cherry tree with our bambo rod and can to pick cherries they were using to wack people in the head when they came near the tree. Hodak was done by about 9pm due to many rounds of Bowdoin-Style beer pong. Then a game of flip-cup survivor started that lasted for what seemed forever. Afterwards people were stumbling away from the table completely tore-up. I was pouring out wine I'd bought and a bottle of vanilla vodka and malibou rum were also killed. An all out war involving McKenzie's doggy toys erupted in the living room and several people ended up passing out all over the furniture with pink headbands of flagging tape that Robyn had started putting on everyone's heads! I'm pretty sure the new COAS kids had a great time at the party which turned out to be one of the wildest ones I've seen all year, behind last years' Halloween party at Pam's I guess. Anyway... for those that attended click the title for a funny slideshow of the pics I got and let me know if you want to contribute any. The next morning the owner of our house got a kick out of all the kids coming over searching for lost clothes, hats, shoes etc in the backyard. He looked at me with my horrible hangover and said, "wow, must have been a good party!". He's a really cool landlord for sure.

Broken Top Climb

Yesterday I climbed another volcano called Broken Top in the Sister's wilderness. On this one occasion I hadn't done much research about the climb minus a quick look at a website with photos of someone else's climb so I didn't really know quite what to expect. I guessed the trip to be around 12 miles round trip so my roomate Jason, our buddy Justin Broderson and Tiffany Greg decided to come along. Justin drove his Honda Element because it got better gas and had more room than any of our vehicles. We left Albany in his car at 7am and after several stops for gas ad food and a very rough drive down an access road we left the trailhead at around 11am. The hike skirted the base of Broken top towards Green Lakes Campground. It was a good 5-6 mile long walk around the base of the mountain to get to the ridge we intended to climb. Unfortunately we didn't spot the herdpath going into the woods from a campsite so we ended up adding on a couple miles and longer ridge walk to get to the final ascent of the peak. The views were amazing all day long and seeing all 3 of the Sisters from that angle was pretty cool. Some of the trail was just piles of volanic tephra. It was so light that it almost felt like walking on packing peanuts. When we got to the final ridge it looked impossibly steep. Jason's hips were bothering him and he looked like he was in a great deal of pain so he remained in the col while Justin, Tiff and I ascended the steep ridge towards the summit pinnacle. It was nearing 4pm and the clouds were starting to move in. Wind gusts were strong and I was worried about time and weather because we still had to get safely down. As we neared the final summit push Justin looked like he was in some pain and after twisting his knee several times on the way up he was concerned about the final class 4-5 scramble to the summit 70 feet above us. (It's always a tough decision for a climber to hold back when so close to the summit but I really do commend him for making the right choice. Going up the nearly vertical rock at the summit may have been possible, but one slip or one wrong twist of a weak knee on the way down would certainly mean major trauma or death). So, Justin decided to remain below while Tiffany and I pushed on to the summit pinnacle which required 3 10-15 foot scrambles with hands and feet up nearly vertical rock. The final pitch had very loose rock which made me nervous for our safety but we both felt confident so pushed on. If we had had ropes with us, belay devices and helmets I would have felt much safer about taking everyone up.
Tiff and I didn't remain long on the summit because we could see a band of clouds moving over the shoulder of South Sister a mile away and knew we didn't have much time to get down from the treacherous terrain. Before we left the steep summit I found myself perched on a 200+lb boulder that was teetering above a very steep chute leading to the glacier below and then another 500+ cliff. I grabbed a hand hold, steadied myself, yelled "hey Tiff", and pushed it loose with all my leg strength while jumping to safety. The rock rocketed down the steep slope setting off many other rock slides. Hundreds of pounds of rocks flew down the face of Broken top exploding in craters into the soft sun-baked glacier below before rocketing off the cliff at the end of the glacier out of site. Tiff and Justin were both pretty impressed at the amount of rock the boulder set into motion. I normally wouldn't do such a thing but there was absolutely no way anybody would be climbing up from that route due to the natural rock fall danger there to begin with. I got a video of it... pretty cool.
We got down to the col where Jason was and found an easier trail out that cut off the long ridgewalk we had taken on the way up. As soon as we caught up to Jason we looked up at the summit and it was gone... buried in clouds. We had literally made the summit and descended in just the nick of time. It was then 5:30 and we had a good 2+ hour walk out partially in the dark back to the car. The 12 mile hike turned out to be 16.7 miles and a lot harder than I had expected, although I'm sure we all had a great time. On the way home we stopped at a brewery in Bend and got some dinner at 9pm. It wasn't until nearly 1:30am that I crawled into bed last night happy to know that it was the 6th Cascade volcano in a row that I successfully summited!

Broken Top

Yesterday I climbed another volcano called Broken Top in the Sister's wilderness. On this one

occasion I hadn't done much research about the climb minus a quick look at a website with photos of someone else's climb so I didn't really know quite what to expect. I guessed the trip to be around 12 miles round trip so my roomate Jason, our buddy Justin Broderson and Tiffany Greg decided to come along. Justin drove his Honda Element because it got better gas and had more room than any of our vehicles.

We left Albany in his car at 7am and after several stops for gas ad food and a very rough drive down an access road we left the trailhead at around 11am. The hike skirted the base of Broken top towards Green Lakes Campground. It was a good 5-6 mile long walk around the base of

the mountain to get to the ridge we intended to climb. Unfortunately we didn't spot the herdpath going into the woods from a campsite so we ended up adding on a couple miles and longer ridge walk to get to the final ascent of the peak. The views were amazing all day long and seeing all 3 of the Sisters from that angle was pretty cool. Some of the trail was just piles of volanic tephra. It was so light that it almost felt like walking on packing peanuts.

When we

got to the final ridge it looked impossibly steep. Jason's hips were bothering him and he looked like he was in a great deal of pain so he remained in the col while Justin, Tiff and I ascended the steep ridge towards the summit pinnacle. It was nearing 4pm and the clouds were starting to move in. Wind gusts were strong and I was worried about time and weather because we still had to get safely down. As we neared the final summit push Justin looked like he was in some

pain and after twisting his knee several

times on the way up he was concerned about the final class 4-5 scramble to the summit 70 feet above us. (It's always a tough decision for a climber to hold back when so close to the summit but I really do commend him for making the right choice. Going up the nearly vertical rock at the summit may have been possible, but one slip or one wrong twist of a weak knee on the way down would certainly mean major trauma

or death). So, Justin decided to remain below while Tiffany and I pushed on to the summit pinnacle which required 3 10-15 foot scrambles with hands and feet up nearly vertical rock. The final pitch had very loose rock which made me nervous for our safety but we both felt confident so pushed on. If we

had had ropes with us, belay devices and helmets I would have felt much safer about taking everyone up.
Tiff and I didn't remain long on the summit because we could see a band of clouds moving over the shoulder of South Sister a mile away and knew we didn't have much time to get down from the treacherous terrain. Before we left the steep summit I found myself perched on a 200+lb boulder that was teetering above a very steep chute leading to the glacier below and then another 500+ cliff. I grabbed a hand hold, steadied myself, yelled "hey Tiff", and pushed it loose with all my leg strength while jumping to safety. The rock rocketed down the steep slope setting off many other rock slides. Hundreds of pounds of rocks flew down the face of Broken top exploding in craters into the soft sun-baked glacier below before rocketing off the cliff at the end

of the glacier out of site. Tiff and Justin were both pretty impressed at the amount of rock the boulder set into motion. I normally wouldn't do such a thing but there was absolutely no way anybody would be climbing up from that route due to the natural rock fall danger there to begin with. I got a video of it... pretty cool. We got down to the col where Jason was and found an easier trail out that cut off the long ridgewalk we had taken on the way up. As soon as we caught up to Jason we looked up at the summit and it was gone... buried in clouds. We had literally made the summit and descended in just the nick of time. It was then 5:30 and we had a good 2+ hour walk out partially in the dark back to the car. The 12 mile hike turned out to be 16.7 miles and a lot harder than I had expected, although I'm sure we all had a great time. On the way home we stopped at a brewery in Bend and got some dinner at 9pm. It wasn't until nearly 1:30am that I crawled into bed last night happy to know that it was the 6th Cascade volcano in a row that I successfully summited!