“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” — Jack Kerouac
Click here to go to the photo album for this day
Getting up at 6:45, I met the crew in Portland, early on Saturday morning. There were 13 of us including some coworkers at Elemental, making this the largest team I’ve climbed with! Our first stop was breakfast at Hood River, a picturesque town along the Columbia River Gorge. One hour from Portland, it reminded me of the oceanside town of Carmel in California.
After an incredibly delicious breakfast of eggs at a diner there, we drove another hour to Adams. It’s a good thing I was driving the Forester, since getting to the trailhead meant doing some light offroading.
The initial part of the hike was through a burned forest that was ravaged by a fire a few years ago. It was certainly a different experience from walking through your run-of-the-mill forest. In case you haven’t seen the albums, these people were all extremely fit! I’d never climbed at the kind of pace we were taking. Granted I was carrying 50 lbs as training for my upcoming Rainier climb, but it was certainly more difficult than I’d anticipated! Once we broke treeline, things started to get more interesting, with steeper terrain & open crevasses just to the side of the trail.
After climbing for a good 5 hours to 9,500 ft, we made it to the Lunch Counter – our site for a base camp. The plan is to leave the tents up while we summit with day packs tomorrow(in my case, a lighter load in my regular pack), and pack up on the way down.
Enjoying our hot & tasty(ok, at least edible) backpackers’ dinners while watching one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen felt amazingly good after a long, hard day. It’s times like these that remind me why I climb mountains. It’s exhausting, difficult & potentially dangerous, but there are sights that can only be experienced in Alpine terrain. Mountains tend to make you appreciate how amazing life is!
Everyone promptly turned in after dinner, exhausted. I decided to stay out for awhile to take some shots of the beautiful night sky. The air glow from the lights of Hood River lit up the sky & made for some gorgeous views. I can think of worse things to be doing on a Saturday night than photographing the Milky Way from 10,000 ft! Surprisingly temps stayed in the 40’s overnight, making for a very enjoyable climate.
Planetary Muffin Expeditions 