Yearly Archives: 2020

Third time's a charm. After two previous attempts both ended in turnarounds due to snow I finally got enough sense to bring a pair of snowshoes with me. The final turn into the northern bowl at just above 4,000 feet was the end of bare ground but this time I was able to float over places where previously I was postholing. On the way up I encountered a few interesting people, one told me about a giant white "spirit turkey" that he'd seen a few weeks earlier down in the clearcut where I'd parked my car. Unfortunately searching for spirit [...]

Ancient Lakes and the neighboring Babcock Bench along the Columbia River Gorge are among my favorite places to backpack. The arid openness yields views for miles and the ground is crisscrossed with hiking trails and old jeep tracks. On previous trips I'd often thought about how great it would be to be able to quickly scoot around the landscape on a bike. With state lands re-opening on Tuesday I took the day off to put my idea to the test. My bike is a ye olde Trek DS 8.3. It's a hybrid bike which means that it's not a great [...]

A previous excursion to Sasse Mountain via the Jolly Mountain trail ended in heartbreak as the snow just below the summit became too mushy to handle without the snowshoes that I'd left back at the cabin. Fast forward past a month of snowmelt to my second snowshoe-free attempt (this time via the Sasse Mountain trail) and voila! Another turnaround due to too-deep too-soft snow just below the summit. If only I'd had some sort of warning - a premonition, perhaps? - or some way to predict this outcome... Oh well. Goals Reach the summit of Sasse Mountain (total failure, but [...]

On Sunday we had a break in the rain so I decided to explore another one of the local trails. The south-facing approach and 5,000 foot elevation of Hex Mountain all but guaranteed a snow-free adventure but after last month's turnaround just below the summit of Sasse Mountain I decided that I'd lug along a pair of snowshoes just in case. It would prove to be one of the lesser mistakes on this trip. The first half of the trail to Hex Mountain is just an old logging road; eventually the actual trail splits off to follow a ridge to [...]

Last weekend I went out on a day hike to Sasse Mountain to focus on elevation-related fitness as well as to test out some gear. At the trailhead I discovered that the snow was particularly crusty so I left my snowshoes behind in favor of just using trail runners and traction spikes. This got me to just below the summit where the road petered out and I would have needed to ascend a steep ridge to continue. Since the snow was pretty slushy I opted to avoid postholing for the next hour and turned around. Goals Reach the summit of [...]