A Slice of Paradise

I think I've finally chosen my favorite place.  Timberline Lodge, OR, where you get ski runs like this entirely to yourself:

Day 1

Allow me to walk you through my family's one-night stay at the Lodge (a Christmas present to me...).  We arrived Thursday morning and started skiing through the snow.

We had a great day of skiing through fresh powder, although we all got pretty wet because the snow turned to light rain at times.  I spent some time skiing through tree glades, which I may talk about in a future blog post.

Here's a route I took, in an effort to understand the appeal of deep powder on a deeper level:

By the end of the day, the conditions looked like this:

Meanwhile, the view out of our hotel window:

As the sun set, we hung out at the Ram's Head pub.  I worked on my laptop, we got dinner, I got a couple glasses of Timberline's own wine, and we played card games.  Out of the window, the sun set over Mount Jefferson and a sea of clouds:

After dinner, we went in the outdoor hot tub and swimming pool under a dark, cloudless sky.

Day 2

I slept restlessly.  Not because the bed was uncomfortable -- on the contrary, the feathertop mattress and mound of pillows was ridiculously comfortable.  Instead, I had resolved to be on the slopes at 9am when the lifts opened, and I kept having dreams in which my alarm didn't wake me up and I slept in until 10.  I woke up twice when it was still pitch black, once when the first hint of light was in the outside world, and finally once again at 7:40am, when I decided to just wake up for good.

The view out of my window:

Not many morning views that can beat that.  If you looked at the right angle, Mt. Hood was framed by ice:

I got dressed and went out to the main lodge area.  I first noticed the view out of the Ram's Head pub.  A picture of the Ram's Head has been my desktop photo for the last 2 months, and I've been wishing I was there for a while.  Tables in the Ram's Head (my happy place):

I found Mom, and we got some coffee from the following coffee pots (notice the background):

Then, after getting Cole out of bed, we all got breakfast.  The selection of waffle toppings caught my eye, so I prepared the ultimate waffle.

Thoroughly stuffed, we hit the slopes, which brings us back to the groomed packed powder.

Unlike the previous day, the weather was dry.

My skiing buddies, Dad and Cole:

Solo shots:

We had a great day skiing.  We skied low on the mountain...

...and high on the mountain.

Here's a path near the top of the Magic Mile chairlift I dubbed "Joy's Cutoff."  Very smooth skiing.

I learned a new skiing trick this day!  Dad taught me how to spin in a circle while skiing, without stopping.  Well, I have to slow down, but then I can spin 360 degrees and keep on skiing.  With time, I became an ambi-turner and could turn both left and right.  Dad's been able to do this for ages, but I'd never gotten it until this second day at Timberline.  With a bit of practice, I could string consecutive spins together.  I would be skiing down the mountain but spinning continuously in circles until I got dizzy!  Since I was feeling silly, I decided to call it the Mayan Infinite Spiral.

We continued skiing until the lifts closed at 4pm.  Near the end of the day, the routes were glowing golden.  Cole and I were both reminded of the course "Golden Forest" from the classic Nintendo 64 snowboarding game "1080."

The last run of the day featured some very smooth snow for me.

Then we returned to the lodge and went in the hot tub one last time as the sun set.  I bought a couple bottles of the Timberline wine, and we departed for Portland as the sun set over Oregon once more.

I just returned from the mountain 6 hours ago, and looking at these photos makes me want to go back already.

Epilogue: First World Problems

I'm going to France for Christmas, and I will be going skiing in the French Alps.  Some of my friends have been laughing at me and giving me quite a bit of trouble for grumbling that I won't be able to spend Christmas at Timberline.  "Joy, Joy, Joy," they say.  "That's not even a first world problem, that's a zeroth world problem.  'Oh no, I can't ski in Oregon, I have to ski in France.'  Come on, be reasonable."

I hope this blog post has given you a slight idea of why I grumble.  I am sure France is going to be awesome, and I am very excited to ski in the Alps, but... it's hard to top perfection.

This morning (day 2 of the trip described above), I woke Cole up briefly at 7:40am and told him to look out of his window.  He looked out at the sunrise reflecting off the mountain, and said, "Wow, that's pretty nice.  Okay, fine, you're allowed to complain about France."

Short Photo Post

As advertised, this is a short post... but I highly recommend you go and look at the photography of Jimmy Chin, my recently-discovered favorite nature photographer.

Check out his photography here.

Mount Kilimanjaro

First, a couple more announcements:

1. I once again blog for beer!  This time I am joined in my Iron Blogging by Kevin R. of the Free Dissociation blog.  Please check it out and let me know if he starts owing me beer!

2. A couple of people have pointed out that, while the "TAIL-us" pronunciation is more common, the other pronunciation of "TAL-us" is certainly also used.  Hurrah!  Here is some celebratory talus:

From K-FREE's flickr photostream

Now, onto the topic of the day: Mount Kilimanjaro.

Mount Kilimanjaro is one of the Seven Summits (the set containing the tallest peak on each continent), but it is one of the easier of the Seven Summits to climb.  Notably, in a sense you can "just walk up the mountain" without a bunch of technical gear and ice-climbing expertise.  Because of this, I had sort of been thinking about Kilimanjaro as just a long hike.  Turns out, I was underestimating it.

This and future Kilimanjaro images are from Fabio Bretto's flickr photostream

The first clue that I'd underestimated the mountain came when I looked up just how tall Kilimanjaro actually is: 19,341 feet.  That's pretty serious.  So, sure, you can "just hike up the mountain" but you'll get HAPE or HACE (high altitude pulmonary edema or cerebral edema) and possibly die.

Wikipedia actually says "All trekkers will suffer considerable discomfort, typically shortness of breath, hypothermia, and headaches."  Citation needed, but... that's a pretty strong statement.  Lesson 1: Kilimanjaro is tall.  Photos taken on summit expeditions remind me of photos taken out of airplane windows:

The way to climb Kilimanjaro is to take a week, possibly more, to acclimatize yourself.  In fact, Tanzania's regulations require that ascents take at least 5 days.  You spend many nights on the mountainside in little camps.

Apparently this mountain kills a lot of people -- not because of falling ice or white-out blizzards, but because people don't take the time to acclimatize themselves.  Again, the take-home message is that the mountain is very very tall!

One phrase you can apparently use to describe Mount Kilimanjaro, which I think is awesome, is "Afromontane sky island."  Afromontane means it's a mountain in Africa, and "sky island" refers to the fact that Mount Kilimanjaro rises up from largely-flat surroundings.  It has a prominence of 19,308 feet with respect to its surroundings, making it ranked 4th in the world for prominence.

I highly recommend you check out this panoramic image showing Kilimanjaro from a nearby African town called Moshi.  Zoom in, and consider how big Kilimanjaro looks compared to its surroundings.  Maybe you can start to get an idea for why this is one of the Seven Summits.

This is probably a bad time to say this, now that I've spent my blog post discussing the dangers of Mount Kilimanjaro, but there is some non-zero probability I'll attempt to climb this eventually.  My friend Yuki and her brother and father are planning to climb this mountain at some point, and I've asked that they keep me in the loop.  I'll make sure they (we?) take at least a week to climb.  And that no one dies.

I might do a series of blog posts on some of the Seven Summits.  I'm particularly interested in the Antarctic summit (Vinson Massif), the European summit (Mount Elbrus), and the North American summit (Denali, or Mt. McKinley).  Feel free to request that I focus on certain aspects of the mountains/the climbing experience.

Until next time!

A Plan!

As many of you know, I live in New England but am originally from the Portland, Oregon.  I spend a lot of time longing for the tall, snow-capped mountains of the Pacific Northwest, but I'm stuck with these dinky little things instead.  Now, after 6 years of living here, I do finally like these dinky little hills for their own sake.  They have their own unique beauty, especially in the Fall, and the crunch of leaves under my feet as I walk through a deciduous forest brings back nostalgia for some wonderful hikes I've had on this coast.

That being said, the Appalachians...

(from Ismael Alonso's flickr)

...are not the Cascades.

(from Michael Lehenbauer's flickr)

In order to deal with this discrepancy, I have devised a cunning plan.  I shall take a small, well-hiked hill, Mount Monadnock:

(from Doug Kerr's flickr)

And then I will climb it in the winter!  And no, not like November or December.  It must be climbed in the January/February chills.

(from Tim D. at ecodiversity.com)

It's looking better already!

(from AMC Connecticut)

(from David Albeck)

I'm pretty excited.  This is one of the best hiking ideas I've had in a while.  Best part: as long as the weather's okay, you can get through this without much equipment.  I'll probably bring an ice axe and crampons, but that's mostly just so that I have an excuse to buy an ice axe and crampons.  You have to spend your REI dividend somewhere.

I've gotten a friend, Alex Khripin, to say he'd be up for climbing this in the winter.  See, Alex, now it's been published on a blog, it's official.

(By the way, go check out his blog at Unwholesome Foods.  It is fascinating and occasionally disgusting.)

After Monadnock in the winter, perhaps some winter camping is the next step?  Could I camp on a New England mountain in the winter?

(Monadnock photo, from Matthew Gemmell's flickr)

(And winter is coming.)

South Sister, Oregon (An Illustrated Guide)

This is a blog post for people who like looking at pictures of mountain hikes...

It's time to start talking about mountains in this blog.  Mountains are one of my great passions in life.  They are important enough for me that I avoided applying to graduate schools in Illinois because it's too darn flat there.  I wouldn't survive.

We'll start small.  Today's post is about South Sister, the first "real" mountain I ever climbed.  There are many definitions of what a mountain is, but nothing standardized, so everyone seems to define them differently.  When I say South Sister is the first "real" mountain I climbed, I roughly define "mountain" as meaning "at least as awesome as the Cascades."  It's certainly the first mountain I climbed that has a year-round glacier.  I say this is "starting small" because it's a completely non-technical climb, at least in the late summer.

All of this is nitpicking, though, so let's get on to the mountain itself:

(Image courtesy of USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory)

There she is.  10,363 feet.  Sparks Lake is in the foreground.

The unfortunate thing, from a blogging perspective, is that South Sister probably looks just like any other mountain to the majority of people reading this.  Until I climbed it, South Sister looks like just another Cascade volcano to me, too.  But the interesting thing that happens when you spend a day climbing a mountain is that you get to know its shape very, very well.  You grow to respect just how huge these mountains are.  When you finish climbing a mountain and look back up, you know every step of the route you took, and you see the mountain in a whole new light.

So, to me, South Sister looks both beautiful and nostalgic.  Looking at pictures of it makes me want to climb it first thing tomorrow.

South Sister has some neighbors, which I haven't climbed.  It is part of the Three Sisters:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rk_balla/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

South Sister is on the left.  The others, predictably, are Middle Sister and North Sister.

To the southeast is this guy, Broken Top, which is covered in talus slopes:

(Image courtesy of USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory)

Route to the Summit

I was going to title this section "The Climb," but alas, Miley Cyrus ruined that possibility.

The standard route to the summit has four sections.  It takes about 10-12 hours.  Unfortunately, I can't post my own photos because my hard drive with the photos died, so we're stuck with random photos from the internet.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/ / CC BY 2.0

Section 1.  Uphill through the trees.  I've climbed South Sister twice (one with kchen, a guy some of you will know!), and both times we started the hike around 8am.  Prime mosquito time.  There are tons of mosquitoes in the first section of the climb, so it usually turns into 45 minutes of speed walking/jogging while constantly slapping the bugs off your arms.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustygrass/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Section 2.  The flat section.  This section begins when you emerge out of the woods and get a beautiful view of the mountain.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustygrass/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

The mountain looks very far away at this point.  Section 2 is the most relaxing of the sections.  It passes by a lake!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markschindler1200/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

By the end of this section, you are standing at the beginning of the big ascent.

Section 3.  The rocky trail upward.  This section continuously ascends the side of the mountain.  It is covered in pale rocks and small trees.  The following picture shows a random guy from flickr at the beginning of section 3.  If you click on the photo, you can see the large version.  The reddish cap on the mountain, if you can see that part, is section 4.  Distance-wise, section 4 is short.  Section 3 is from where the guy is standing up to the beginning of the red section:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustygrass/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Here's the view from part-way up section 3, looking back.  If you click on the photo to see a larger version you can see the path stretching away along the flat section:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/ / CC BY 2.0

Section 4.  The scree (talus) slope.  At the beginning of this section, there's a nice glacial lake:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustygrass/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

The way up from there looks like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustygrass/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

The way up from here is entirely "scree," or "talus."  It's crumbly volcanic rock, and at times, the way is a bit steep.  You take a step forward and slide a bit back, so the way is tiring at times.  Here's another view:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/ / CC BY 2.0

If you look straight down, it looks like you're walking on Mars sometimes:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/ / CC BY 2.0

The way up taught me a lot about pacing on uphill climbs.
 

The Summit.  The summit has chipmunks who would very much like to eat your snacks:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/ / CC BY 2.0

There are piles of rocks arranged into windbreakers that shelter areas to sit and camp.  I should try backpacking up there and spending a night on the summit crater... Here's the crater, with a year-round glacier and Oregon's highest lake, Teardrop Pool:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/ / CC BY 2.0

Most people hike around the crater before beginning their descent.  You can even hike down to the pool itself, but it's very cold.

Here are some views from the summit.  The view of Middle and North Sister:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeco/ / CC BY 2.0

The view of Broken Top from the summit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/50417018@N00/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Descent.  The descent is mostly relaxing.  An extra pair of socks is strongly recommended, because the descent down the scree slope gets lots of rocks and dust in your socks.  "Conveniently," the warmer part of the day, when the mosquitoes take some time off, you're up above the mosquito-infested forest.  By the time you make it back down to the forest (section 1), the mosquitoes are out in force again.  Both times I've made this climb, I've spent the last half hour of the looong day running downhill through the woods, brushing at my arms constantly.  I hate those mosquitoes.

Closing Notes.  As I've said, the climb takes 10-12 hours.  Most people drink about a gallon of water.  I drink about a gallon and a half.  Bring that extra pair of socks for after descending the scree slope.  Bring some bug repellent.  Let me know if you would like to climb this mountain!  I will climb it with you.

(Image courtesy of USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory)