Deserts, Rainforests and Mountain Passes

Taking a break in an alpine paradise. Mt. Seymour (4,700').
Click photos to enlarge. 

Hello and welcome back!  Spring is in the air here in Vancouver, and we've been soaking up every bit of it, enjoying the bike paths, beaches and mountains that the area has to offer. I spent this morning on a conditioning hike to the summit of nearby Mt. Seymour, and was back in the neighborhood in time for a late afternoon stroll on Kitsilano beach.  My co-worker slash hike buddy Evan remarked on the summit view from Seymour.  To the south is metro Vancouver, 5,000 feet below us and about 5 miles away.  The view north is dominated by the jagged peaks of the British Columbia Coast range and seemingly endless wilderness, access to which is just an hours drive from the high rises of downtown. Pretty great!  All this makes it possible for me to curse and sweat my way up beautiful mountains to train for my PMC ride, and show you all pictures of it! Let me add here a shameless plug to please donate to my ride for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute!  Every penny of rider raised donations goes to support cancer research at Dana-Farber.  Thank You!  

Downtown Vancouver (center) from the Summit of Mt. Seymour.
Oil tankers in English Bay visible in center right.  

Bailey on the Summit of Mt. Seymour.
British Columbia Coast Mountains in background.  

For today's installment, a road trip down to Oregon USA for a sampling of what the Pacific Northwest has to offer.  I had a week long spring break from school at UBC, so my girlfriend Bailey and I drove down to Portland to meet some friends and decide on which of the multitude of Oregon State Parks we should go and enjoy.  In Portland we recruited my old buddy Simon and headed east from the city along the Columbia River Gorge. 

 The Columbia river flows west along the northern edge of Oregon separating it from Washington state on the other side, and cuts through layers of rock to form a 150 mile long gorge that is up to 4,000 feet deep in places.  17 million years ago, just east of the gorge near the present Idaho border, great cracks in the earth opened up and began flooding the land with lava.  The eruption lasted about 3 million years, and when it was over a large part of the present northwestern US was buried under its lava flows which today are called the Columbia River Flood Basalts.  They are over a mile and half thick, cover tens of thousands of square miles and represent one of the largest volcanic events in earth's history.  Ten million years later the Cascade volcanic range began to push the ground upward.  Rainfall draining west toward the Pacific slowly cut its way through the layers of basalt, and about 15,000 years ago a melting ice age glacier in Idaho would bust at the seams and send thousands of cubic miles of water rushing west to the sea, carving the dramatic gorge we see today. 

About 2,000 ft of basalt lava flows seen in the walls of the Columbia River Gorge.
Originally horizontal layers were tilted by uplift of the Cascade Range.    

The gorge is the only water lane that cuts through the Cascade Range, which runs like a spine from north to south along the west coast.  It is often a good winter route east from the coast, as most other roads must go over the range and are often dangerous or impassable.  We chose the route for this reason as well as to enjoy the incredible scenery that the gorge affords. The Cascade Range acts as a barricade to wet pacific air coming from the west, and while the coast is famously drenched eastern parts of the state are left dry, an effect called a rain-shadow.  With a transition from temperate rainforest to desert grasslands in about a hundred miles,  we would enter a new and different ecosystem with every few minutes of zipping along I-84.  After a great drive through the gorge we went south into the central Oregon desert.  

Bailey hiking at the Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

For our first stop of the trip we had decided on John Day Fossil Beds National Monument,  another of Oregon's geological wonders, and a great place for a sunset hike.  The fossil beds at John Day record the evolution of plants and animals here over the course of 40 million years.  These fossilized remains are found in various layers of volcanic ash and lake bottom sediments, and preserve a story of a changing landscape from the steamy tropics that the dinosaurs knew, to the dry and temperate climate of today.  Vibrant red volcanic ash and green lake-bottom clays add up to make this place a natural wonder, and we arrived in time to hike around for a couple of miles and watch the sun go down on it.  

Sheep Rock, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.  

Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument.

Simon and Bailey enjoying a hike at the Painted Hills

As the desert began to get cold and dark, we hit the road on an empty gas tank and headed deeper into the middle of nowhere.  I knew we had some distance before any civilization in Prineville, what I didn't know is that we would have to go over the Ochoco Mountains to get there.  The next hour or so was pretty hairy, calculating the odds of making it to town while watching the fuel needle bottom out.  By the time we reached the high point of the range I was mentally prepared to be pitching the tent on the side of the road for the night, but miraculously we were able make it over the summit and coast into town.  I pulled into the first gas station I saw and pumped 14.953 gallons into my 15 gallon tank, which by my calculations gave us about a another 700 feet before sputtering out.   After a diner dinner and some giddy laughs at our luck, we made the short drive to one of my favorite places in Oregon, Smith Rock State Park, and pitched our tents in the dark.  

The author enjoys a morning coffee at Smith Rock State Park, OR.  

We woke up to a beautiful day beneath the stunning spires that this park is famous for.  Smith is a great place for hiking, biking and horseback riding, and its tall beautiful rock walls are world famous for climbing.  I had been here before to climb but hadn't yet a chance to enjoy the hiking trails, and there was a particular little number I had in mind.  We fried up some eggs, packed up our bags and hit the trail.  We spent our day on the Misery Ridge trail, which went up and over a ridge of spires on steep switchbacks and then around the base of the ridge along the Crooked river to get back to camp.  It was a great trail, we had good weather and it was a hell of a workout.  It was a round trip of about 8 miles with 1,500 feet of elevation.  

Switchbacks at the bottom of the Misery Ridge trail.  Smith Rock State Park.  

Tiny people on the Misery Ridge trail. 

Simon and Bailey in a desert pose-off. 

Having a good time.  

I taught Simon my patented tent drying technique.
Highly effective, and a great workout. 

This desert is a beautiful place in the winter, but after being fried by the sun all day and frozen solid all night we decided on a change of scenery.  We spent one more dreamy night under the moonlit rock towers of Smith, then packed up and drove west.  Thankfully we had another day of great weather, after driving out of the desert we would be going up and over the Cascade Range.  The road took us past great vistas of high Cascade volcanoes like Mt. Jefferson, Three Fingered Jack and the Sisters before dropping down into the familiar coastal rainforest.  The dismal winter weather at the coast keeps crowds away this time of year, we had most of Cape Lookout State Park to ourselves and were able to score one of their coveted yurt shelters.  We went on some walks, played some wiffle ball on the beach and nursed our sunburns in the cool mist.  Our time off had just about run out.  We dropped Simon off in Portland, drove back up to Vancouver and went back to work.  

Wiffle ball in the mist at Cape Lookout State Park, Tillamook, OR.  

Yurt camping in luxury at Cape Lookout.  

The road trip.  Google Earth.  

That's about it for this one!  Training here in the city is going well, it doesn't hurt that everybody around here is in great shape and constantly running everywhere.  I swear you can't stop and stand anywhere in this city without turning around to find someone angrily jogging in place behind you, waiting to get by.  Donations are starting to come in, but I have a long way to go, so please DONATE if you can!  Dana-Farber is making great progress everyday on treatments for cancer, but they need our help to keep going!  

Tomorrow I'll be hiking up to the glacier field on Mt. Garibaldi to scope it out for a summit attempt later in the season, so watch out for that one.  Stay tuned for my next blog,  I'll be jumping with both feet into backcountry skiing in the Canadian Cascades!  

Walking with some big trees. Stanley Park, Vancouver. 

Bailey on the bike path.  Fairview. Vancouver.  

Spruce Harbor marina, Burrard bridge and North Shore Mountains.
From the bike path, Vancouver.