update

Well it's about time I wrote something here. At the moment I am at my younger brother David's house in Moro Oregon eating his ice cream because it's the only way I could find at short notice to cool off, that's partially an excuse to eat ice cream, the other part is that he gets all of the free organic ice cream he wants from where he works and it's top notch stuff too, absolutely delicious.

I mentioned before that I am on a self inflicted vacation out here to the west coast, I'll be able to update what I've been doing up to this point I hope, with pictures if I can get the electronic gadgets to cooperate.
To start out my planned departure date was moved ahead a few days because my grandmother had a heart attack and dad wanted to come out here and see her with me, or maybe it was the other way around. Dad had his usual Azure truck route out here to Oregon but no way to get up to Washington to see Grandma, he had an empty truck though so I drove my car and trailer with all of my stuff, motorcycle included, into the refrigerated semi truck and we took off together in the truck. We made good time, only hit one deer (a nice big buck too) and made it to my brother's place (he lives and works at Azure standard, the food warehouse that my dad picks up his load at) I had a terrible time backing the semi up to the loading dock to get my car out but we eventually got to it and I drove the car and trailer through the warehouse and over to David's place, picked him up and dad, David and I rushed up to Grandma's place in north west Washington where we were treated to two of the only rainless days of the year up there. The second day up there we went up to my other Grandparents place in Gig Harbor Washington where all of the rest of my brothers and one sister were already staying for the summer. Gig Harbor is one of the nicest little towns I have ever been to and I hate towns. It's kind of a picturebook place with more sailboats than cars and a view to live for. We picked up my other brother Samuel and took off back to David's place so dad could get back to his truck and get the delivery route started on schedule, on the way down we stopped off at all the big sporting goods and camping stores we could find since there are all kinds of gigantic places out here and at home in ND there is just a little tiny Cabellas and a smaller Scheels. The Cabellas out here is many times the size of the one back home, two floors, escalators, elevators and an airplane hanging from the ceiling. The selection of things to take my money was impossible and I finally just looked around while the others tried buying things. I just am not used to big stores that have everything anymore. I did end up finding some great deals on things I had been needing and some on some things I just wanted, a new backpack, boots, .22 rifle, some gear for inside the backpack, etc. Sam and I recuperated for a day and then David and I went shopping for camping/backpacking/mountain climbing food in the Azure warehouse after the workers went home. David gets an employee discount so he bought the things, he also knows his way around the huge place, I was lost! We ended up going through the out of date area where there are pallet upon pallets of out of date or damaged product that we got for free. I loaded up on things, my trailer is overweight now and so is my car!
Samuel and I took off in the afternoon for Mt. Hood which is about an hour and a half away, to get there we got to go through the Hood River valley which is a superbly beautiful place of orchards and vineyards, all with a breathtaking mountain view.
This is a view as we are coming out of the orchard area, unfortunately, I couldn't find a good stopping off place back where the view was better because there was a line of cars behind me and there were no stopping off places. Oh well. We got to the Timberline ski lodge before dark and camped in the woods by a rather loud waterfall. I loved the location for the asthetics and the sound was sure peaceful but I didn't like the fact that it would drown out anybody sneaking up on us in the night. The next morning we got up early so we could climb the mountain but when we got up to the lodge the folks there said the climbers were waiting until midnight because it was already too warm up there and the rocks were falling, along with the risk of an avalanche. they also informed us that with the present conditions we weren't allowed to climb without crampons and ice axes which we didn't have. This made me mad but I figured they knew more about these things than I do so I let it go. Instead Sam and I bought lift tickets and rented skis and had a fantastic time skiing all morning. I hadn't been skiing for years so it was a crash course all over again, literally. Samuel insisted on going through the freestyle section all at once so as we went over the first jump I landed like an idiot and lost a ski, which left me skiing on one ski at a frantic pace down the mountain until that failed and I ended up face first in snow. After that incident things went much better and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The lift goes most of the way up the mountain and the views were breathtaking, here's a look-
And another-

And another- my ski's.

At 1:30 the lifts were going to close due to the warm weather and snow being more on the water side than ice, by 1 we were having a tough time of it in the slush, going down the hill I would feel the drag of the wet snow and once Samuel found a wet spot that stopped him cold, flipping him over, I was right behind him so of course over I went right after him. That gave us the bright idea to quit skiing and use the remaining time on our outrageously expensive lift tickets to get us halfway up the mountain while sitting. We returned the ski's and grabbed our backpacks from the car, ran to the lifts and got in just in time for the last trip up of the day. The highest lift was about 8,500 feet if I remember correctly, from there we took off on foot for as high an elevation as we were able to with the remaining day, figuring we wouldn't make it to the top but having a goal of 10,000 feet before turning back for the day. The climb was awesome, my camera is a piece of junk that quit working at every opportunity so I don't have many pictures but there are a few of the way up-The pictures cannot possibly show the immense beauty and the feeling of the place, absolutely stunning.

Samuel taking one of the many breaks, by this time we were about out of air, at least for our flatland accustomed lungs. The view is breathtaking too so it hits us twice as hard.

From about 9,500 feet, Mt Jefferson and the Three Sisters in the background but you can hardly see them, the camera made everything fuzzy, it was really quite clear out that day and we could see the other mountains crystal clear.
Another shot-

Samuel and the ridge we just climbed.

Another-I think this is the first picture of me posted here ever. About 10,000 feet.





This is the summit. From this point on we were completely out of breath whenever we walked, I was surprised we were so out of oxygen here, we are not that high at about 10,300 feet. When we got to our goal of 10,000 feet there was good climbing if we could dodge the hailstorm of boulders falling around us from the loosening rocks above us, we almost quit here but I wanted to see the sulfur steam vents ahead so we kept going.




This one above is of the summit and looks into the crater, I doubt you can see it in the picture but the snow in the lower right corner is stained greenish yellow from sulfur and there is a large stream originating there, rushing down under the glacier that I was unable to photograph due to the camera deciding it had had enough.

Same place.

Me resting at 10,400 feet. Samuel stopped here but I went 100 feet further to the steam vents. Due to the falling rocks (I can't show where they came from because the camera died as I was trying to get a picture of the area) I could get up to the steam vents but not around them, the gasses were nauseating, deadly I hear, people die once in a while from getting too close and passing out. I had Sam stay well away while I carefully went forward. It was incredibly steep there, i was clinging to rocks and sticking my toes into little spots here and there and if I fell it would have been several thousand feet before I stopped. I got to one vent and held my breath while getting close, it was hot and steamy naturally, quite interesting. I left as fast as I could to get some air and had to stop climbing there since there was just no way around the vents without going into a stream of falling rock, the highest point by my altimeter was 10,500 feet, leaving only 700 feet more to the summit.
This is getting long so I'll finish it later. I've got to find the rest of the pictures.