Mountaineering Trip to the PNW Part 2: Planning

With gear purchased and testing in progress, the next step was to learn as much as possible about the mountains we were planning to climb.  There is nothing I hate more than going into a trip unprepared.  It's one thing if you're on a short summer hike on the east coast, but a winter expedition to volcanoes in the Cascades is a big deal.  Initially, our plan was to try to hit two state high points: Mt. Hood (11,250) and Mt. Rainier (14,409).

It was in this planning phase that I discovered that my ascent up Borah Peak in Idaho (12,667) from May 2015 was in fact a bust.  Socked in with clouds, I had made it to a false peak just above Chicken-out Ridge, nearly a mile and 1000 vertical feet from the actual summit.  This began clawing away at my insides, and I needed to get back to that mountain and give it another shot.  I asked Noah his thoughts on it, and he said "sure, put it on the list!"  I may have left out the fact that it was 700 miles away from Mt. Hood.

Borah

So Hood, Rainier, and Borah.  I was almost more focused on Borah at this point, but Noah was focused on Hood, so I figured we would eventually get all the information we needed with frequent "war meetings" as he puts it.  After looking into Rainier for a few nights, I had a gut feeling that was bad about it, so I told Noah that I thought it was outside of our range to pull it off, and I just didn't feel right about it. I felt good about Hood and Borah, so we continued our research on them.

Borah has a simple way up, and that is to follow the trail from Birch Springs Road in Custer Co., then follow Chicken-out ridge to the summit.  My memory of the route from 2015 is still quite vivid, and looking at past pictures and route maps, I felt comfortable leading a climb up there, so long as we both had appropriate gear.

Hood was more complicated since it was a new target for both of us.  South side routes were by far the most common, but near the top of Hood is where several routes diverge, and have a vast range of technical difficulties.  The two common routes are the Pearly Gates and the Old Chute.  The Old Chute cuts off to the left and avoids a big hazard called the bergschrund, just above the Hogsback, which we thought to be a good idea since neither of us is trained with rope skills and crevasse rescue.  Best to just avoid that altogether and climb to the left of it.  In either case, we knew we were in for a climb that approaches 45° slope (100% grade) while going through the chutes.

Old Chute (green) and Pearly Gates (red) from the Hogsback.
Courtesy cascadeclimbers.com

I sought advice online for some other climbs that we could do in the area in case of bad weather during the week I was planning to spend out there.  Someone suggested Mt. Saint Helens via Worm Flows, so I looked into it.  At 8,366', it was considerably lower than the other objectives, but still with an ascent over 5000 feet involved.  That would be a good starter for me, considering I would need to get acclimated to higher elevation for a climb of Mt. Hood.

Mt. Saint Helens, courtesy Noah Pappano

At this point, we agreed on Mt. Saint Helens, Mt. Hood, and Borah Peak for our big climbs on the trip.  The main focus was Hood, though I was irritated by my false summit attempt on Borah, it became the primary objective for me.  It is strange how planning a trip like this becomes more than a logistic problem, and almost an emotional one.  Some mountains speak to you, and they lure you in.

I managed to get some time off from work, and I got it to match up with my weekends, allowing me 9 consecutive days!  The plan was that I would fly to Portland, OR and Noah would drive up from Arizona starting a few days prior.  From there the climbing would begin (assuming good weather).

Noah decided he wanted to rent mountaineering gear from one of the shops in Portland to save a bit on money.  The reason I bought outright is because I see myself doing big climbs like this in the future, though I'm not sure where Noah stands on that spectrum.  (Perhaps opinions have changed after the trip...)  I would rent a helmet since I don't own one, and snowshoes because I couldn't figure out how to pack them inside the bag for the flight.

In the week before my flight west, I began checking the mountain weather and avalanche sites, and I began to see a big problem, and that was a good 3 or 4 days of heavy snow in the PNW.  As our research had taught us, avalanche danger is high during storms as well as the day or so after the storm.  With limited to no avalanche experience, we wanted to minimize that danger as much as we could.  The best option, it seemed, was to go to Borah first, since weather was fair over Idaho during the storm over the Cascades.

The way the weather was shaping up, it looked like the whole plan was going to be reversed: Borah, Hood, then St. Helens.  Not a horrible plan, but the elevations were not in my favor, coming from a mere 200 feet above sea level.  I wasn't terribly concerned for Noah, since he was coming from 7000 feet in Flagstaff.  Thankfully, the temperatures weren't quite what I'd call frigid, though Idaho was noticeably cooler than the west coast, where temps were hovering around the 40s - 50s.

A trip report of Borah Peak will be in Part 3.

2015 Road Trip: Part 38 (End of the Road)

Sheridan, WY
Public Transport...
Day 54 - 59
6.6.15 - 6.11.15

Here I begin writing about the final leg of my journey cross country.  I've had to take some time off to get my mind of the end of this trip, which, as you will see, did not go at all as planned.  It was a recipe of failed expectations, mystery, doubt, and sadness.  But let's not jump the gun.

If you remember from Part 37 of the road trip blog, Emma and I had just driven through Beartooth Pass, which was an absolute bomb of an adventure.  We found the campsite just outside Red Lodge, MT.  We woke up to the sound of one of those gators that the campground attendants drive.  That is a sound of sheer terror when you are looking to sneak in and out of a campsite.  Yes, we had to pay.  I think he realized we were trying to get in for free.  They don't like it.

A nice view of the mountains behind the campsite

We filled up with petrol in town, and headed eastward aiming for I-90, our path back to civilization and out of the bleakness that is Montana and Wyoming.  For a change, we mixed up drivers and Emma drove. This gave me a chance to take some pictures without having to drive - a pleasure after doing it for the whole trip until now.  Though you do get quite good at it after many thousands of pretty miles that you must capture but you shouldn't be stopping on the freeway.

A Montana sunrise

I-90 loops north and south a bit because of mountains in the area, so once again we got to enter Wyoming.  It was around this point in the trip that things began to go awry.  An unfriendly noise coming from the engine.

Welcome to Wyoming (again)

Not only was this a strange noise from the engine, but it was very much like the noise I heard earlier in the year while trying to do a mini road trip to Massachusetts and New York.  That noise caused the engine to die on me, requiring a tow and an engine replacement.  To put it simply, this is not a noise I was happy to hear in the least populated state in America: one that also happens to be several thousand miles from home.

I had pulled over to assess the noise when it happened in the winter, and I was unable to start the engine, so I decided we needed to get to a town at least, to minimize towing distance if necessary.  The next town was Sheridan, WY, still a fair distance when hearing an irritating click with every engine rotation.

I stopped into an auto parts place and one of the guys said it sounded like a worn connecting rod in the engine, and that basically means bye-bye engine.  Well shit.  Also no Subaru dealerships in town, and I'm advised not to drive the car.  We went to a nearby Toyota place, since I figure at least it's Japanese, like Subaru.  Same deal from them - don't drive the car, because it will die on me.

Where to stay for the night?  What to do about the car?  Get a new engine in it, sell it and get a beater to get home?  What about all my stuff?  I also have Emma with me, and she is supposed to be back in Chicago by the 10th of June.  When stuff goes bad, it snowballs, at least when it goes bad like this.  Many unknowns as of this point.  However, we were in a town with access to food and internet for finding other things, so as far as that goes, we were set.  A nice guy gave us a ride to Starbucks with free wifi, where we found that there was a city park right around the corner from the dealership that allowed camping for a few consecutive nights.  Talk about hitting it lucky.

Here was the skyline from our site at the nice grassy park:

Sheridan, WY

I spent several hours at Starbucks just trying to figure out what the hell my next steps were going to be, hoping the internet would be of some use.  I asked for advice online, and got some advice, perhaps not the greatest advice.  People recommended driving the car until it actually wouldn't drive anymore.  This sounded like a good idea at the time, so we chose a slower road east the next morning.

Cottonwood trees

Judge me as you like.  We left Sheridan the next morning with the horrendous rattle/click coming from the engine.  I didn't have much power, considering I was running on 3.5 cylinders.  Any hill was a struggle.  Well, we made it about 40 miles and then it happened, a shudder from the front of the car, the engine shut off, and a horrible cloud of steam coming from the hood.  I was expecting an explosion of sorts, so we booked it out of the car and got fairly far away.  There was thankfully no explosion, and we came in closer to look at what happened.  Oil and coolant leaking.  Never a good sign.  Out of nowhere, a local farmer on his ATV stopped by and offered his best diagnosis.  Cracked engine block.  He recommended we push the car down into his neighbor's driveway which was right behind the car, so we didn't get run over.

Here we sat.  I had a nice talk with a guy from AAA, who told me a guy would be on his way within an hour or so.  During this period of waiting, I had nothing better to do than to think about what had just happened, and how unexpectedly bad of a situation I was in.  We watched the train with a hundred cars go by.  A few cars went by, none of which were a tow truck.  It was utterly bleak.  Beautiful country, but bleak and barren. I decided to play the accordion.  Improv music will often help me deal with hard things.  I've used it in the past, but this time was very powerful. I'm not sure if it made anything better per say, or maybe it did...hard to know.  I know that it allowed for me to cry things out, which I'll be honest has not happened in many years.  I'm quite sure that this emotional distress came through in my music.  Music conveys nothing better than emotions in my opinion.  I was at a loss.  Confusion.  Disappointment in regards to the road trip having to end on the side of the road in rural Wyoming.  Frustration, because I was no longer able to give Emma a ride back to Chicago in the form of an exciting road trip.  And the death of a vehicle that had taken me over 11,000 miles across the nation to see things I've never come close to seeing before.  It let me do things I haven't done before.  Wombat was like a close friend, and on its deathbed, I outright killed him today.  It was imminent death considering an engine replacement was not in my budget.  But now it was in my hands...I had done it myself.

Even months after the fact, this is challenging for me to write about.  I want to forget about it.  I really want to not remember this part of it at all. But you all have been following the story mile after mile, so I owe it to you.  I owe it to myself, to accept that sometimes things turn bad when you least need them to.  On the bright side, I hadn't caused any injuries from crashing or the like.  That was not enough to turn my mood around. Maybe life has been kind to me, and I haven't had to experience something challenging like this before.  It was a step into the unknown, but way more at once than I wanted.

Tow truck arrived.  Big and yellow.  Engine functional.  That in itself pissed me off.  Thanks to Emma for trying to make me pull it together so I could talk to the driver and get him the information he needed for the tow.  When you just want to dissolve into the background and not exist. He towed us back to Sheridan, and dropped Wombat off in the back lot of the dealership.

The remainder of the day, I had to choose between getting my mind as far off the subject of reality as possible, or trying to deal with what lay ahead of me.  I aimlessly browsed used cars for sale in the area, none of which were in my budget.  Engines for Wombat cost more than the car itself.  For the time being, Wombat served as a storage area for all my stuff.

I spent many hours talking with people at the dealership to see if they might have something I could buy to get me as far as home.  And many hours on the phone with parents trying to figure out the best choice to move forward.  But there are only so many hours in a day, so Emma and got our stuff and headed back to the city park.

That evening, we had a nice sunset at our disposal to let us forget about reality.

Sunset over Sheridan WY

Day 3 in Sheridan.  The sun rises no matter what happens in life.  This is refreshing.

A child had left bubble mix at the picnic tables the night before.  I blew some bubbles.  They slowly sank to the grass, but with the morning dew on the blades, the bubbles didn't pop.  Sometimes it's the small things in life.

Over the course of my stay in Sheridan, a beautifully kept (or restored) original Beetle appeared at the dealership and was parked next to Wombat.  It was like a friend for Wombat during his last few days.

After some debating of options, it was decided that Emma would take a bus back to Chicago and I would take public transport home, shipping a few large boxes home.  I got myself some bus and plane tickets, and then I had the task of getting someone to take the car from me.  I had a hard time accepting that this would be the last time I could see Wombat. Here is a portrait in honor of a dutifully done job as long as Wombat was healthy. Without him, I would not have made it to the Pacific Ocean.  Without him, I would not have hiked to many peaks in the western states.  Without him, I would not have taken a journey that put me out of my comfort zone to try new things and see new places.

Goodbye, Wombat

I found a guy to take my car for $100.  It's damn disrespectful, but considering its mileage, maybe it's not worth putting a new engine in it. With three huge boxes sent off toward Maine via UPS, and three large backpacks on my person, I headed out in the evening to catch my bus to Billings, MT.  Yes I realize that is west, not east.  I spent the evening before my departure time at Starbucks once again, and some massive thunder storms rolled in.  It was inspiring, as I love a good thunderstorm. I was also very happy to be nearly on my way home after two months on the road.

The rain let up as I started to go to the bus station, and I got talking with the crazy guy at the gas station where the bus stopped.  I was the only person getting on that night.  Being a nighttime bus, there were many people sleeping on board, so I figured I would do the same, since I was on for a few hours anyway.  I admit, even as a driving enthusiast, it was nice to have someone else in charge of my getting around for a change. Time to relax and know that things are headed the way you need to go.

I got into Billings at 12:30am.  The driver had taken my license as collateral for the ticket that I was supposed to get at the depot in Billings. He must have been tired because he gave me my license back and my bags were waiting for me, so...I just left.  I like to consider that a frugal move.

Next stop, Billings Regional Airport.  My flight plan was a bit convoluted, since I was to fly to Seattle before flying to Boston.  I was told it was very much uphill to the airport from the bus station.  It was.  It's even more uphill when you look like a pack mule with three backpacks, heading up over the bluff at 2 in the morning.  I think it was a few miles or so.  I thought it was neat looking back at the city lights since I was above it all. I had to wait an unreasonable amount of time for my flight.  I arrived at the airport at 2:30am or so, and my flight was at 6pm the next evening.  I tried to get some sleep in the not-at-all-dark airport with crappy music playing.  Glad I had my sleeping bag and a pillow with me.  I tried to drown out the bad music with my ipod, but I just ended up falling asleep due to exhaustion.  Eight AM.  People start milling about, and even though I had found a nice corner with a plant to crash for the night, I was unhappy to be woken up, but more relieved that someone didn't ask me to move somewhere else during the night.

With bags checked, I hung out in the terminal.  Planes are kinda fun when TSA isn't a bitch to you.  Luckily I did not have any explosives or whiskey with me that would cause issues.  Minutes before departure time, the plane arrived, and here she is:

My chariot west to Seattle!

Once aboard, I was placed next to a nice man from Idaho.  We talked about how we ended up on this plane and the beautiful country that is in this area.  He was a longtime native, so I'm sure he knows better than me, but as a visitor, I surely loved the area.

Flying west over the Cascades was something I really enjoyed, since it was cloudy when I had driven east through them days before.  Nothing like snowy peaks in June.

I arrived in Seatac with a 2 hour layover.  It was strange to be in a place with so many other people at once.  After being almost exclusively on my own for most of 8 weeks, this was a shocker.

While getting a bite to eat, I saw this map of the airport and found some interesting errors.  Can you see what's wrong?  (Hint: the error is in yellow.)

Okay, fine...if you didn't find it, the bathroom sign to the left of Security Checkpoint 5 is upside down.  You can only use the toilets if you orient yourself upside down first.

For the first time in my flying history, I was not placed at a window seat. But an aisle seat was good for stretching out, considering it was an overnight flight.  Respect goes to those who fly over the time zones frequently, because I was getting all messed up.  Mountain Time in MT, then Pacific Time a few hours later, and then soon on my way to Eastern Time.

I don't recall much of what happened on the plane, likely because I slept most of the way.  Having someone do all the vehicle controlling is great because you can sleep during dark or boring parts of the journey. Compared to my 800+ mile day from Indiana to Arkansas where I had to be conscious the whole time...that was a drag at the end.

I remember waking up once during the flight to see the stunning red, orange, and blue glow in a perfectly clear sky across on the opposite side of the aircraft.  This is why it would be awesome to be the pilot on overnight flights.  You get to fly into the sunrise every flight you make eastward.  I soon fell back asleep, and awoke near the landing time in Boston.

It felt strange to be in a place that I had been before.  Familiarity was something I was unfamiliar with, ironically.  I was ready for it though.  My time away had been just long enough.  I accomplished my goals.  My goals were to leave home long enough to want to come back.  I was getting tired of home.  The road trip allowed me to occupy my mind with something else, and at the same time get to see many new places, all at my own pace, and at my discretion.

From Boston, I was to take a bus up to Bangor, where I would be excitedly greeting by my parents.  Even after sleeping in the plane, I felt very tired, and surprise...I ended up sleeping for some of the bus trip into Maine.  After my transfer in Portland, I ended up watching a movie without sound on the screens up above.  It was called The Trip, oddly enough.  Without sound, I was able to pick out that it was about a couple of British friends who went on a trip in a Range Rover, meeting up with different people along the way as they stayed at B&Bs.  There was some hiking involved as well.  I'd be curious to watch it with sound some day.

I was shocked at how much a recognized the area.  This probably seems normal to people, but coming home after an extended period was just such a strange experience for me.  More dramatic than returning from a trimester at college.  I was very excited to look up a road signs and know the cities and towns like the back of my hand.  This was something I hadn't done in several months.  Very fun when you're out of practice.

The meeting of the parents in Bangor was quite exhilarating.  It is amazing how distancing yourself for awhile can indeed make things much better.  I was very happy to be in a familiar place, and finally not so alone.  I learned how to be alone on my road trip.  Sometimes it is great and healthy.  But I think most people need some interaction with family or friends once in awhile.  I was happy to have spent a few weeks with Noah on my trip, and a week with Emma as well.  But I am equally happy to have spent some more time on my own, able to explore and make my own decisions without cross-checking with a road trip buddy.

I think this is the end of my writing about the Great Road Trip of 2015. Sorry about the lack of pictures during this last part.  Taking pictures is something you think of more when things are going well.  Not so much with things go....not as planned.

I'd like to thank those who followed this trip in part, or in whole.  It was nice to know that people were out there caring about my wellbeing from afar.  If you have or haven't done a trip like this, I highly recommend trying it if you can get the time for it.  it was exceptionally healing for me, as well as broadening my horizons, literally and figuratively.  Now that I have been bitten by the travel bug, I will try to infect all of you as well! :)

Oh - here's the final map of events thus far:

59 Days, 11k+ miles by car, 173 miles hiked,
a few more by plane, a few more by bus.

2015 Road Trip: Part 35 (WA-ID)

Washington to Idaho (the panhandle this time)
Day 51
6.3.15

I present some photos of our campsite in Randle, WA, near the strange cow.  The biggest problem about this site was how rocky the soil was and how this made staking tents challenging.  However, all was good because we had the lime green folding chair to lift our spirits.

Car, frying pan, grass, tailgate.

This day was more of a distance-covering day instead of a sight-seeing one, so we went after I-90 eastbound through eastern Washington, which we discovered to be an awful lot like eastern Oregon.  It's very dry because the Cascades steal all the moisture coming east.  With Idaho in our sights, we entered the beautiful area of Spokane...during rush hour.

Coeur d'Alene, the eastern gateway to the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho and Montana!  We popped off the highway for a bit to go see Lake Coeur d'Alene.  It was finally sunny, now that I was away from the coast where I was hoping to see some sun.

Lake Coeur d'Alene

Just past the lake, some passing storms doused the air with water droplets and made a cool rainbow.

Rainbow

Using the trusty free campsites website, we had read about a place right on the border between Idaho and Montana called Lookout Pass.  It was supposedly under a mile from the highway - just get off the exit and drive up a dirt road to a ski area.  I believe we saw the incorrect dirt road, since we saw no evidence of any primitive camping sites, however we did make it to the top of the ski slope.  The road was perilously steep in certain parts, but nothing Wombat couldn't handle.  At the top, there were several ski lifts and a few buildings that cater to skiers in the winter, and the verdict was to drive back down a little bit to a flat-ish spot we spotted on the way up.

Wombat posing in the mountains

Things got crazy while setting up camp.  Emma's shelter required two trees to tie the rope to, but there was no ideal spot, so we used to car as one tree.  From there, her shelter and the dinner canopy was tied. Consider this Shelter 2.0.

The sun peeked through the clouds just before setting as we were cooking dinner, and we realized what a beautiful spot we had chosen for the night.  Yes, in the middle of a ski slope.

One must celebrate the small things in life:

Root Beer

The clouds blew off as dusk fell, and we were able to see Venus and Jupiter in the sky.  (Venus is visible in the photo below).  I had been watching them move slowly night after night for the past few weeks.  It's one of those things you get to noticing when you are away from your standard daily routine, e.g. on a road trip.

The night brought on some chilly temperatures, likely because we were up around 5000 feet or so.  Nonetheless, I think this was one of my favorite camping spots on the trip.

This day, we drove 436 miles, bringing to total up to 10,501.

Day 51: 436 miles

2015 Road Trip: Part 34 (OR-WA)

Oregon to Washington
Day 50
6.2.15

Like the day before, it was damp and mostly overcast on day 50 of the trip.  Now that Emma was traveling with me, we had to figure out some kind of shelter involving tarps and rope and other fun things since she had not come out to Oregon with a tent.  We'll call this Version 0.9, or perhaps just the beta test version.  There was a conflict of interests while building this shelter the night before.  See, Emma was after functionality, and I was after aesthetic perfection.  One side ended up being uneven which caused a wrinkle in the tarp.  I found this unacceptable and the loops along the top rope needed to be fully repositioned.  I won't mention how long this took.  But most importantly, no ropes were cut in the process.

Shelter version 0.9

The plan for the day was to head north along US-101 into Washington, though beyond that, any plans were vague at best.  I had been hoping for a sunny day at least some time along the coast, but today was not going to be that day.  We stopped at some place along the shore and enjoyed a walk by the waves.

Pacific Ocean and Sand

As you likely saw in the last road trip post, the west coast has bumpin' bridges compared to what I've seen in the east.  The best of which was the bridge that crosses into Washington across the Columbia River.  It is the widest bridge on the river, and also the most westerly.  We could see it for miles.

Columbia River

Once on the bridge, it was quite similar (in material and construction at least) to the Piscatiqua River bridge in Maine along I-95.  Unlike that bridge however, this one had a tall segment for letting warships pass, for example, and then a long causeway for the rest of it.

We had high hopes of it perhaps clearing a bit as the day went on.  We had picked a camping spot right in between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Saint Helens.  As it turns out, we saw neither of those mountains, despite Rainier being over 14 thousand feet.  The clouds seem to win every time.

Our camping spot was however very nice, even with no views of tall mountains.  It appeared to be an old paved farming area, grown in with grass in some places.  There were some mossy concrete bits here and there as remnants of foundations.  There was a strange cow across the road that was making noises I didn't know cows could make.  I honestly thought it was a guy yelping for attention.  Eventually the cow did settle down for the night, luckily before we did.

I failed to get a picture of Shelter 1.0 at this site, but this was a much better design that involved some additional tent stakes and some uber-reflecty orange P-cord.  Expect an immaculate shelter setup in a future post...

Day 50 added 402 miles to the journey, bringing the grand total to 10,038.  My trip finally made it into 5 digit numbers.

Day 50: 402 miles.