on the river

Colleen and I are camped out on the Willamette this morning and we chose a most interesting campsite with lots of entertainment. We have an industrious and well fed beaver going back and forth 10 ft in front of our feet. There were 10 students who passed in 2 orc rafts at 9:45 last night with no shirts (it was cold then) or camping supplies. By far the most random is a boiling cauldron or water. Yup. There is a huge gush of water shooting up from the sand bar and then heading upriver in a slightly separate channel from the river. It doesn't look like the water is coming from a pipe, and the boil is a little higher in elevation on the sandbar than the river. Weird.
I guess I could also mention that we are on the river because we are paddling from Eugene to Corvallis for the weekend. I think we could have done the trip in a day but we kinda just wanted to take it easy and camp. The upper streches were a little speedy at times (for a 17 ft long kayak anyway...) and surprisingly clear (who'd have guessed the water below Eugene looked drinkable!). Once we got to about a half way point, several tributaries turned the river into the green lazy thing we know in Corvallis.

Col relaxing on our beach. Easiest camp spot ever.
The beaver buddy we shared the beach with
had to test out the underwater function on the camera
Snacktime on the water
Colleen just cruisin along in the perfect weather.



People pay good money to do the things we do. How lucky are we...!

granite, oh blessed granite!

Climbing is my thing and this weekend I got to do my thing. I started the weekend with the homies from the bay area who were driving up to sasquatch festival. It was great to talk about old times and watch them flail on the climbing wall. We roadtripped up to the 'squatch festival for the evening and got lost and found several times amongst the 20,000 or so tent campers there. I felt kinda old running around all the teenieboppers there, but whateva. I know I rock in my old age. After unsuccessfully trying to get scott laid several times, we quit and went to bed. Logan and Melvin were kind enough to pick me up the next morning on the way to Leavenworth so off to climbing it was! I tell ya, pulling into a granite wonderland like that is just magical. Gets my heart going every time. The original plan was to get on serpentine arte IV 5.8 on dragontail peak, but that was very snowed in so We played for two days on the pearly gates wall near snow creek wall. There I got my MUCH needed crack fix. In two days we threw up everything worth doing, with the highlight for me being a redpoint of a 10.c roof finger crack. Just heaven. Granite is granite is just so soft and cuddly to climb on compared to so much else (jtree excluded). I didn't have to tape up once the whole time in Lworth. Oh, and there were some mtn goats cruising. Around that were very very friendly and provided some very nice photo ops. I think they are the snow creek wall goats who came down due to the raptor nesting on outer space ( no climbers means no climber handouts and pee to lick up). Oh, and icicle creek was a raging river, with about 5 miles of massive constant class V+ water.
We rounded out Sunday evening with some minigolf, but not before HOT Rainier Beer from the car, chips and queso, and another twelver of can beer in the parking lot. Winning the round, Logan and I tied about ten under Greg and Dev. At about the 5th hole of golf when all the brews were kicking in, I heard the best line from the weekend: "So uh, who's driving home?!?"
For monday we drove partway home then stopped at Tieton for some basalt column cragging. I would compare Tieton to trout creek, only with more broken colums and a but more jagged in spots. And a ton more routes. I would call the ratings there a little stiffer than leavenworth or smith, but a little softer as the grade gets harder. Definitely going to have to go back there again for a weekend or two. My favorite lead of the weekend, the 10.c finger crack.

Plastic