Sequoia POCer Party Part II

Sunday we decided to rehab our swimming muscles with an 8 mile hike at 7,000 feet elevation. Everyone else had to fly or drive home so Brian and I headed up to the Wolverton Trailhead and did the hike to Heather Lake. On the way up we took the Watchtower trail. I assumed the name referred to a fire watch tower we would be able to check out, but really it refers to a big outcropping of rock overlooking the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River. It was very impressive but also steep and loose so we didn't walk very far out onto it. The valley was beautiful, the river cascades down a granite dish at one end and makes a series of pools in the side of the cliff. I'd like to do the hike from Lodgepole campground to Tokopah falls sometime. I'd also like to do some backpacking from there so we can get deeper into the alpine country. Above the Watchtower the trail turned into a ledge blasted from the side of the cliff. It was wide enough for comfort but still pretty exposed, very fun.

View from just past the Watchtower into the valley.

Nell being pensive on the ledge section.

Ledge section on the Watchtower trail, Sequoia.

 On the way up we saw three marmots hanging out on a rock and a hairy woodpecker tapping on trees. The lake was very nice, Anna claimed it was pretty warm for an alpine lake but I didn't test it out. We spent about half an hour basking on a rock then hobbled back down to the trailhead via the Hump trail. I think the Hump bit refers to the fact that you have to go over the ridge into the next little creek drainage over before you start descending. In the future I think I'll do the Watchtower trail out and back, it had better views and more uniform elevation change. 

The Watchtower trail turning inland toward Heather Lake.

Heather Lake, Sequoia.

Brian taking the previous image.

Yet more pondering of the Sierras.

We had dinner at the Lodgepole Grill. Protip: if the you ask the cashier "Are the chicken tenders are strips of chicken or pressed minced chicken?" and she says "Yeah they're really good, like big chicken nuggets." that is not the answer you're looking for. Luckily Brian is not obnoxiously fussy like I am. He gave me most of his cheeseburger and ate my chicken tenders.

Sequoia POCer Party Part I

This past weekend Brian and I went to Sequoia to celebrate Derick and Anna's impending baby with a bunch of Purdue Outing Club peeps. We hadn't seen any POCers since our Red Rocks trip last fall so it was fun to catch up with people and celebrate. I haven't been to the Sierras for several years, I'd forgotten how beautiful they are with all the trees and granite. I really like the scrubby desert too. 

I made a hat for the baby based on the Windschief pattern, but I forgot to take a picture of it. It turned out pretty cute. I think I'll do that pattern again. I may alter the decreases though because I wasn't wild about how they went. We also bought a board book of The Runaway Bunny, the prettiest baby book ever written. I hope they enjoy reading it together. 

Saturday we went low-key canyoneering with Brendan and Stephanie on the East Fork of the Kaweah River. I'd never really been canyoneering before so I was very excited. It was not a camera friendly outing so we don't have any pictures, but the river was beautiful. We started about 3.5 miles up Mineral King Road and bushwacked down some cow paths to the river. From there it was about 2 miles along the river back to 198, where we had a cocktail at the Gateway Lodge while Brendan hitched a ride back to the campsite to pick up a car.

We had a great time sliding down rock ramps, floating through deep pools and bumping over rapids. Everyone but Brian jumped off a 15 ft. rock. Brian scouted the depth of the pool for us, despite being very disinclined to stick his feet down into the dark water. Shortly after lunch Steph rolled her ankle scouting a ramp so we had to take the last bit of the trip a bit slow and careful. It clearly hurt pretty badly at the time but luckily the next day it didn't seem to be getting worse, hopefully just a minor sprain. Although I managed not to damage myself the next day I was sore everywhere, I guess I should have stretched after all that swimming. Hopefully next year we can do a more technical canyon with some rappels and waterfalls and things. 

Discovering Mt. Adams

We stumbled upon the Mt. Adams wilderness almost by accident. Our first camping trip this year we hoped to stay at Smith Rock, but it was packed. We kept heading east and ended up in Ochoco National Forest, which was lovely but kind of far for a weekend trip. It also skewed more toward off-roading than hiking trails, making it hard to explore on foot. Next we celebrated Memorial day by embedding the Yaris in a snow drift on the south side of Mt. Hood. That was also good fun but still too crowded. We didn't pass a single campground with sites available. Mt. Hood National Forest has abundant opportunities for dispersed camping but I consider fire to be half the point of camping and building my own firepit every time doesn't feel super low-impact.

In a bid to get out of the Portland crowd radius, I started looking across the Columbia into Washington. The Twin Falls campground in Gifford Pinchot National Forest sounded pretty great so one Saturday Nick and I drove up to check it out. The campground is nicely situated on a small river near some waterfalls. Sadly all the sites were full by the time we got there. Judging from the number of empty beer cans on the picnic tables it wasn't going to be our scene anyhow. Undaunted, we continued on to Olallie Lake. Only one other site was taken and the view of Mt. Adams across the lake was worth several waterfalls at least.

Sunday we hiked up the road from Tahklahk Lake to a nice big lava pile and a boggy meadow. The road was 70% covered in snow, too deep for a Yaris (I know these things) but passable for a big truck. On the way back we helped a couple dig their car out, which was good because we owed the universe a favor for the very nice fellow who helped us dig our car out over Memorial day. There are several trails, including the PCT, in the Mt. Adams wilderness and the mountain makes a very inspiring adversary. We've been back two more times already and I have more hikes I want to do in the future.

Mt. St. Helens overlook from Highway 30.

Mt. Adams across Olallie Lake.

Finished Fatty Lumpkin horse

I finished my crocheted n-gon horse quite a while ago, but never posted a picture. This post is to remedy that. I'm very happy with how he turned out, I think he's really cute. He's pretty big. I used thicker yarn than the pattern called for and I suspect I'm not the tightest crocheter around. Consequently, he isn't really structurally sound on his own. I put paper towel tubes in his legs and neck and used string to keep his feet from splaying out. That all contributes to his majestic charm. He spends his days monitoring our goings on from the platform at the bottom of the stairs. 

Fatty Lumpkin crocheted horse

Fatty Lumpkin crocheted horse

Cherriversary

We passed the one-year anniversary of our move to Portland last week. The first full weekend we were in town, basically as soon as we had a car, I dragged Brian up to the Hood River Gorge and we picked 40 pounds of tart cherries. We pitted them by hand over the next few days and froze them in 9 cobbler-sized portions. I've been slowly using them in pies and cobblers, drying them in the oven, and making syrup from the juice. We're now down to one bag. To mix things up, this year I got a cherry pitter (amazing, best invention ever) and a Presto Dehydro food dehydrator. Sadly, they were out of tart cherries at the orchard so we had to content ourselves with 20 lb. of dark sweet cherries, mostly Lamberts with some Bings. 

2016 cherry haul.

I've only used a real food dehydrator once, to make trail fruits for a backpacking trip in high school. The one I got is pretty similar - round trays stacked over a heat source and fan - and works pretty great. I dried a bag of the frozen tart cherries and a bunch of the new sweet ones. The tart cherries dried a lot faster, the freeze-thaw process releases a lot of juice, but they are pretty beat up from being hand-pitted and frozen. I really like their flavor dried, it's very intense. The pitter did a great job on the sweet cherries, leaving only two small holes. That meant they took close to 30 hours to dry down to a reasonable plump-raisin level. They are milder in flavor than the tart cherries, but still nice. I think I might try coating some with dark chocolate. Yum.

This year's bucket of cherries, and Mt. Hood.

Tart and sweet cherries in the food dehydrator.

Oceanside rocks

Brian and I got one rock-hunting trip in before winter ended. We went to three beaches on the north Oregon coast. The first two were up near Highway 26 and didn't yield much in the way of rocks. And we got rained on a lot. Luckily I had my new Columbia rain coat on. We almost gave up but then decided to drive down to Oceanside beach, where we had better weather and found a ton of great rocks. 

Oceanside rock hunt prizes.

That's about 7 lbs of rocks. My tumbler only holds 3 lb so I picked the agates (the white pile on the right and the center pile) and added a few of the green guys and the black rocks with embedded agates. I skipped the coarse grind step and added a third polish step with 1000 grit alumina to hopefully get a higher shine more quickly. Here is the polishing progression:

As-found beach rocks.

After 1 week of medium grind (180/220 grit SiC).

After 1 week of pre-polish (500 grit SiC).

After 1 week of mid-polish (1000 grit alumina).

After 1 week of polish (1200 grit alumina) plus burnished 1 day with Ivory soap.

This is a pretty small subset of the batch, the whole pile looks like this:

Oceanside rocks before tumbling.

Rocks after tumbling.

Paper pieced bunnies

I finished the pillows I was practicing for in March and bestowed them on Raj and Vivek this weekend. The fronts are paper pieced bunnies with patterns from Silver Linings Originals. I'm so happy with how they turned out. I really like the Silver Linings patterns, and the folks who run the store are very nice and helpful. I made their tree frog pattern for a friend's baby quilt last year and it was great too.

Bunny panels pre-pillowfication.

Holland lop rabbit pillow.

Dutch rabbit pair pillow.

Yachats rocks

In the Cape Perpetua visitor center I learned that the volcanic rock on the Oregon coast is full of agates. As streams and waves wear down the rock the agates break free and wash up on the beach. You can find them among the rocks as the tide goes out. So while Nick perused the tidepools I scoured the gravel for anything vaguely translucent. 

By the end of our time in Yachats I had a pretty good handful of potential agates. Nick got me a rock tumbler for an early birthday present so I could polish them up. It seems that people generally polish rocks in four stages: gross shaping, minor shaping, pre-polish, and polish. I decided to skip the gross shaping step to keep my rocks in more irregular beachy shapes. The trade-off is that some of them would retain pits and depressions that won't polish up that well. I took photos before and after, because science. I think they came out pretty well. Each square in the pictures below is 1" x 1". Number 63 is my favorite.

Tiny rocks pre-polishing.

Tiny rocks after polishing.

Biggish rocks pre-polishing.

Biggish rocks after polishing.

Yachats trip

I spent some of my layoff-cation exploring the coast town of Yachats with Nick. We stayed at Ocean Cove Inn and ate dinner twice at Heidi's Italian Restaurant, both of which were awesome. It rained every day we were there, which kept the crowds down and made for good waves. 

Our main objective in selecting Yachats was to check out Thor's Well, a hole in rock ledge on the ocean's edge that fills and drains with every wave then the tide is right. We visited first thing Friday morning. You'll have to check the link for pictures. We were too chicken to take our phones out near it. I did get a shot of the Spouting Horn blowing up a puff.

Cape Perpetua Spouting Horn spouting.

We stomped all over the coast then drove up to the Cape Perpetua overlook to dry off a bit. It was only 800 feet up but that was enough to transition the rain to snow. It was too overcast to see very far but the view gives you a good feel for the coastline.

Nick in the snow.

Cape Perpetua Overlook

After lunch we hiked the Giant Spruce trail to what is reputed to be the second largest tree in Oregon. It is a big one. It started life on a fallen log called a nurse log. When the nurse log rotted away it left a nice dry cave. 

Hanging out in the nurse log cave.

That's a big tree.

Cool yellow plant.

On Saturday we drove down the coast a bit to check out the sea lion cave. It is a huge sea cave where sea lions hang out; you can take an elevator down and ogle them. The scene is kind of like the elephant seal beach in Big Sur, but in a cave. They have a mesh fence up to keep the visitors separate from the seals. There is not much chance of disturbing them from a distance because it is crazy loud in there with the barking and the waves. While we were down there the elevator broke down so about 30 of us were trapped for 40 minutes while they tried to get a repair person out. Eventually they decided it would be too long to wait for a fix and we all got to go up the stairs. It was the twistiest spiral staircase I've ever encountered. You had to kind of sidle up with your back against the center pole. I kept picturing us all going down like a line of dominoes if someone at the top stumbled. 

Sea lion cave.

Sea lion cave movie.

After escaping from the sea lions we went for a short hike on the dunes. I would have liked to get down to the ocean but the path was flooded and swampy from all the rain. Still, we got to scamper in the sand which was fun. 

Nell on the dunes.

Sunday we headed home in scattered rain. We stopped a few times to look for agates and to check out Otter Rock. We glimpsed a few critters in the waves, but I think they were sea lions not otters.

View south from Otter Rock.

Otter Rock in repose.

Catherine Creek hike

Brian and I hiked around near Catherine Creek yesterday. It is known for wildflowers March - May and we saw quite a few. I tried to take photos but the camera on my phone is definitely tuned for people and scenery shots, most of the flower shots did not turn out. Below are few of the better ones. I found the names on wildflowersearch.com, although any errors in ID are certainly mine alone.

I really like these upside down orange guys but I couldn't find them on the flower naming site.

Columbia Gorge desert parsley. We thought these guys looked a bit like the fennel that grew in Santa Barbara.

Poet's shooting star flowers.

Naked broomrape flowers.

Bigseed biscuitroot amongst the rocks. Sister to the desert parsley and also very fennel-like.

The hike itself was beautiful. We paralleled Catherine Creek for about 1/2 mile and got to hear it burble.The land had been used for sheep and cattle in the past and had some old wooden fences still and rolls of barbed wire about. The trail traveled through open meadow with large grassy areas and areas with rocks sticking out. It was a ~5 mile loop with 1500 feet of elevation gain. We could see down into the Columbia the whole way. About halfway up we got high enough to see Mt. Hood but it was covered in clouds. We got a better view from the Hood River bridge on our way home. 

View east up the Columbia.

Brian doing his thing.

Old livestock pen by Catherine Creek.