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.