Mt. Hood & Mt. Adams Climbing Trip

After a successful climb of Mt. Rainier in 2006, I've been itching to get back to the Cascade Volcanoes. The terrain is spectacular. For this trip, I went with the Serac Club to climb Mt. Hood, Oregon, and Mt. Adams, Washington. (See my website for more photos)

Mt. Hood--that is a fine mountain.

We camped on the south face of Mt. Hood.

A brilliant sunset.

Climbing in the morning.

The shadow of Mt. Hood cast in the distance.

Reaching the summit ridge.

Another picture of the shadow

On the summit (Me, Glenn, Tyler)

After Mt. Hood, we drove to Mt. Adams, just north in Washington.

The road was still snowed-in 3.5 miles from the trailhead. We ended up digging out the road and driving all the way to the trailhead. Although it was a ton of work, we felt motivated and had a blast doing it.

When we got to the trailhead, a youth group had a young adult who had fell in a tree well with a 70-pound pack and blown out his knee. They had no idea how to get him down the mountain other than carrying him 3.5 miles. They were preparing to carry him when we showed up at 8pm. They were emotional and stunned at the same time. We put the boy in the back of the car and drove him down our newly opened road. It was a wonderful experience to help someone in such desperate need. In addition, when we met the group, they were dumbfounded that we had cleared the road of snow and trees. They kept asking "How did you do it?" I was still wearing flip-flops and one of the boys said, "And look, he's wearing flip-flops." Another boy responded, "Wow, he's a mountaineer." No joke. It was the best ego-trip of my life. Yeah, that's right boys.

Mt. Adams in the morning. This climb was a beast. Nearly 6,700 vertical feet and 14 miles round trip.

A storm nearly overtook us, but is passed us to the west. We considered it some divine help for our good deed yesterday.

Climbing the upper mountain.

The summit. Great trip!

And puppy makes three!

Three kids that is. =) Here is the newest addition to our family...Meet Tapio.


He is 75% golden retriever and 25% cocker spaniel. They breed them this way so they won't be as big as a golden retriever. We're hoping anyway. Matt loved the idea of getting a puppy that the kids could grow up with. My 3 big absolutes were that he had to be a good family dog, one who would respect the kids as his superior, he couldn't be a really big dog, and that he was going to be Matt's "baby." I mother babies, not puppies. =) So far so good. I've had to do a little more mothering than I thought since Matt still has to travel about 2 days a week for work, but I've already grown attached to this little guy, he is the cutest little puppy!


Tanner just loves him!! (Good call Matt!)




We are in the process of training this little guy, he chews on everything! He is coming along though. We'll see how he's doing in a few weeks. =)

Aye, Aye...eye

Poor Kate had to wear a pirate patch for a day after she scratched her eye pretty badly. It healed really nicely, thank goodness. But it should made for some fun pirate pictures. Tanner thought it was so funny she was wearing a patch.


At first she hated it! She tried to take it off a couple of times, but I was determined to keep it on there so it would heal all the way.


By the next day she had totally gotten used to it. No big deal.

Happy Birthday America!!

I have not been very good about blogging lately, things have been crazy busy. For the last few months Matt has been traveling about 4 days a week, so needless to say, blogging has been the last thing on my mind. But, some good things have happened, and Matt's traveling schedule has decreased substantially!! I'm so happy to have my husband back. And maybe now I'll get caught up with the all the pictures I've been avoiding.  =)

We had a wonderful 4th of July! I hope all of you did as well. It started out early, really early.  We went to see the hot air balloons life off with some of Matt's cousins and their kids.  The say the kids enjoyed it would be a huge understatement.  They LOVED it!!  I wish I had brought my camera to get some pictures of their enjoyment.  Then I came home and made this thing of beauty.  =)  We started making a fruit flag giant sugar cookie last 4th of July and so we carried on the tradition this year.  It is so yummy, I think we'll have to make it a continuing tradition.

After taking a nap, we had a family BBQ that was so much fun.  Matt has a lot of family here in the area, so we swam, grilled some meats, and sat down and had a fun evening together.  I wanted to get a picture of the kids, and this was the best I got.  Doesn't Tanner look so tired? Poor guy, he was just going all day long.  

These next 4 pictures are such Kate's personality.  I love this girl.  She is so laid back, just taking it easy.  It's funny, I can't tell if she's going to be a girly girl or more of a tom-boy?  She loves accessories and anything pretty and girly, loves her dolly, but plays with all things boy (with exception of her doll).  I think more than anything she may be a girly girl influenced by big brother.  =)  We'll see, either way she is darling and we wouldn't want her to be any different.

Kate playing with her cute 2nd cousin who is only 3 weeks younger.  I love seeing the two of them together, they both have the same chub and yumminess!  =)

Tanner didn't want to go see fireworks this year, he does not like the loud bangs.  But when I showed him these sparklers he thought they were very cool, and warmed up to them right away.  These and poppers were the ticket this year!  He loved them.  We'll see what he'll want to do next year.

I love the curiosity and amazement in Tanner's face.  I just love this kid!!  He makes things like sparklers and holidays awesome.  Isn't it great to experience things through the eyes of a child?

Thought this was a pretty cool picture.  Matt was teaching me how to play around with the time delay on our camera.  This is my little brother who is living with us this summer.

Summer Climbing on Mt. Olympus

Our route plans were to climb West Slabs of Mt. Olympus . . .

. . . then traverse the six summits, and descend down the south and west aspects of the mountain.

The morning was perfect.

I lead the first pitch . . .

. . . but the climbing was so fast and easy, that the rope and gear was becoming more of a hinderance than a protection . . .

. . . so we put all that stuff away and soloed the rest of the route.

Ahhhh, great rock climbing.

From the top of the West Slabs, we continued up the west ridge to the summits of Mt. Olympus.

Making our way to the north summit.

Traversing the additional summits.

An awesome part of the route.

Success.

Coming down the route, I felt exhausted, but nothing unusual until the last 20 minutes before the trailhead. I sat down on a rock and felt a wave of numbness, exhaustion and I almost blacked-out various times. I fought like the devil to stay focused and conscience and slowly finished the hike down. After 15 minutes at the car, I was losing control of my body with excessive sweating, swelling, dizziness, and waves of numbness and almost blacking-out. So I asked Glenn to take me to St. Mark's E.R. Admittedly, I was a bit scared because I had never experienced this lack of control before, but they loaded me with sugar and 4 liters of fluids and I was good to go.

The likely contributors were being overstressed mentally/physically, I ate nearly nothing the whole time and I didn't drink enough, so my body couldn't deal with it all at the end. Good lesson to learn from. It was still a blast!!!

Tanner workin' the Carveboard

More of the Goods: Climbing Dromedary & Sunrise Peak

This spring it just keeps snowing and snowing in the mountains, so I've had to be patient and wait for a sunny Saturday to come along. Finally I got one so we headed out to climb a Wasatch classic: Tanners Gulch (the main chute in the middle of the photo).

Near the top of Tanners Gulch.

After traverse some steep terrain, we gained the west ridge of Dromedary Peak. If you look to the left of the climber's yellow helmet, you can see the highway below. That's our trailhead. It's nearly 4,000 feet down.

We climbed the west ridge with spectacular views of the Central Wasatch.

Reaching the first summit.

Yours truly.

Traversing back to the gulch to climb Sunrise Peak along the steep south face.

Climbing Sunrise.

Right off of the ridge it drops a long way.

Sunrise summit.

Going back down Sunrise to the top of Tanners Gulch.

3,500-foot slide straight down to the car at the trailhead. It's the only way to travel, and a heck of a good time!