My apartment-mates have started me down the road of baking my own bread...at least attempting to. My first loaf ever (above) came out with such a great crust that I thought I had nailed it the first time I tried, but that was before I cut it open. A little too doughy let's say. The crust was tasty though!
A whole bunch of middle school kids came out yesterday to stay for a few nights. While they are here they will be lead on guided climbing tours of some old-growth douglas fir trees, get a chance to explore some of the nearby wildlife, and terrorize everyone else with their constant yelling. I didn't sleep well last night. At least their school has a great name, "Fern Ridge", I like that.
Took another moment to get a few photos of one of the hummingbirds. I could easily waste hours watching these little balls of feather zooming every which way trying to jostle for control of the sugar-water feeder hanging from the porch.
A Big-Leafed Maple leaf I liked.
Last night a few guys from the "Owl Crew" and my apartment-mates decided to watch "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" after dinner. Being that it happens to be one of my favorite movies I joined them and decided to push my evening walk a little later. Lesson learned, don't hike at night in the Oregon wilderness while it's raining, and you are alone. I made it probably ten minutes down a trail when I saw eyes (I would guess it was a deer) reflecting off my headlamp and decided it was time to turn in for the night. The picture above is just an attempt to show how much visibility I had.
Today I had the day to myself, and I wanted to do something special with it. Luckily, it was also the first day sense I arrived that I woke up and it wasn't raining. In fact, the forecast showed perfect adventure conditions all day long; partly cloudy and mid-60s. I took out a map and figured that a run to the Tidbit Mountain summit sounded like a fun thing to do. Problem was, the trail head was over ten miles from the campground. My apartment-mate Alex was leaving for the weekend and said I could use his Gravity 29er mountain bike ($2,000!). I took him up on his offer and decided to ride up to the trail and back. Let's just say the way up was definitely "up". The old logging road climbed (without break) for the full 10 miles a total of ~2,500 feet. It was an absolutely grueling bike ride to the top. But the scenery made every pedal worth it (as did the ride back down!).
Wildflower #13: On the way up I spotted these stunning flowers at the base of a dirt bank. These flowers are called Indian Paintbrushes.
Although it isn't the best picture, about 4 miles up the road the sound of a waterfall caught my attention and I parked the bike and hiked in a few minutes until I could spot the cascading stream a full 30 feet high at least.
Wildflower #14: As I hiked in to get a view of the waterfall I found a patch of these peculiar flowers called Bleeding hearts as their petals form a heart-shaped inflorescence with the bottom "torn" open.
After another mile or so I was beginning to enter low lying clouds and the temperature had dropped significantly.
A view across one of the U-shaped gorges that the road followed.
Immense landforms dominated every view when there was opening in the treeline. By this time riding through clouds was happening quite often.
A nice little water fall I passed.
The peak at the top of the photo isn't clouded, it is covered in snow. Now I knew I was really climbing.
Wildflower #15: An umbel of these fairly ordinary looking flowers topped a single stalk. I only came across these after several miles of biking, perhaps hinting that these grow only at higher altitudes.
A view of a few peaks across one of the valleys. Simply breathtaking to actually stand there.
One of the best parts of the ride was that I covered almost 30 miles of bike/run/hiking and I didn't see one other human being. That's when you really know it's remote.
I was definitely glad to see a sign for the trail head only about a half mile farther around the turn. Of course, I round the bend and have to walk/hike my bike the last half mile because the road became insanely steep.
By the time I reached the trail head I was spent, but I had come this far and still wanted to run the Tidbit Mountain Trail.
The trail awaited. I got about 2.5-3 miles down the trail when the snow became so deep that I couldn't run any further. When I returned to where I parked the bike I grabbed my camera and backpack and headed back down the trail to document where I ran.
After only a few minutes clouds enveloped everything around me. This created mind boggling views of the sheer slopes and trees vanishing into pure whiteness. The temperature had plummeted at this point.
Don't know what kind of bird this is.
I just like the way the upturned trunk reaches out over the trail in a very ominous manner.
The trail snaking along the edge of the slope falls drastically to the left. A few times while I was running I slipped on the wet surface/snow and was extremely close to falling off the edge. Such a fall would not have been kind to my body as the mountain side was so vertical that a fall could place you hundreds of feet from the trail.
Wildflower #16: Tiny little groups of bluish-purplish flowers. Pretty to look at, but hard to get the camera to focus on.
I love this image as I think it does a good job of portraying the way this falling creek seems to originate in nothingness.
After only about a mile and a half snow started to speckle the trail leading to some slick turns.
Massive trees appear ghost-like in the clouds.
That white patch in the center-right portion of the image is a clearing about 500 feet below the trail, again showing how unforgiving a fall would be.
I came across these deer tracks in the snow and followed them hoping for an indication of some greater beast.
It wasn't long before I found these larger paw prints (either bobcat or juvenile cougar). This animal seemed to have taken up an interest in the deer tracks I had found moments ago.
This was about the point I had to turn around as the snow here is about 1-2 feet deep making running here both pointless and dangerous.
On the way back I spotted what I thought was a different species of trillium. But, my apartment-mate Alex informed me that it is actually the same species of trillium I have pictured in my first post and that when this species of trillium gets older their petals become slightly translucent and the color changes, sometimes as much as from white to a dark maroon.
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