Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity. - John Muir
Of course these are debatable but the gist of it is true. What this perspective does is help you prioritize your actions. The first thing you must do is maintain core body temperature. Next, find water. Then concern yourself with food. Get obsessed with something else when you have no backup, and you may not survive.
This is great news in my book. I was out at the Imnaha river in spring and there is one of the first packs reported to have pups. I saw no sign of them. Now it sounds like most of the known Oregon packs have pups this year, even the newly discovered pack. Wild carnivores on the rise! We now have 53 wolves in Oregon. The ranchers hate it of course, but hopefully we can reach some equilibrium between livestock and canines that everyone can tolerate. I wonder if there might be some way to keep wild canines at bay that is as elegant as moving lights to keep away lions. Of course it's hard to protect your bovines when they're wandering far and wide...like those cows all along the Yampa. Need a wolf network up there too, keep the ranchers in line.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. ~Edward Abbey
The helicopter footage is gorgeous, especially the ways the trees glimmer when the camera zooms back out, and the views of Mount Hood. This is the legendary favorite local class V run. I haven't been there yet. The word is that there is quite a bit of new wood washed into the Green Truss, and in bad places, so perhaps this is where my boating crowd will shift to. I hope so. It looks like fun to me.
It has quite a reputation. Spirit falls breaks backs, and several caves eat boats from time to time. More than one person has died there. Whitewater boating is new enough in the PNW that wherever somebody has died, people get extra scared. Back east somebody has died just about everywhere already, so there's no point in it.
Lower Canyon Creek, which we ran twice last weekend, is a short creek run just outside Battleground Washington that I would call class IV, at least at the levels I've seen it (470-600cfs). I can imagine that at high water it would become class V. For years nobody (or almost nobody) ran it because there was a gigantic woodpile obstructing the run. But that woodpile washed out something like two years ago. Here it is: ( Notes on little white....Collapse )
I felt some loneliness the first week I was here. But now, no. I have enough acquaintances to not feel lonely. The landlady, Marie, speaks English and her bf is American. And her niece, Emma, also…
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