Janel's First Hike!

Julien, Michelle, Jagan, and Kendra joined Janel and I on Janel's first hike since her surgery. We did two easy hikes to get her going again -- Elowah Falls and Wahclella Falls. We took it nice and slow, which gave me plenty of time to play with my new camera :).

Here is Elowah Falls in the morning:

From Elowah Falls

Here is a view of Mt Adams from the hike up to Upper McCord Falls from Elowah Falls:

From Elowah Falls

Upper McCord Falls:

From Elowah Falls

After the first hike to Elowah and McCord, we headed up 84 to Wahclella Falls.

From Wahclella Falls

Indian Point

Melvin and I did a training hike up to Indian Point in the Gorge on Saturday. We pushed through 8 miles and 3000ft of elevation in ~3 hours, including some stops for pictures and for Melvin to scamper out to Indian Point. I wimped out and would not climb down and out to the precarious rock formation, missing some great photos. Oh well. Here is another photo from the hike looking West.

From Indian Point

A walk around the neighborhood

Janel and I took a walk today around the neighborhood and I played with my new camera. Here are a couple selections ...

This is from our front yard:

From Around the Neighborhood

This is from a neigbor's house:

From Around the Neighborhood

Free Portland Bike Maps

Allen found some really nice (and free) bike maps at a farmers market (or something). I was quite jealous. I was poking around the internet, and discovered that you can order a whole crapload of maps from the city for free! All you have to do is go here and there is a link for ordering stuff. You don't even have to pay shipping. Now ... I have not received my maps yet (just ordered them) ... but seems like a good setup to me ...

Dog Mountain

I organized a trip for my group at work to climb Dog Mountain on the WA side of the Gorge. We were supposed to head up on Tuesday, but I had to reschedule it to Thursday because of bad weather. It turned out to be a great decision.

We had a great turn out. Allen, Melvin, Jagan, Jason, Michelle, David, Jeff, Margo, Ken, Rob, Gans, Kai, George, Bob, Krishnan, Allison, and I headed up from the trail head at about 11:30. We made it about 1/2 and stopped for lunch at the first big lookout. The flowers were out in full force (as expected).

From Dog Mountain Quarterly

After a nice long break, giving everyone a chance to recover, we headed on up. After the first stop, we passed through some more woods but eventually got out of the trees again. The final push to the summit is all through meadows and is great.

From Dog Mountain Quarterly

From Dog Mountain Quarterly

From near the top, there are great views of a snow-covered Mt St Helens across wild-flower covered meadows.

From Dog Mountain Quarterly

We had a nice rest at the top with great views of the Gorge.

From Dog Mountain Quarterly

Everyone made it to the summit, and it was a perfect day for a hike. It was still rather crowded at the top, but I am sure the number of people up there was only a fraction of what we would have encountered on a weekend.

After the hike we headed over to Laurelwood Public House on the East Side and enjoyed some food and libations. Another successful quarterly! I am going to have a hard time topping my last two.

Latest News

It has been a while since I made a post. I am going to be lazy this time and not post any photos, but there has been some fun stuff going on over the past couple months, and you can see some photos in my photo gallery.

Janel is doing really well with her ACL recovery. Despite having surgery ~3 months after me, it was looking for a while like she might "graduate" from PT ahead of me. My shoulder was doing pretty poorly though the end of April, but over the past couple weeks something happened and things have really turned around. I will be wrapping up PT after two more visits.

I went to Chris P's and Mariko's wedding in April (without Janel). My dad too a ton of photos, so I don't have any on my blog. It was a great chance to catch up with my family and a lot of my old friends. Good times. Best of luck to Mariko and Chris :).

This weather this weekend is great. Janel and I went on a nice bike ride after working in the yard, and I am planning on going on a run tomorrow (Janel won't be cleared to run for another month or so). I will be heading out to Dog Mountain this week with my group for a quarterly, and, weather permitting, I will get to really test out my new camera for the first time -- a Canon 500d (T1i) (my first DSLR!).