Pam Stevenson

KAREN & ROB'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE
Lining up the Chandalar River in Alaska Have you seen "Fuel" yet? The Sundance award winning movie, currently playing at the Regal Pilot Butte, is about our addiction to oil and is getting rave reviews. One Bend couple has their own alternative to oil - chocolate.
It all began 10 years ago with a four-month mountain biking trip from Seattle to La Paz, Bolivia. That experience was enough to hook Karen Holm and Rob Walker on human-powered adventure. In 2000, they built two wooden sea kayaks in Glacier Bay, Alaska and paddled 1500 miles to Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands of Washington. In 2004, they spent six months traveling 1850 miles of Chilean Patagonia by sea kayak.
Last year, they dreamed up the Three Rivers Traverse, a 3-month, 1403-mile multi-modal odyssey. It all started in Skagway, Alaska. The plan was to canoe 4.5 miles to the Chilkoot Trailhead, pack up their 40-pound folding canoe and hike 33 miles along the old Klondike route to the headwater lakes of the Yukon River, re-assemble their canoe, paddle 1000 miles down the Yukon River and then up the East Fork of the Chandalar River to its source, traverse the Romanzof Mountains in the Brooks Range and follow the Okpilak River across the coastal plain of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge to the final destination of Kaktovik. Whew, now there's a run-on sentence.

PHEW!
Let It Snow!Patience is a virtue. Not one of mine, but sometimes you have no choice. As Tom Petty used to croon, "The waiting is the hardest part." We can all breathe a sigh of relief now that the long wait is over. A beautiful full moon snowstorm finally blew in last Friday night, dumping 23 inches of fresh powder on Mt. Bachelor over the weekend. Both the alpine and nordic areas opened Sunday on a limited basis. On the downhill side, the Pine Marten and Sunshine lifts went into action, while the upper trails and Woody's were groomed on the X-C side. With frigid single digit temperatures and more storms predicted for the remainder of the week, it looks like winter is here to stay. Kind of like a new boyfriend who turns out to be a couch surfer, just remember how much you wanted it when it's still lingering around come May.

Testing the power threshold on Bend's spin scene. Isn't it ironic that the year you decided to fork out for a season pass there is no snow? I thought it would make for somewhat similar irony for the Outdoors column to be about the Indoors this week. Due to my shoulder injury, I've been frequenting some of Bend's best indoor cycling venues the past few months. We are blessed in Bend with a treasure trove of great spin instructors and cycling coaches, and I'd like to introduce you to a couple.

Who needs a lift ticket anyway?Mount Bachelor may be under new management, but Mother Nature is in
charge. To the dismay of Thanksgiving vacationers and local ski buffs,
not to mention Powdr Corp execs, Mt. Bachelor lacked enough snow to
open during the Thanksgiving weekend and I'm willing to bet that
continues to be the case when this issue hits print. I've lived in Bend
nearly nine years, and this is the latest start to ski season I
remember.

The object of my affection.Months ago, I said I'd write about Stuff again. So, just in time for your holiday shopping, here is my Top Ten list of outdoor gear. It's not a list of the ten essentials recommended for survival nor the hottest, coolest, most unaffordable equipment. It's just a random collection of some of my ol' faves and a few things on my wishlist, David Letterman style:

Ahhhh, a two-hour trail run along the Metolius, a campfire, a mug of hot chocolate, a good book and a great dog.I first came across Pam Houston's colorful stories of adventure and
travel in magazines and more recently I read the book that won her
fame, Cowboys Are My Weakness. Last week, she visited Bend as one of
the guest authors for the Nature of Words and I wrangled my way into
her writing workshop. Pam, a single 46-year-old woman, has a house in
Colorado, teaches at a university, loves dogs and takes inspiration
from the outdoors for her writing. That sentence describes Pam Houston,
but applies equally to me, so you can understand why I sensed a kindred
spirit when I met her.

Hopefully, some of her words of wisdom
rubbed off on me to your benefit as a reader of this column.
Unfortunately, "Adventure Racers are My Weakness" just doesn't seem to
have quite the right literary ring to it to match her standards. I'll
keep working on it.

FIRST TRACKS
First tracks across Dutchman FlatWhat more could you ask for on November 4th - an Obama
victory and a foot of fresh powder on Bachelor! Yippeee! The day after
the elections, my friend Lisa and I scored some of the very first
tracks of the season on Woody's and Easy Back. We skied across Dutchman
Flat into the nordic area through perfect snow and found the groomer
had just made a pass to pack down the base. I'd say it was an
auspicious start to a new season and a new era.

THREE FALL HIKES
Fall colors at Mt. JeffersonFall is hiking season in Central Oregon. Now that
November is here, the window of opportunity for many of our best hikes
is closing quickly, but if you can squeeze in one more hike before the
snow flies, here are some of my favorites.
Get there any which way you can: Jeff Park
There
are four ways to gain admission to the "Park," a gorgeous lake-studded
meadow at the base of Mt. Jefferson. Every autumn, I try to find an
Indian Summer weekend to backpack up there when the huckleberry bushes
paint the fields burgundy. My usual way in is an easy six miles up the
Whitewater Trail, off Highway 22. One time, we took a shuttle and came
back out the Pacific Coast Trail and Woodpecker Ridge Trail, which is
about the same length, but can involve a challenging crossing of the
creek running down from Russell Glacier. You can also enter the park by
taking the South Breitenbush Trail or the PCT from the North. Once
you're there, it's an idyllic place to hang out or, if you're really
gung-ho, you can attempt to climb 10,497-foot Mt. Jefferson. Whichever
way you get there, you won't want to leave.

BEATING SAD
Sunset over Maui: not very SAD.At 2am on Sunday November 2, we "fall back." I call it
the "Saddest Day of the Year." Thank goodness the Energy Policy Act of
2005 extended Daylight Savings Time one extra week, but all too soon it
will be dark when you go to work and dark when you come home, a
depressing situation for a solar-powered person like me. At least we're
not in Portland, where the incessant grayness can make one suicidal. I
lived in Portland through the icestorms of '95 and the mudslides of
'96. We went months on end without seeing the sun and I couldn't seem
to shake the gloominess. Eventually, I diagnosed myself with Seasonal
Affective Disorder (SAD) and bought an expensive, high-intensity,
full-spectrum light for my cubicle. It attracted co-workers to my desk
like moths to a flame, but it didn't really solve the problem, so I
finally told my doctor how unhappy I was. He said, "Well, I can
prescribe some anti-depressants… or you could move to Central Oregon!"
Shortly thereafter, I picked up and moved to Bend… and never looked
back.
As our well-placed promotion in last weekend's Warren
Miller ski flick, Children of Winter, touted, "In Bend, the number of
days of sunshine competes with the number of inches of snow." That's
our saving grace. Mt. Bachelor's average annual snowfall is 370 inches
at the base and Bend claims 300 sunny days per year (which I think is a
marketing stretch), so I think the edge goes to the snow, but it would
be an interesting statistic to track.
Relocating to Central Oregon is one way to defeat SAD. A few other suggestions follow.

Death By Meeting
Local Rick Wright with Ron WydenBack in my California windsurfing days, we would occasionally sneak out of the office on a blustery afternoon for a "Board Meeting" at Coyote Point in San Francisco Bay. That's my kind of meeting. I would much rather be out on a trail than sitting in a chair in a conference room. My butt is sore from too many meetings last week, but sometimes you've got to endure the chair to advocate the trail. I attended a meeting of the Deschutes County Committee on Recreation Assets with Senator Ron Wyden, as well as the Winter Recreation Advisory Group and Trail User Group meetings with the Forest Service.
The attendees at the meeting with Senator Wyden represented a "Who's Who" of outdoor recreation leaders in our community. Wyden appointed the ad hoc committee, co-chaired by longtime Bend La Pine School District official Peter Miller and Deschutes County Commissioner Tammy Melton, because "access to outdoor recreation enhances quality of life and attracts new businesses, creates jobs and stimulates the economy." Wyden also believes the benefits of outdoor recreation stretch beyond that to addressing our looming healthcare crisis.