Outside Features

The author gives rigged photography a shot with a disposable camera, a great way for beginners to hone their skills without smashing their gear.
Greg Garretson was dangling 150 feet off the ground. The wind was pushing and spinning him in his climbing harness as he fought to keep his lens steady.
Below him Ryan Palo was fighting to become the first local guy to climb Just Do It, one of Smith Rock’s most difficult routes. Garretson knew there might not be another chance to capture a successful attempt, so he steadied himself on his fixed rope, fought the vertigo and kept his eye to the camera. Then—free fall.
Palo let out the familiar scream of muscle failure. Garretson followed the climber with the lens until the rope stopped Palo’s fall, dozens of feet below, snapping a dozen great shots of the stellar climber.

For seasoned sea kayakers, paddling the Inside Passage, from Bellingham, Wash. to Muir Glacier in the East Arm of Glacier Bay, Alaska, holds the same mystique as backpacking the Appalachian or Pacific Crest Trail for backpackers. And it takes about just as long.
For those who can’t miss three or four months of work at a time, but would still like to experience this journey, the good news is you can do it in about two weeks by riding the Alaska Marine Highway Ferry system for three days and enjoying another seven days paddling around Glacier Bay, an ever-changing body of water that is considered one of the world’s top kayaking destinations.

Heli Skiing in Valdez
Ha! And you thought skiing at Mt. Bachelor was expensive! A six-day group trip in pow-heavy March will run you $8,757 if you book a package with Valdez Heli Ski Guides. The 20-year-old outfit guarantees 30 runs, seven nights lodging (meals are extra!), and a helicopter and guide, of course. It’s pricey, sure, but can you really put a price on magical, untracked powder? Apparently, you can. The going rate is $3,500 per hour of flight time. Whoa.
Photo taken by Lucelu.

It seemed easy enough. I’d guided rafts through the Big Eddy stretch hundreds of times, I thought, as I sat in my little yellow kayak above the rapids. And I’d kayaked plenty of class IIIs and IVs.
But none of them were so thoroughly lined with lava rocks as sharp as these.
All summer long, I’d played the “should I or shouldn’t I?” game with this stretch—the rocks in the river here, just above Lava Island, are young, geologically speaking, and razor sharp.
But as the raft of a friend who would run safety for me rounded a bend, I knew my summer’s worth of contemplating was over.

It’s official—the lovely city-owned historic building formerly known as the Mirror Pond Gallery will soon have a new tenant.
Bend’s David Marchi, an experienced mountaineering, heli-ski and cycling guide, is opening Crow’s Feet Commons, a backcountry ski/boutique bike shop that will also serve coffee and beers in The Rademacher House, which was the former home of Arts Central. Marchi signed a lease Sept. 21.
This is great news for three reasons.

After leading through the halfway point at the 2012 U.S.A. Cycling Mountain Bike Marathon National Championships, Bend’s Adam Craig thought he had the race sewn up.
Last year’s marathon champ continued to ride comfortably at the front of the race until mile 52 of the 54-mile event.
“I pretty much won the whole time until about two miles to go,” joked Craig about last Saturday’s race. Near mile 32, the Rabobank-Giant rider said he started to run low on fuel and then, with 2012 U.S. Olympian Todd Wells bearing down, Craig dropped his last two gels while racing down Dinah Moe Humm Trail.

Climbing up Flagline Trail is kinda tough, but it’s fun and scenic and generally not THAT hard.
Climbing up Flagline 17 miles into a 54-mile mountain bike race, however, is a real kick in the pants.
Once again, Central Oregon will play host to the U.S.A. Cycling Mountain Bike Marathon National Championships, Sept. 15, but rather than hold the start and finish in the Old Mill, a la the 2011 edition, the race will instead be staged out of Wanoga Sno-Park and will include more single track, more miles, more high altitude and more elevation gain than last year’s race, which featured miles of pavement and minimal uphill pedaling.

For the second consecutive year hundreds of “mature” bike racers will flock to Central Oregon for the USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships. This year it’s a five-day affair that will kick off Wednesday, Sept. 5 and run through Sunday, Sept. 9. Unlike last year, however, this year a “masters racer” is defined as those aged 35 and older. In 2011 the youngest master’s category was the 30 to 34 age group.
Other notable changes for this year’s edition include new courses for the time trial and for some of the crit races. Rather than race another time trial up and down the broken pavement of Skyliner’s Rd., race organizers elected to hold the race outside Prineville on  the Crooked River Highway that will take racers upstream and into the Wild and Scenic Crooked River canyon.

Hiking up the trail along the east fork of the Lostine River into the Eagle Cap wilderness in the Wallowas is one of the most perfect fly fishing pools imaginable. Enough off the trail that you might miss it, the pool comes at the base of a short rocky drop in the river. After the drop, the water flows quietly in a 20-yard-long by 10-yard-wide pool that’s no more than four feet deep at most. Since the river bottom here is sandy, wading barefoot is easy. There’s also no fear of snagging on a backcast as the trees are well set back from the pool’s edges.
The only reason I made a recent trip into the Wallowas was to fish this pool and to bask in the joy of wading deep in cold water and casting to eager Brook Trout. Note that the pool’s brookies aren’t huge but are ready to take traditional dry fly patterns, like an Adams, Royal Coachman, elk hair caddis and humpy floated on the surface, or pheasant tail and bead head nymphs.
Arriving at the pool after a two-and-a-half-mile uphill hike, I took my boots off and rigged up my four-piece backpacking rod. Reel on, I reached into my pack for my fly box and found it missing. Despair ensued. I’d forgotten to pack the box.

Bend already lays claim to the title “Bike Town U.S.A.,” but it may be time to add “Ultra Runners ‘R Us” to our town’s moniker.
Bendites dominated the recent GORE TEX Trans-Rockies Run, a 120-mile, six-day stage race in Colorado that concluded on August 18. Bend sent eight runners to the race, which started in Buena Vista and finished in Beaver Creek and included approximately 20,000 feet of altitude gain, and each day all eight Bendites made podium appearances.
Zach Violett and Stephanie Howe returned to the race hoping to improve on last year’s third-place finish in the “open mixed” category. The couple, now experienced in the ways of stage racing, blew the other co-ed teams out of the water and won the six-day race in 17 hours, 47 minutes—two hours ahead of the second place team.