Outside Features

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.

October snow on the WifeTHE WIFE
Of course, we have the confirmed Bachelor in our midst. And
everyone knows the Three Sisters. But, as holiday party season
approaches, it can be good to embrace long lost relatives. So, are you
familiar with the rest of our Cascades family?
Last weekend, a
small group of friends decided to climb the Wife. If you haven't
visited the Wife, it's probably because there is no trail that leads
you to her. She plays a little hard to get. To access the Wife, we
parked at the Devil's Lake trailhead and hiked the trails to Wickiup
Plains. Fall was evident in the brisk air, red groundcover and
snow-covered hills. The Plains are enjoyable because of the open vistas
of South Sister with the Rock Mesa Obsidian Flow in the foreground.
When we reached the PCT, we could spot the Wife to the northwest and we
started to cross-country. Soon thereafter, we lost sight of her because
the clouds closed in and cold rain began to fall. We passed a small
group of hardy deer hunters camped near the base of the Wife and prayed
for the deer when we spied their hoofmarks a few hundred yards later.
We headed clockwise around the base of the Wife and upward. It's a bit
of a scramble to get to the top (which would have been a piece of cake
without my arm in a sling and six inches of snow), but we arrived and
enjoyed a quick lunch of breakfast leftovers from McKay Cottage, brown
rice sushi and organic ginger snaps in the wet flurries. Slip-sliding
back down the snowy slope, our return was uneventful and it made for a
nice 10-mile roundtrip adventure -followed by the hot tub and hot chai,
of course.

Fat fun on the Metolius Windigo.The organizers of Bend's Big Fat Tour (BBFT) called me up recently to
invite me to ride in their 14th annual mountain biking event October
17-19th. Unfortunately, I had to take a rain check, but I'll be there
next year for sure simply because founder Paul Thomasberg waxes so
poetic about it:

It’s a dog’s worldNow that autumn has arrived, Oktoberfest has come and gone and the days are (alas!) getting noticeably shorter, "Shoulder Season" is just about here. For those who have been reading this column lately, you'll catch my double entendre. Life in a sling can crimp your outdoor style unless you're creative. Likewise, the in-between season can present a motivational challenge when the roads are too icy to ride but there's not enough snow yet to ski. No telling what this year has in store for us, but last year I hiked through 6 inches of snow on the Green Lakes Trail on October 6th and skied into Todd Lake on October 20th. The Farmer's Almanac is predicting a warmer and wetter October than normal for us, and lots of snow in mid-November. No matter, Shoulder Season is an ideal time to take a break from your normal sports and do something a little different.