The Bestest Summer EVER! pt II

I've been far too overproductive for a summer vacation Monday. I mean, I rode my bike roughly 9 miles, ate breakfast, bought all my school books and it's only 1:15 in the afternoon. This, unfortunately, means that I need to go back out to 'burbia to my old apartment and do some cleaning and moving. This I do not want to do at all. Not one bit. But I kinda have to.... I have to be moved out completely by the 30th, a Saturday, and this weekend I won't be around because I have four - count 'em! - FOUR shows to go to! Flogging Molly is playing in Eugene and Portland, so of course I'll be going to both, Amadan - our own local trad Irish/punk band - is playing on Sunday afternoon in my hometown (before Flogging Molly plays in Portland that evening), and Friday the CHERRY POPPIN' DADDIES ARE PLAYING!!!!!!!!! In high school I was OBSESSED with this band. Take my fanaticism of Flogging Molly and add teenager and you're nearing the infatuation level I had. I thought they had called it quits long long ago, but here they are on tour! Woooooohoooooooo!!!! The summer will go out with a bang.... Social Anthropology 10:15am, Monday......

Did I tell you about my backpacking trip? No? Ok, well here's the rundown:
DAY ONE: Left late, ate a can of uberfatty chili in the car while driving through Sandy and up the mountain. Got to Timberline, with an elevation of 6,000ft and procrastinated in the parking lot while making sure all of my stuff was attached. I set off, first a bit up hill and then down down down. There wasn't a green thing in sight; everything was brown, ashy and rocky. I hit the White River valley and encountered my first obstacle. The White River is a glacial stream, which means that most of the time the water is itty bitty compared to the giant canyon it has carved out. There is no bridge, so one has to slide down the loose rock and ashy soil, wade through the water and then try and climb up the other side with wet feet and 40+ pounds on the back. After the blazing hot valley, I went into trees and climbed for what seemed like eternity. When I started to come back down again I overestimated where I was and ended up having to camp 2 miles short of my goal. Oh yeah, and I couldn't find the trail. Y'see, there was another river crossing... and the trail starts up a long way from the other side, and it's not marked. I walked around for an hour before I gave up and pitched my tent. It was a beautiful spot though, surrounded by boulders with a view of Newton Creek (really, a river) and Mt. Hood.
DAY TWO: Still couldn't find the trail in the morning and decided to turn around after an hour of climbing up boulders and landslides. While walking back and dreaming of toasted sandwiches back at the lodge, I found the trail. Almost reluctantly, I carried on, up Gnarl Ridge for an even longer eternity. The trees soon left and I was walking through open fields of rock and dirt and some alpine bushes and it was still uphill, with teasing little dips downwards. At around 7,000 - 8000ft I hit the snowfields. Most of these at most were a hundred feet across, but tilted down to the right to unknown and terrifying drops below. They looked like real life waterslides to doom. And because it was so hot the snow was slippery. It probably took five full minutes to cross each of them, with my arms outward, tiptoeing ridiculously. On either side of each snowfield was another impossible rise, and then a dip across snow and then another ridge. It seemed to go on until the end of the earth. While crossing what turned out to be one of the last beds of snow, I paused to see where the trail went thinking, "it can't possibly go up much more," and right then the ground fell out from underneath me. I fell, twisted and ended up leaning my shoulder up against the edge of the snow. That's right, Sara fell into a mini-crevasse. I am an idiot, it's official. Having been sufficiently scared, rattled and dehydrated, I made up my mind that I was only going as far as a campground 14 miles into the trail. I reached it that afternoon, pitched a tent and vowed to turn around the next morning.
DAY THREE: After unsuccessfully talking some fellow campers into giving me a lift back to the lodge, I set off back the way I came. It was only fourteen miles back from there and this time I knew the route. It was hot out, but really really windy. So windy that I put on my sunglasses to keep the small rocks from flying into my eyes. It was straight uphill for two miles and the wind was blowing me backwards. Still, I got good and sunburned crossing the open snowfields. The latter half of the day was downhill for a good long way. By the late afternoon I had made it to Mt. Hood Meadows, a ski place, and by early evening I was back in the White River Valley, just 3 miles shy of Timberline Lodge. I decided that I was too tired and the day a bit late to try and finish off those three miles, so I pitched a tent and hid out of the wind. I had a great plan: get up early, finish off the last uphill section and be munching on pancakes by half past ten. The wind kept going, blowing what I thought was sand into the back of the tent, and was pulling up sides of my rain flap, which I'd have to scramble outside to fix. At two am, I heard the distinct sound of rocks falling.... towards me.... and getting louder. I poked my head out to see a decent size rock coming to a halt about six inches from my tent. I squinted into the moonlight and realized that I had parked my tent under a landslide... and there was a boulder the size of a dump truck perched precariously in a line directly above my tent. Knowing I couldn't sleep with the knowledge of such a monstrosity waiting to squash me, I decided to move my tent. Somehow, I thought if I just yanked up the stakes, I could just slide it backwards without a problem. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!! Turns out, that wasn't sand blowing on my tent, it was snow. And there was a lot of it around. And the wind was howling. I probably lost half of my stakes in the wind, and ended up having to pin my tent down with large rocks. The poor thing never really recovered and it remained sunken and sad looking the remainder of the night. It also seemed to be getting closer and closer to my face.
DAY FOUR: When I finally decided that the storm wasn't going to let up any time soon and that I really needed to get to the lodge before the end of winter, there was about four inches of snow on the top of my tent. I gave up trying to be neat and strapped things where I could. Crossing the White River this time was much more difficult. The first day it was so hot that it was a relief to put on my water shoes and wade across, but in the middle of a blizzard was a different story. I tried hopping across rocks and was successful.... so I thought. Turns out I had just hopped over to an island and there was still another part of the stream to cross... and no rocks. So in the snow, I had to take off my boots, put on my water shoes, dash across and then put my boots back on before my toes froze off. It took an hour and a half before I was continuing on the path on the other side of the stupid river. The snow kept falling and while it was very pretty, I was wild-eyed and exhausted. I forgot how hellaciously tiring walking uphill in snow is and repressed memories of my time at Ft. Drum started coming back. Finally - FINALLY - I rounded a corner and there, in the distance through a haze of white flurries, was Timberline Lodge. I nearly cried I was so happy. Tears welled up, anyway. I changed clothes at the skiers lodge below the proper one and decided that I was too stinky to be around civilized folk, so I took off in my car home.

I seem to have misplaced the cord for my camera during the move, so the few pictures I took from the trip will have to wait to be posted. I'm glad I did it though. It seemed to be the unspoken motto of my family that if no one nearly died, it wasn't a camping trip. It's good to have adventures like that every now and then. It helps me appreciate how easy things are here in the city and I don't sweat the little things as much.