The Ends of the Earth

Government Camp and Sandy, Oregon Thursday, May 16, 2024

Today was a day for reflection and reorganization. Always a challenge to go from hiking-mode to bicycling-mode, today’s transition was freighted with rental car returns, UPS packing, bike-repair pickups, and peeling lips. Behind it all was profound disappointment, for all my trying to put a brave face on yesterday. Seemingly out of reach is my hope to complete the highpoints, is there any point to going on? Do I just go back to Portland and go home?

I’d hoped at least to catch up on sleep, what with the exhaustion, but there was too much on my mind. I completed yesterday’s post, hung out in the lobby and commiserated with Alex and his friend Richard, who are going on to do Mount Saint Helens today. Chatted with Chris, who was loading up his bike to do Hood to Coast, he had just completed his first year of Columbia law school. Two guys came in who had just summited this morning, it seems the slush had refrozen overnight. One of them, Ken, has put my peak-bagging to shame; a recently retired Silicon Valley engineer, he’s climbed over 800 major western peaks, shared his peakbagger.com page https://www.peakbagger.com/climber/climber.aspx?cid=25934 and encouraged me to set one up of my own. As if I need one more obsession.

So climbers were successful the day before and the day after our debacle, so much was just the luck of the draw. So close, and yet so far. Maybe I’ll try again, I just don’t know.

Jane, ever my heroine, texted the perfect thing. “What next options are you thinking about? I know this has knocked the wind out of your sails but I think you’ll regret it if you come home.” She’s right. Both of us have made space in our lives for this summer’s grandiose expedition. She’s having a blast with our daughter Hope, touring Maine, picking out marble countertops, cruising antique fairs, and spending a week on Cape Cod with family. I’ve got my dream bike, newly tricked out with a dropper post, in one of the most beautiful parts of the country. The legendary TransAmerica Trail starts right here. What am I moping about? The horizon beckons.

Or as John Muir is often quoted, “Who has not felt the urge to throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence?”

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had to come back from Oregon, and so do I, following their trail, which conveniently passes near most of the trailheads of the western peaks I’ve climbed. Closing the loop at the Paradise parking lot on Rainier really floated my boat, and so could the others. We could call it the Parking Lots Tour.

And so, as Meriwether often journaled, we proceeded on.

No statistics for today, it was all driving.

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

On the Mountain Tuesday-Wednesday, May 14–15 2024

Caesar: The Ides of March are come.

Soothsayer: Aye, Caesar, but not gone.

Midnight on May 15, I couldn’t get that exchange out of my head. In the end, it turned out better for me than for Julius, but we were both disappointed.

As planned, on Tuesday I met with my private guide, Laura Rae Berger, for an equipment check and ice climbing training clinic. She was satisfied with the gear I had brought, and supplied an ice axe, mountaineering boots, crampons, helmet, climbing harness, and down parka. The clinic was just across the parking lot in a steep gully that let us practice crampon footwork, belaying, and self arrest. I’d been through it all before, but it had been six years, and I was grateful for the refresher. Laura turned out to be an excellent fit, ebullient, patient, completely aware of my situation, which I had laid out in my application form. She’s from a small town in New Hampshire I was familiar with, started out in journalism at Saint Lawrence University, but found her true calling guiding and ski instructing in the Northwest. I’ve been blessed with many terrific guides over the years, but she was perhaps the most delightful. We had so much to talk about, and chatted incessantly throughout the experience. It turns out that was her in the group of guides snickering at me as I began my uphill trudge the day before, but they were laughing at my snowshoes, not my appearance. Nobody brings snowshoes to this mountain.

Also delightful was Alex, a fellow client who had hired his own private guide. He was a geologist from Slovakia, currently working in Houston with his wife, who was employed by the Johnson Space Flight Center. We talked for hours about Europe, academics, highpoints, healthcare, science, and could’ve talked much longer, but it was time to go to bed early.

It was no good, all my efforts to “jet lag” my schedule around to wake up before midnight. This is always been a challenge for me with early departures. I avoid caffeine and alcohol, have had no luck with zolpidem (Ambien), just get too keyed up to get more than a couple of hours of sleep. I greeted the 15th with a caesarean sense of dread, but recalled his line about a coward dying a thousand deaths.

I realized I made a couple of errors. I left that down parka in the climbing office. The training venue was a parabola of snow on a sunny day, I was diligently applying sunscreen but forgot lip balm, and developed a second-degree burn with blistering on my lower lip. Subsequent applications of balm only helped for a few minutes.

The day’s sleepy contingent of climbers and guides, about a dozen of us, clambered into the behemoth at 1:30 AM and were ushered noisily to the top of the Palmer lift. On went the crampons but not the climbing rope yet. The first 2000 feet were just a steep climb to the technical part. Right away I felt the altitude, my 70 years, my sleep deprivation, my bilateral disc surgeries that left me with only 20% of my calf muscle strength, my anemia (never fully resolved despite a celiac diet and IV and oral iron supplementation), and my general lack of fitness. I’d hoped my weight loss and ambitious bike riding would help, and they undoubtedly did, but not enough. Within minutes, I was lagging far behind the others. I had hired the private guide to avoid slowing the others down, and Laura did a great job, staying with me, kicking out steps, offering encouragement, but she gently said “this pace was not ideal”.

It has always been thus. I’ve never been athletic, my resumé notwithstanding. I avoided team sports in school, choosing solitary activities like hiking and cycling where I could set my own pace. Each day on the Camino, I was happy to be the first to start and the last to finish. My endurance and determination are great, my stamina not so much. I was hopeful the early start and great recent weather would make up for all that, that other party had summited successfully at 9 AM. But Laura said the conditions had worsened since then, and she wanted us on top before 7.

Huh? How could that be? The weather was perfect, warmer than ever. It was bizarre, huffing and puffing in the dark, our headlamps creating little islands of light in the gloom, the lights of Portland shimmering far below, the headlamps of the others far above. The steepness of the slope was just this side of scary. I felt I could maintain this pace forever, but now was anxious that might not be good enough. My lips hurt, aggravated by the heavy breathing. The wind gusts weren’t strong enough to knock me over, but didn’t help my crappy balance. My harness kept slipping down to my knees. I was a little chilly in all my layers, anxious it only got colder and windier as you climbed, anxious I’d forgotten that parka.

As a doctor, I know how anxiety can sap your strength. I knew, but I couldn’t get past it. That caesarean line was ringing in my ears. I gasped out to Laura, “I don’t know if I can make it,” but she showed her true professionalism, offering just the right amount of encouragement, saying “we’re almost at the Devil’s Kitchen, let’s head up there and talk about it.”

It was 5:45 AM. The sun had just risen. In all my anguish, I noticed the setting was beautiful. The mountain cast a massive triangular shadow past Portland, all the way to the Pacific.

Laura posed in front of the Kitchen, a hot rock surrounded by ice and snow, seething sulfurous fumes.

The group was gathered there, I thought they were far ahead. The guides had conferred and had an announcement: they were turning everybody around.

My first thought was OMG, was it because of me? But Laura reassured me, no, I had a private guide, I had nothing to do with it. The conditions, which looked so good, were deceiving. The usual route, the Pearly Gates, was closed by a bergschrund, a separation between mountain and glacier that I encountered on Denali and Gannett. There it was bypass-able, here it was not. The guides were using the less ideal Old Chute.

Those days of rain I suffered through last week fell here as wet snow, over 2 feet in Government Camp and much more up here. The last few days have been clear, but cold up here, in the single digits. The snow had frozen, and offered good footing for crampons and ice axes. But the warmer weather in the last 24 hours, so welcome below, was our undoing. The frozen snow had thawed and turned to slush. We noticed it less so far, the winds had kept things relatively cool. But the Chute was sheltered from the wind, and fully exposed to the sun. Treacherous under the best conditions, impassable now.

The other clients, who had made it to the Hogsback, had already been turned around. I felt a weird combination of disappointment, dismay, and profound relief. We were all going back. There is nothing we could’ve done. I had my “cover”. Even if I had been fully up to this, I still wouldn’t have made it. I felt bad for the other clients, who were clearly on a path to victory.

On the long trudge down, I felt incongruously elated. All the anxiety was gone, a massive weight off my shoulders. I had time to exult in the spectacular beauty of the scene. Laura and I chatted amiably. I reflected on our obsession with mountains. It’s about the journey, not the summit we’re always told, and we all enthusiastically agree. But in our achievement-oriented culture, we give the lie to that. When I came down off of Denali, the trip of a lifetime, where three people had died, the first question everybody asked was “did you summit?”. You could argue this disconnect is emblematic of what’s wrong with our society.

Through all these musings, I was rewarded with the ultimate Easter egg. Laura is also a certified ski instructor. Back at the top of the Palmer lift, where everybody else had to deal with the same interminable 2,500 foot slog to the base I had done two days ago, we had rented and stashed skis and boots. The slopes had been newly groomed to perfect corduroy, and the lifts wouldn’t open for an hour. We had it all to ourselves. I got a private lesson from the best in the business. It was the best skiing I’ve had all year. We could’ve been down in 15 minutes, but I kept stopping, not wanting to leave the glorious scene, wanting to get the full benefit of her lessons. Instead, it took almost an hour. We were still down by 9:30.

So now it’s over. I failed. Strike two. Spent thousands of dollars, months of planning, weeks of cycling, and came up with diddly. Locomoted my sorry ass from the sea to over 10,000 feet, and got squat. Did the other great peaks, but can’t get the smallest of them done. How am I ever going to complete those 50 highpoints?

At the base, I talked with Catherine, 75 years old, who was one of the clients who was way ahead of me. So I can’t really blame my age. I asked Laura to be brutally honest, you’ve seen my abilities, do I have any chance on this mountain? She outlined a way (I won’t go into the details) that it could be done, and she’d be happy to guide me again. But It would be another big expense, again with no guarantee of the caprices of the weather.

When I would give my slideshows about Denali, I would remark that ultimately, I failed. I succeeded in reaching the summit, but I failed to turn around when my guide told me to. On this mountain, I failed, but had a wonderful experience. Can I be satisfied with that? What happens now? Stay tuned.

A parenthetical note. Just as we were all leaving the Devil’s Kitchen, another group, a different guide service, came up and started towards the Old Chute. Laura couldn’t believe they would be so reckless, our guides had briefed them of the conditions. But Alex thinks he saw them go through the Chute, and on the summit ridge. I don’t have confirmation of that, hope they’re OK.

So I don’t know.

Ice climbed 4 miles, 654 total. The skiing doesn’t count. Time 8 hours. Elevation gain 2,150 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

Timberline Lodge, Oregon. Monday, May 13, 2024

As detailed in the previous pages, today is the fourth of five legs to climb Mt. Hood. The first was from Portland to Sandy at 1000 feet. The second from Sandy to Government Camp at 4000 feet. The third from Government Camp to Timberline Lodge at 6000 feet. I have hired a private guide, Laura Berger, for the final summit push on Wednesday. You take a snowcat to the top of the ski lift at 8500 feet, starting at 2 AM. With luck, I’ll be at the summit around 7:30.

Because of my insistence on climbing this mountain from the sea*, I feel the need to do the snowcat leg on foot. I had Jane mail me my snowshoes. Yesterday‘s dry run suggested I could make it up the 2500 feet in four hours. In fact, it took five. You follow a “climber’s trail” that skirts the right edge of the ski slope, just beyond the ski boundary, but it is typically broken up with snowcat tracks that make the going challenging. I had checked in at the guide office, they didn’t think I really needed snowshoes for this leg, but the snow was pretty soft in places, and I saw a fair amount of post-holing, I’m glad I brought them.

I had a sumptuous breakfast at Timberline Lodge to get me going. It’s really an amazing building, considering it was built as a New Deal project to get us out of the depression. Here is the main lobby, the sign at the bottom has some interesting statistics.

Parked outside was one of the behemoths I’ll be taking on Wednesday morning.

Had a nice long call with sister Anne as I trudged up, she couldn’t hear me very well because of the wind noise, but I could hear her fine, and she filled me in all about the family. My niece Martha is getting her PhD in linguistics from Berkeley today, she’ll be getting her hood while I’m climbing Hood! An interesting cirrus cloud formation developed around the mountain, and I texted Anne this picture.

Encountered two women, a guide and her client, coming down the mountain, they said it was fine up there, they summited at 9 AM, the snow was in good shape so she didn’t think they had to summit earlier than that. Encouraging.

Skiers and snowboarders would occasionally veer across the track, but the lifts closed at 3 PM. Just after, a ski patrol guy stopped by and said that if I needed a rescue after that, I would have a long wait. Geez, did I look that pathetic?

It wasn’t clear where I was actually headed. The guys in the guide office said just go to where the snowcat tracks stopped, roughly even with the top of the ski lift. Up that high, the wind had obscured most of the tracks. A low moraine blocked my view of the lift, but I believed I was even with it. I went up to the last of the ski boundary signs, my Apple Watch said I’d climbed 2,485 feet, so I called it good. Overall altitude almost 8,500 feet, I hadn’t been this high in quite a while. Maybe that’s why I was breathing so hard.

Coming down took longer than I hoped, I hadn’t used my snowshoes much recently, and it felt pretty precarious, negotiating the steep slope. I didn’t want to slip or twist an ankle, alone up here. A couple of times I sat down and just glissaded down the hill, but that’s easier to do with snow pants on, and without snowshoes. Sometimes I felt like a baby, butt-scooching across the floor, sometimes I got an icy wedgy. Charming.

Even this late in the day, I encountered a number of backcountry skiers skinning their way up the slope, one couple had funny looking skis, which turned out to be split snowboards. Interesting.

Halfway down, the broken snowcat-tracked trail turned into smooth corduroy. I was so touched. This was outside the ski area boundary, so some kind-hearted groomer must have spotted my predicament and smoothed the trail for me. And I wasn’t even a paying customer. Or maybe it wasn’t all about me. It made all the difference, suddenly I could skim along in smooth, gliding strides.

All told, it took three hours to come down, I limped into the parking lot at 6:30. My pants were soaked, but amazingly, my feet were dry. I guess my combination of Gore-Tex trail runners, waterproof, socks, and gaiters actually worked (I will be renting mountaineering boots for the climb). Noticed my balance was quite a bit better by the end, maybe this trip was therapeutic after all.

No question about it, there was no way I could have done this and the summit climb on the same day. Once again, dependent on fossil fuel. But in my convoluted way, I can also say I climbed it on foot.

Back at the motel, I made a disturbing discovery. I had been reapplying sunscreen regularly, but my forehead was scorched.

I don’t usually like to apply sunscreen there, it’s covered by the brim of my hat anyway, and when you sweat, it gets in your eyes. But I’d forgotten, on a snow slope, the sun is reflected back up at you. I now recalled on Denali, when you were gasping for air constantly, the roof of your mouth got sunburned.

Tomorrow will be a low-key day, I will meet with Laura at 10, she’ll check my equipment, and we’ll review ice climbing techniques for a few hours. Need to get to bed early, for the 1:45 AM start the next day. No blogging for tomorrow.

Snowshoed 9 miles, 650 total. Time 8 hours. Elevation gain 2,485 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

• actually the first leg of this trip was the two weeks I took getting from the ocean at Bellingham to Portland.

Timberline Lodge, Oregon. Sunday, May 12, 2024

It’s all very well to bask in this Coast to Hood thing, but the reality is I’m only halfway up the mountain. And as I’ve alluded to in the past, this mountain and I, we have a history.

Today was Sunday, a day of rest, I took my time checking out of the Government Camp motel, chatted, web surfed, wished Jane a happy Mother’s Day, drove the 7 miles to Timberline Lodge, and waited around for early check-in to my room at 2 PM. Retrieved the big box from Jane, sorted out my gear, and didn’t really get going until four. In the lobby was a detailed contour map, you can zoom in if you like.

More vivid was the view from the parking lot, looking uphill the perspective is foreshortened, and doesn’t appear as steep as it actually is, but formidable enough.

That’s the clean view, and here are my annotations:

So we’re at 6,000 feet, with 5,249 left to go. To maximize chances of success, the guides insist on starting halfway up—at the top of the ski lift—and since they don’t run at night, that means taking a snowcat, a noisy, lumbering, carbon-spewing beast. Not too compatible with my whole sea-to-summit shtick. But we’ll get to that later.

Like on Rainier, they want you at the summit at 7:30 AM. Snowcats leave at 2 and 3 AM and when they drop you off, you rope up to your guide, with helmets, ice axes, and crampons, and start climbing.

I’ve done all this before, exactly 6 years ago, on May 14, 2018. I met my guide Brad, an affable, competent mountaineer, the day before for an ice climbing clinic. I appreciated the refresher although I just climbed Gannet Peak the year before. This May, like most Mays, I wasn’t in the best of shape, still carrying my winter weight, having been comparatively sedentary over the previous months. Brad remarked that my footwork could be better, and he was right, balance has never been my strong suit.

By the luck of the draw I got a 3 AM snowcat. Here I am looking hopeful at 2:45 in the ski lodge.

And here we are at the Hogsback, five hours later. A grinding uphill slog, uneventful but slow. We had just passed the Devil’s Kitchen, a sulfurous vent that reminded us Hood, like most of the Cascades, is a semi-dormant volcano. I felt tired but OK, but Brad recommended turning around. We only had 700 feet left to climb, but that included the treacherous Pearly Gates, a chute where most of the fatalities occur. You can see it at the top center, with climbers (mostly boyz, of course) strung along a rope.

They want you on the summit by 7:30, Brad said, because the risk of avalanches after that is higher. He didn’t insist we turn around, but he recommended it.

This is what BJ said at the Football Field, 19,500 feet, on Denali 20 years before. Then as now, we were just 700 feet from the summit. Then as now, we were slow, tired, but otherwise feeling fine. Then, I prevailed upon BJ to let us go on, and he reluctantly agreed. We made it without incident, but it wasn’t until we were halfway down, when the oxygen got back into my brain, that I realized the enormity of what I had done. I had gone against the guide’s recommendations. I had done the very thing I promised Jane I would not do. Done the very thing that led to most of those deaths depicted in Into Thin Air. I gotten away with it, but vowed never to do that again. Indeed, subsequently on Longs, Granite, and Gannet Peaks, I turned back, able to succeed later.

I raised my axe in “victory”, posed for a mug shot with Brad, and headed down.

I consoled myself that if I had gotten the earlier snowcat, I might’ve succeeded. Who knows? But this time I did snag a reservation on the 2 AM cat, and my guide is not one of the boyz, but Laura. I’m six years older, my balance still sucks, still overweight, but I’ve lost 20 pounds with my recent activities. And I’m still full of beans. We’ll see.

About the snowcat thing. I have gotten here a day early, so I can snowshoe up to the top of the ski lift, continuing the “old man with a walker” metaphor. The guides are right, if I had to do that the day of the climb, I almost certainly wouldn’t make it.

Today I took a dry run, climbed 330 feet in half an hour, about an eighth of the total. If I can maintain that pace, I should be able to get up in four hours, and down in three tomorrow. We’ll see.

I passed a group of guides as I started up the slope, one of them was a woman, could that be Laura? I think I heard them snickering at me and wondered why. Then I got a look at the selfie I had taken just before.

Yep, nobody can do dork like I can. Then I zoomed in on my face and thought OMG, I look like the Unabomber.

Snowshoed 2 miles, 641 total. Time 1 hour. Elevation gain 330 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

Government Camp to Timberline Lodge, Oregon. Saturday, May 11, 2024

How had I not heard of this? A number of people I talked to on the way up said hey, you’re doing Hood to Coast backwards! Turns out it’s the largest relay race in the world, having been run annually since 1982. This movie looks like it might be worth paying the four bucks to rent. https://youtu.be/1m_1Vm666bc?si=WiBK9yXJNS7kPvL9

Yeah, I did it backwards. Started on the coast and ended at Timberline Lodge. Instead of 36 hours, it took me two weeks. Instead of Seaside, Oregon, I touched the ocean in Bellingham, Washington.

Instead of 200, it was 639 miles. Instead of a rolling party, it was just me. Oh yeah, and it was all uphill. 29,436 vertical feet to be exact, higher than Everest!

And if I’m lucky, I’ll finish on the summit, not just at Timberline Lodge. We’ll see.

Today sounded like I was slumming it, just 14 miles, on a bare bike. 7 miles up, 7 miles back down. But those 7 miles were crazy steep, rising 2000 feet. At points the grade exceeded 9%, and I had to walk. I sure hope I get stronger as this trip progresses.

Here is the money shot, my bike by the entrance of the lodge, with its weird metal tunnel to cut through the snow drifts.

Timberline Lodge was the setting for the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Only the exterior shots were used; the inside, and the road leading up to it, were different. But the hotel is proud of its legacy, here’s the receptionist holding up the infamous “Here’s Johnny” axe.

Timberline Lodge is also the center of a ski resort that has the greatest vertical drop in the country, with slopes both above and below. There was a lot of skiing and snowboarding going on today, even with temperatures in the high 60s. It has a parking lot the size of Connecticut, which looked like a tailgating party; lots of shorts-and-sandals-clad hipsters hanging out in beach chairs, blaring music, and drinking beer. I wandered over to Timberline Mountain Guides, in hopes of meeting my assigned guide Laura, but she was not there that day. I will meet her on Tuesday.

Two hours up, 15 minutes down. Plenty of extra time in the day, and I won’t be needing my bike again until Thursday. Time to address my seat problem definitively.

Jane had sent a big box to Timberline, with snowshoes, my mountaineering gear, and my other broken-in Brooks Saddle. Before I mounted it, I got some pictures of my temporary saddle, and the way it’s attached to the seat post.

The attachment looks elegant, but you can see how it pinches the saddle rails in only two spots, focusing a lot of stress there; I suspect this is why the rails broke on the prior seat.

The replacement seat itself looks comfy, heavily padded, with an anatomical cutout to accommodate your nether regions (as my dad used to call them).

But curiously, I prefer my rock-hard Brooks Saddle, just a single sheet of smoothly polished leather—agonizing for the first thousand miles as it breaks itself in to mold perfectly to those aforementioned regions—but then, heaven. Also, much less friction between shorts and saddle as you’re pedaling.

Anyway, I’m concerned that mounting is going to break the rails of this seat too, so I should replace the seat post. The latest technology is something called a dropper post, where you can flick a lever to raise and lower the seat. Designed initially for competitive mountain bikers, who want to keep the center of gravity low on steep descents, it’s been embraced by the geriatric cycling crowd, who drop the seat when stopped. If you can put your feet flat on the ground it’s easier to start pedaling, then pop it back up to ideal height once you get going. Jane and I tried these when we rented electric mountain bikes in New Zealand, and were impressed.

I drove the bike down to George Wilson, owner of Mt Hood Bicycles, where I had stopped yesterday on the way up. He has ordered the dropper post for me, it should arrive early next week and he should have it installed by the time I come down from Hood on Wednesday. As I said, George is a fellow clinician, I was impressed by his meticulous shop. Look how neatly he has all of his tools mounted on that pegboard.

I feel better having my fancy bike in his shop anyway, rather than visible to all in the back of my car.

Tomorrow will be a low-key day, just driving up to spend the one night I do have at Timberline Lodge, and get ready for the big snowshoe on Monday. I’ll explain about that then.

Distance 14 miles, 639 total. Time 3 hours with stops. Elevation gain 2,000 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

Sandy to Government Camp, Oregon Friday, May 10, 2024

I didn’t want to do it this way, but it turned out to be the right way.

The jumping-off point for most climbs of Mt Hood is Timberline Lodge, a beautiful rustic building halfway up the mountain. Built as part of the New Deal by the Works Progress Administration in 1937, it is the only accommodation at this location. Knowing this, I called in January to reserve three days there. I was told I could only have the first day, it was otherwise fully booked for a convention, but I should keep checking back. I did so, but those other two days never opened up.

Rats. That meant I would have to stay at the village of Government Camp, 2000 feet lower on the mountain, and get myself repeatedly back up the mountain. The day of the climb would be particularly problematic, we leave at 1:45 AM; there’s no shuttle, or Uber, or cab that could take me up at that hour. Even the guides are prohibited from doing so, because of liability concerns. I would have to rent a car.

Followers of this blog know how much of an anathema that is for me. I wanted to do this whole trip without using fossil fuel, going to almost comical lengths to avoid it. But I’ve had to knuckle under, most notably in that jet from Montreal to Vancouver. So I guess I’ve already besmirched myself.

Well it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I discovered on my jaunt to Paradise a week ago that I am simply not (yet) strong enough to pedal my fully loaded bike above a grade of 5%. The track to Timberline Lodge is frequently steeper than that. I would have to do those parts without the extra weight, and figure out later how to get the bags up. After researching every other possible option, a rental car seemed the only way to go.

Things seemed to fall into place. The closest rental car is at Sandy, last night’s destination. I found a reasonable weeklong reservation for a Toyota RAV4, that could fit my bike easily. The motel said I could keep the car in their lot for the day. Stashing my bags inside, it was just a matter of an out-and-back to Government Camp with the stripped down bike.

Just a matter. It was only 30 miles each way, and I felt light and free for the first 20, but things got really steep in the end. I passed the last bike shop I would see in a while, and scored some extra chamois cream (you experienced bikers know exactly what I’m talking about; as for the others, look it up. Once you start using it, you’ll never go back.) Turned out the owner is a fellow clinician, a retired orthopedic physician’s assistant, and his shop reviews mentioned he’s a specialist in installing dropper posts. Far out. I could use one of those puppies, and made arrangements. More on that later.

All of this slowed me down, of course, and it was early evening as I ground up those last switchbacks. This gut-punch view of the mountain didn’t help, though anyone else would have thought it beautiful.

It was six before I limped in to my next motel at Government Camp, grabbed a chocolate milk and an apple, and went roaring back down to Sandy. You don’t even realize how steep the slope you climbed was until you zoom down it. The temperature had peaked at 87° on the way up, but I was chilled going down. Found out to my disgust there was actually a 530 foot hill to climb on the way back. Got back to the car at 8:30, barely beating the sunset, totally gassed. Snagged a dinner salad at Subway just before it closed. Found out unusual solar activity was making the aurora borealis visible this far south, but a big white mountain was blocking my northern view.

Luckily, this next motel, another Best Western, is pretty nice. Collapsed into bed without blogging, that’s why this post is late.

This Aztec two-step feels, like I mentioned, like an old man with a walker, taking a tentative step, then bringing his baggage up behind him. Repeat performance tomorrow.

Distance 60 miles, 625 total. Time 10 hours with stops. Elevation gain 5,040 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

Portland to Sandy, Oregon. Thursday, May 9, 2024.

It’s always fun to find quirky place names. Truth or Consequences, New Mexico; Nameless, Tennessee; Old Dime Box, Texas—I have only read about those. At least these guys have embraced their name with a sense of humor.

Otherwise, today was anything but. Reluctant to leave one of the coolest cities in the country, and one of the last cities I would see for a while, I savored the pretty Portland waterfront

had a brunch of Lost Eggs at trendy Café Broder, as recommended by my daughter Hope,

and succeeded in my pilgrimage to the second of two famous Portland bike gear manufacturers. I had to pass on Chris King Cycles yesterday, but Showers Pass makes, in my opinion, the best rain gear for cycling. https://showerspass.com I’ve been using their stuff for years, and it kept me from being miserable over those last rainy days on this trip. Evan showed me around their factory and flagship store, and let me trade in my waterproof gloves, five years old, for the latest model that was touch screen friendly.

I’ve been to Portland before with the family, and hit all the touristy spots, today I just exulted in the city that has the reputation of being the most bike friendly in the country. Sure, there are bike paths everywhere, and many accommodations that make bicycling more pleasant. But the feeling is deeper than that, and hard to articulate, or capture in photos—it’s a culture. You can’t find a street that doesn’t have something on it to promote cycling, and the proof is in the pudding, there are cyclists everywhere. You get a hint of what it must be like to bicycle in Amsterdam, or Copenhagen. The wave of the future, I hope.

Portland is lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep, and highpoints to bag before I sleep. Except for the headwind, it was a blue bird day, which meant I couldn’t escape the image of Mt. Hood, looming ever larger over the otherwise dreamy Springwater Corridor bike path, trash-talking me, egging me on.

Hood is by far the easiest of the quintet of highpoints that require a guide—Denali, Rainier, Granite Peak, and Gannet Peak being the others, all of which I’ve done. It’s over 3000 feet lower than Rainier. It’s the only one that can be done as a day hike, and a patient of mine, two years older, has climbed it over 50 times. But it still looms large in my imagination, and my sense of dread. I have failed on it before, as I will elaborate in tomorrow’s post. It’s the only one I’m going to try to climb from sea to summit in a single trip, necessitating, as I’ll describe, a comical series of steps that reminds me of nothing so much as an old man using a walker. Stay tuned. As for today, I climbed the first 1,000 of its 11,249 feet. Miles to go before I sleep.

Distance 27 miles, 565 total. Time 7 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,107 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

Vancouver, Washington to Portland, Oregon. Wednesday, May 8, 2024

As predicted, it was all too easy to linger at the Graman’s, I didn’t get out till 11. Supposed to be an easy day today— just down the hill to the river, one more slightly scary crossing on marginal bridges, and then on to what is perhaps America’s most bike friendly city, Portland, Oregon. I had a hotel right on the Willamette river. Planned to make a pilgrimage to two famous bike gear manufacturers. The first is Chris King Cycles, whose precision hubs and headsets are so beautifully made, you look forward to maintaining them. Their classic rear hub in particular is a work of art—called the ring drive, it’s famous for the noise it makes when coasting, like a hive of angry bees. The bicycling equivalent of the Ferrari without a muffler.

It was not to be. Just as I was crossing the river, I felt another sickening crunch between my legs, and this time the nose of my saddle was flopping around like a loose earlobe. Sure enough: both rails had fractured completely, and it was just the limp leather hanging. Here’s my seat, compared to a factory photo of what the underside is supposed to look like.

Almost totally unrideable, but it couldn’t have happened in a better place. Just 1.3 miles ahead was Kenton‘s bike repair shop, and there Rich proved himself to be another trail angel. He found me a serviceable replacement seat, and a box to mail my broken seat back.

Simon Firth of Firth and Wilson Transport Cycles in Philadelphia, is the North American service center for Brooks saddles. He has helped me many times in the past, and again was willing to do a warranty repair. The post office was just down the block from the repair shop, so after a couple of hours I was back on my way. Once again, my tour was saved by Trail Angels. I can hardly begrudge my original angels, Aaron and Blake in Eatonville. Their makeshift repair lasted a week and 290 miles, 12,000 vertical feet, and got me to Paradise and Portlandia.

Portlandia. The ultra-hip city gently mocked by the TV series of that name. I no longer had time to visit Chris King Cycles, a representative I had emailed said they were not open to the public anyway, and Rich at the Kenton repair shop said there was nothing to see from the outside. Instead, I just luxuriated in the nurturing web of the city’s bike trails and gorgeous riverfront promenade, where my hotel was. The receptionist recommended Luc Lac, a trendy Vietnamese restaurant. Saw very little of the homelessness I understand is endemic here. Sated, contented, saved from catastrophe, I felt blissed out.

Only one little thing. Quite unexpectedly, as I threaded through the warehouses outside the city, I caught a glimpse of my next objective, Mount Hood, Oregon’s highpoint, rising 11,000 feet above us.

Beautiful, but yikes. This one I’ve got to climb, not just get to the parking lot. The next week will be dedicated to this.

Suddenly, I felt very old.

Distance 22 miles, 538 total. Time 5 hours with stops. Elevation gain 752 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

St Helens, Oregon to Vancouver, Washington. Monday – Tuesday, May 6–7, 2024

Wait, what? Vancouver? I’ve come over 500 miles and I’m still in Vancouver? Of course not. This is Vancouver, Washington.

Old George Vancouver sure got around. This bedroom community of Portland, the bigger city in British Columbia, and the huge island opposite were all named for the good captain. Though lesser known, the one here was founded first.

I was crossing back into Washington over the Columbia to visit an old friend, former colleague and mentor, Howard Graman and his wife Katherine. Howard and I worked together at the University of Vermont Medical Center, then called Given Health Care Center, from 1987 to 1996. Howard was our practice manager, and a real inspiration for me. He was a natural leader, smooth, firm, urbane, and sensitive to (and loved by) his patients. He pioneered a videotaping technique to teach interviewing skills to medical students and residents. Handsome with jet black hair, creative, and always impeccably dressed, he was a kinder version of Don Draper from the series Mad Men. He starred as Bernardo in our local repertory’s version of West Side Story. He was a real inspiration for me, and I loved working with him, but he was headed for bigger things. Recruited by the Cleveland Clinic to establish a primary care facility to complement and support their world-renowned referral center, he went on to be CEO of Cleveland Clinic’s Florida facility, the Carilion Clinic in Roanoke Virginia, and finally Peace Health in the Pacific Northwest, physician-led consortium of more than 600 doctors. His wife Katherine, a nurse and therapist, came to love horses and with each move acquired a larger herd. They settled finally in Vancouver in a lovely home that reminded me a bit of Southfork Ranch in Dallas, which they share with four horses, two donkeys, a parrot, a parakeet, and an adorable little dog named Cabot.

OK, perhaps I’m laying it on a little thick, but Howard and Katherine were like that, glamorous but always down-to-earth and approachable. They graciously hosted me for two nights, and what a respite from those grueling and soggy miles I’d been doing. Great wine, food, conversations and reminiscing, and a bed so luxurious I feared I would never want to leave. These pictures only begin to capture the beauty.

Uh-oh, I’d better get going. The last time I stayed in a place this posh, it was too hard to resume life on the road, I wound up going home.

 Distance 49 miles, 516 total. Time 7 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1489 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria

Toledo, Washington to Saint Helens, Oregon. Sunday, May 5, 2024

Or maybe I should title this post Stinko de Mayo. My clothes were all dry after hanging by the space heater overnight, and seemed remarkably odor-free. But then I was reminded of that Febreze commercial, where everybody but the reeker notices the reek.

But no, I’m calling it Sinko, because the rain never stopped, for a second straight day. I know, I know, I got the memo, the Pacific Northwest in the spring. Get over it. Easier said than done.

At least I was comforted by an old friend. The Adventure Cycling Association, the AAA of the bicycle crowd, had curated most of the route I followed today. I have described this organization, the former Bikecentennial, in my post of 5/2/21. What a joy to have your path chosen by people with local knowledge, rather than just by an algorithm.

In my further musings about the differences between our nation’s capital and Washington state, I focused on Columbia, DC stands for the District of Columbia. But no, there is plenty of Columbia in Washington state. As previously mentioned, the highest point on Mount Rainier is called Columbia Crest. And much of the southern border of the state is defined by the Columbia, one of our nation’s great rivers.

I’ve seen it only once before, when we crossed near Astoria on our West Coast bike ride in 1987, the bridge there was 4 1/2 miles long. The Lewis & Clark bridge at Longview was shorter, but just as high. There was only a narrow shoulder with no margin of error, with the cars and trucks whizzing by only inches away. I had to keep an iron grip on the handlebars, and didn’t dare stop for a picture until I got to the crest.

And then suddenly I was in Oregon, following the trail of Meriwether and William, I had earlier followed their route through North and South Dakota. I was hungry, there was only one dive in Rainier, didn’t look too prepossessing, but they had a crab salad to die for. It sheltered me and the bike through the heaviest downpour; the patrons inside were mostly focused on losing money at the multiple casino screens, but were bemused at the sight of this dripping wet stranger and his peculiar story.

They had trouble grasping what on earth I was doing, but they were kind and wished me well. Also kind was the motel clerk, Amber, who did my laundry for free since their guest machines were broken. I was grateful, did not want to show up at my friends’ house tomorrow in clothes that had been unwashed for three days.

Interesting parenthetical note: Cinco de Mayo is a much bigger deal in the US than in Mexico, where it is only a minor chapter in their vivid history.

 Distance 54 miles, 467 total. Time 8 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1452 feet

©️ 2024 Scott Luria