Pikes and a Mountain

18/11/12

This morning we got up and went to check out the Pikes Farmers Market. There was a few good things available for purchase but I still didn't really want to add to the weight I was already carrying. Good Christmas presents there though as Jesse proved by buying a couple.

We then set sail for Portland. It was pretty crappy weather but we had our sights set on a mountain climb up Mt Si. It was pretty rainy and cold when we got to the carpark but we did some manning up and started the ascent. We were just in running shoes, shorts and long sleeve tops and it was pretty funny passing people coming down who looked like they were set up for an Antarctic winter. The higher we got the colder it got so the faster we had to run. I was pretty disappointed when my hill climbing effort, it was pretty brutal and unrelenting though. Near the tree line we stopped to have have a yarn to some people, they said they hit snow and wind just above the trees and turned around. They were a bit sceptical about our attire. 

We pushed on and passed another guy who looked to be wearing full mountaineering gear just before we got above the tree. We took a couple of pictures:

While we were taking the pictures the mountaineering guy caught up and turned around! We carried on for another 15min or so and got to a very sketchy looking scramble up some loose rock covered in loose snow  (The track goes right up the middle of the photo):

By now it was kinda snowing up there so we decided that death might ensue if we attempted the final ascent so we headed back down. All in all it was about 12km with 1000m of climb in it and we did it in 2 hours 20min.

We headed to Portland via a Chipotle for dinner. On the way we encountered some pretty horrendous heavy rain weather with poor visibility and lots of standing water to aquaplane over on the freeway but the Mustang seemed to handle the conditions ok and we made it to the destination with no problems. Jesse still doesn't have a home so we checked into our plush presidential suite hotel room and crashed into bed.