Columbia River Gorge

This weekend was filled with wonderful visitors and adventure. Our brother in law, Pat Papczun (from Chicago), and his friend Brian Miner (from Ohio) visited us Thursday through Sunday. Brian taught me how to snowboard back in college and Pat gave me my first snowboard (which he had previously inherited from Brian). The snowboard was a Burton Mystery Air....yes, old skool. It has since been retired and returned to its original owner (Brian), and I have been led to believe that it is proudly hanging in a Smithsonian (or just a wall in his house?). Pat and Brian came out to do some snowboarding on Mt. Hood (lured by our previous post?). Unfortunately, mother nature has given us uncharacteristically warm weather lately and most of the snow on Mt. Hood has melted. We decided to make the most out of the weekend and do some hiking.

On Thursday, Pat and Brian arrived in the early afternoon while I was still at work. Em took them for a walk around the city in the evening, which concluded with a hike up Burnside to the Pittock mansion. The view from the Pittock mansion includes the entire city and, being a clear day, Mt. Hood.

On Friday, they dropped me off at work in the wee hours of the morning, and then they headed to Mt. St. Helens to do a 13 mile hike. Whew, good thing I had to work...not sure I could keep up with them on that one!

In addition to Pat and Brian, I had an old grad school friend, Evan, who happened to be in town for an interview with Intel so he decided to crash with us for the weekend.

Saturday, we headed east about 30 min from the city to do some hiking in the Columbia River Gorge. Here is an overlook from the Rt. 30 scenic byway:

Left to right: me, Em, Pat, Brian (Evan is behind the camera)

A short hike from the road is Coopey Falls (~100 ft). Look closely at the bottom 1/3 of the pic to see the columnar basalt (rock formations from slow cooling magma).

A few more minutes of driving leads to the impressive Multnomah Falls (upper section is 542 ft; lower section is 69 ft). To put the height of this waterfall in perspective: Niagara Falls is a mere 173 ft. This is my second visit to Multnomah Falls and I would love to do it a thousand more times before I die. It is that good. Here's Pat on the lower observation deck:

Here is the view from the observation deck (the small bridge visible in the pic above). The upper falls are so massive, I cannot fit them in the frame of the pic!!

We hiked on up the falls and found this random little cove.

Finally, we made it to the top. It was quite an exhausting hike with some steep switchback. The hardest part was keeping up with the blazing pace set by Pat (who is in much better shape than I). Here is the view from the top of the falls. It is amazing that such a small stream can have such a dramatic visual impact. For perspective, look at the size of the cars in the parking lot (visible in the upper right corner).

With a few hours of daylight left, we decided to continue on a longer trail to loop back to the car (to avoid doubling back on the same trail....gotta see more!). There are rumored to be literally hundreds of waterfalls in this area. After a few hours of hiking, I believe these numbers to be true. You start to lose count. It reminded me of our honeymoon trip to Hawaii in which we drove the road to Hana. Anyone who has done this knows exactly what I am talking about. Waterfall after waterfall after waterfall. There is simply not enough time in life to enjoy such treasures....I think I could spend hours at each one just staring.....however daylight is fading so we must march on.

Here is an outlook from up high on a cliff overlooking the Columbia river. The size of the road helps give you perspective, but you can't truly appreciate this unless you experience it in person (hint, hint, come visit us).

Luckily, Em just bought some Gore-tex trail shoes hours before the hike. (Much thanks to her cuz, Greg, for hooking us up with a phat Adidas discount.) What better way to break them in and test their waterproofing than to fjord a small stream?

Em and Pat pose for a quick pic by one of many waterfalls. Daylight is fading fast so we gotta keep moving or we'll be spending the night up here!

It was full darkness as we finished the hike. The trail spit us out 1/4 mile down the road from where we had parked the car so we just had a short walk to get back. (Left to right: Brian, Em, Evan, me).
Afterwards, we all hit the hot tub at our place. Strange we would want to be wet after hiking around so much water all day, but it did wonders for sore legs. We all hit up a Brazilian steakhouse for dinner and gorged (pun intended) ourselves on red meat. What a great reward after a full day of hiking!