And yes, that is Aventinus on tap in my glass. Yum

Sunday we went up little-known Sevenmile Hill near Chenoweth, OR. No trail, and much steeper than it looks. No trees until the top make it hard to gauge distance. The balsamroot and lupin was in full bloom, and Mt Hood to the southwest kept us company. Blackbirds and meadowlarks sang, a few cow moos and train whistles. At the top we had lunch in the shade of a ponderosa surrounded by a grove of oaks and flowers, with the gorge and Mt Adams beyond.

Mt Hood.

Clear border between grazed and wild hillside.

Moo moo and looking east along Columbia river.

The Dalles.

Western end of Stacker Butte on the Washington side of the river. Doug’s Beach is at the bottom. There’s some area to explore here too, though may have to wait until next spring when the poison oak is little again.

Mt Adams, Lyle, WA. The cliffs on the right have the Lyle Convict Road at the bottom.

View from our picnic blanket. Not too shabby.

I love these little guys. They have little blue stripes that remind me of circus tents. I think they are Bicolor triteleia.

Then stopped by to see the White Salmon Sees at Everybody’s Brewpub before heading home. A good day.

“Bogus!” sez I, “bogus bogus BOGUS!”
“That’ll be $35,” says the City of Portland.

Curious if anyone else knew that this was a ticketible offense.

Upper point–you can get fairly far out on the fin before it gets sketchy.

From the tippy top. Looking north in Washington state, Underwood WA is up there someplace. Columbia River below.

Looking west from the top.

A Grass Widow on the lower point.

The keen eyed can spot the same grass widow in the lower left. Across is Washington Highway 14 and the train tracks cutting through several headlands by tunnel. Also the Broughton Flume cut across the hillside here on its way from Underwood/Mill A to the lumbermill at Hood, WA (near fish hatchery west of Bingen).

A brave photographer challenges the wind to take that perfect shot.

Grass widow in the moss.

LIDAR is essentially radar or sonar with [freakin'] lasers, plus GPS. A plane with a LIDAR unit can scan the ground below and get really accurate high-resolution 3D maps of the terrain and buildings. You can spot old roads and even trails in forest, buried volcanic craters, odd hidden geological features, map wetland, measure tree height, find landslides, etc. The Oregon Department of Geology has so far scanned about a tenth of the state and you can cruise around using their online map site.

Here’s a presentation on LIDAR and the scanning process from Oregon Geology.com.

[Above is "bare" and topo version of Mitchell Point on the south shore of the Columbia River.]

[via Wyeast blog]

in the afternoon sun, SE Portland.

(Personally I turn the sound off when I watch these. Put some music on you’d actually listen to.)

(…and of course watch full-screen…)

Finding Oregon from Uncage the Soul Productions on Vimeo.

..

A purty picture of a purty waterfall snapped by our pal Kelly Hoffer.

Not a huge amount of information yet, but looks like there’s a forest fire along the Timberline Trail on Mt Hood near Elk Cove and Vista Ridge. Depressing–this is some of the prettiest part of the mountain, and my family’s favorite area, historically, for backpacking. Add to that that it’s nearish to the family homestead at Cooper Spur Junction (though the burn from previous much closer Gnarl Ridge fire is apparently acting as a sort of fire break). Amazing photo by Adam Lepierre via the Hood River News.

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center

Inciweb

updates:

• 10/11/2011: It’s pretty much over. Looks like everything in the alpine and subalpine area from Elliott Creek to Cathedral Ridge on the north side of the mountain is ash. Luckily not much of the over-cut timber land outside the wilderness area was burned. Thank goodness! OK, the upside is that there will be a lot of morels and wildflowers in this area for the next decade. And the views will be better. But it’s still very sad.

• 9/6/2011: The fire spreads west around the mountain. Updated map. Very depressing.

• 9/3/2011: from inciweb: strong winds out of the east pushed the western flank of the Dollar Lake fire to the west in the Mt. Hood Wilderness. By Saturday afternoon, the fire had spread as far west as Cathedral Ridge and the Mazama Trail area. They have yet to update the map to reflect this, but this may mean Eden Park is burnt up.
• Picture from KATU
• 

• 9/2/2011: Finally added to Inciweb: http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2563/.

And my own synthesis of the fire map on Inciweb and features, including location of Grandma’s house/Tamarack/the mountain house. Does seem like it’s not hit the Cairn Basin/Wyeast Basin/Eden Park area (yet).

•  08/31/ 2011 8:12 PM: Sounding hopeful. Weather projected to be cool until Saturday.

We just returned from Cooper Spur and a nice dinner with friends. Everything is calm, and there are a lot of fire resources such as tankers and engines on standby in the area as well as at Cloud Cap. I can tell you it was very cool there, somewhere in the low 50′s.

I talked to a Forest Service law enforcement officer, who was there keeping the ski area and Cloud Cap road closed, and the latest word she had was there is no indication of any evacuation of the Cooper Spur area at this time. However, the fire people did commit equipment to the area on the basis of rather safe than sorry. — John F. Marker, Sentinel Orchards, Parkdale

•  08/30/2011: Parkdale fire chief synopsis

• 08/30/2011: a video of the view from Parkdale.

Like the use of “allegedly.”

Went on a hike up an old road to the top of Stacker Butte, also known as Dalles Mountain, across the Columbia from The City of the Dalles. It’s in the zone east of the Cascades where the trees thin out and grass takes over before the sagebrush starts. There’s ton of balsamroot and lupine up here, though on our visit those flowers hadn’t yet bloomed much above the trailhead–at least not balsamroot, there were other little flowers going like Bonneville shooting star and big-head clover. The top ridge, sadly, is covered in antennas, including this weird beacon for airplanes. Views from the ridge on a clear day are incredible.

These guys were ahead of us at a light. That’s a box spring and mattress being held onto the car by one arm from the driver and one from the passenger. We really hope they aren’t driving far (or fast).

I think last time I came to Otter Rock (age 8?) I couldn’t beat this game.

The chowder wasn’t as good as I remembered, but the place is still fun, nice staff, great view, laid back.