July started with a bang on the weekend of the fourth when Ian, Dan, Kendall and I headed down to White Salmon (right across from Hood River). We camped the first night in the tent Ian's friend has set up in their yard for the kids - not the most secluded camping but it sure was easy! Saturday dawned hot and sunny and the four of us went for a great mountain bike ride in right from town. A huge climb up, then down to the river, then back up on an exposed ridge, then a great downhill to finish. 5000' of climbing and we were worked! That was just the warm up for day 2...
We left that evening for Mt. Adams, and because of all the snow we had to park 3 miles from the trailhead at Cold Springs. Aaron and John rolled in at about 1AM (thankfully I was asleep in my tent) and we got up at 5 for the slog to the top. We skinned all the way from Cold Springs to the summit, topping out late at about 4pm. Then Aaron and I decided to try the Avalanche Glacier route down, which we had done twice before in years past. After skiing through the notch between the summit and the northern peak, we found the whole glacier had moved down the mountain, opening up a huge crevasse right in our path. We turned and skinned out of there with our tails between our legs. I'm eternally grateful to Aaron and his good judgment as I was thinking "it looks pretty filled in over on the right" - could have been a disastrous choice. It's all the worse because you can see the crevasse from down below and we had thought it was a crown of an old avalanche. Anyway, we skinned back to the summit and skiied right back to cold springs down the south approach. Our buddies skied the Avalanche Chutes and had a good run.
Sunday night Kendall and I camped at a remote site where we were the only ones there. He in the back of his truck and me in the tent. At 3am I awoke to somehing tromping through the woods toward the campsite. "Of course it's a bear" I was thinking as my heart pounded. The thing walked right past my tent and off into the woods. Just as I started to calm down I heard it coming back! I felt like a chewy treat inside a thin wrapper and I had had enough! I yelled for Kendall to shine a light, which he did after a few panicked requests for him to wake up. We never did see what it was, but I'm comforted to know I escaped death on that occasion.
Monday we capped off the weekend with a great ride at Post Canyon on the Oregon side of the river. They have miles of singletrack and have built out some easy t0 medium features like log bridges, drops and ramps. What a blast!
