Smith Rock Trip

The weekend of the 27th and 28th of October I was lucky enough to do some climbing at Smith Rock State Park just north of Bend Oregon. This was my second trip and Sarah's first, our "guide" was good ol' Nate. Nate made it down to Portland from Tacoma around 6:00, after a quick stop at Fred Meyer for food and beer (we picked up a 64 ounce growler of Rouge's Dead Guy Ale). Off on out of town on Hwy 26 towards Mt. Hood, we stopped just outside of Government Camp to use the rest area and I saw my first fresh snow of the year (they had a foot or so the other week). Downhill east of the Cascades into the high desert we headed under the full moon. We got a nice view of Mt. Jefferson lit by the moon to our east as we were coming upon Madras. Down hwy 97 for a little ways and we were upon Terrebonne just out side of Smith Rock State Park (~140 mile trip). Nate knew of a good camping spot which didn't cost a cent, "skull hollow". We pulled into the campground around 11:30 and found one of the last spots. It was chilly as all get up. We didn't bring any firewood so we quickly set up tent, pranced around trying to keep warm and decided to hit the sack.

We woke up to a very chilly morning with frost on the tent. Got packed up pretty quick, left the tent to save our spot and we headed over to the crag. We were in the parking lot at Smith rock a little before nine and it was already getting busy. This is a very impressive place even from the parking lot. My neck was crooked upward the whole walk down to the river looking at the rock face rising starkly on the other side. We headed left to the Morning Glory Wall area which was already filling up and found an open area just up the wall a bit. We got a few routes in, the first a 5.8 that was pretty fun. I thought it was kind of tough and was worried that it may be too much for Sarah's very first route but she surprised me and cruised right up, good work. We had to wait some time to do another which was a little bit easier. At this point we moved around looking for something else to jump on, took a while but we found one. Nate went up first, easily of course and then I gave it a shot. I couldn't even get the first move and I got pissed at myself and spent 15 minutes just trying to get a few feet into the air. Finally gave up. We went on a nice hike after this around the back side of the park. There was nearly nobody on the back side which was a nice change. We got our first view of monkey and saw a guy hanging from a rope way up. Watched the sun go down and made it back to the car with just a little light left.

So we were pretty excited to cook a bunch of veggies with some rice and Indian spices for supper that night. Funny thing happened though. I brought my stove but forgot my fuel bottle, nate brought his fuel bottle but forgot his stove, and of course his fuel bottle didn't work with my stove. So we got back and ate iced molasses cookies with vanilla pudding snacks, raw veggies, and a cold tasty bite (which actually wasn't bad cold). This night wasn't as cold as the first but was still very chilly. Since we didn't have a fire we decided to go make friends with someone who did. We brought lots of candy and beer with us to bribe people with. Our first fire we came upon we met Bobcat and Joel. Turned out Bobcat was from Minneapolis and Joel from Milwaukee. So we chatted about home and climbing for a good while. Joel had a bunch of trad gear and was looking for some one to go with so we made plans to go with him on Sunday. Nate didn't bring his rack so we were stuck with the busy sport climbing routes until we came across Joel. Their meager amount of firewood ran out so we all decided to go to another fire. First one was a bunch of kids so we didn't stop. The second was a real big fire with a bunch of quite people. Nate broke the ice by giving every person a piece of candy. Turned out they were a college group from Central Washington University. They weren't much fun so we headed out shortly thereafter. Everyone else went to bed and Nate and I found another fire with 2 Iraq war vets. We sat there warming up and heard a bunch of war stories for half an hour or more before we headed back to the campsite.

Got a slower start on Sunday morning. Got all packed up and ready for the day. Joel made his way over and we headed to the parking lot again. We got away from the crowds by going down to the lower gorge section. It sure was a pretty fun hike getting to our wall. Just a few minutes from the car we were at the edge of the shear cliffs looking down on the river. There were these large closely spaced columns of rock at the edge of the cliff. Looking down between the cracks you could see 30 or so feet below. At one point there was a wooden ladder; down we went. At the bottom of the ladder we had a pretty good boulder field to descend. Then a tricky river crossing. There was one boulder with just a tip sticking out of the water that was kind of scary. My digital camera would have been toast if I would have slipped on that one. We had the place basically to ourselves which was a nice change from the previous day. I got to do my first crack climbing. There was some very challenging routes in this area. I spent quite a bit of time and took a couple falls before I made it up. Nate did a nice 5.10b trad crack. I didn't even try it, the first move was tougher than the one I couldn't do the previous day. We headed out of the canyon around 3. Said our good byes to Joel and headed out. We stopped at La Siesta, a mexican joint in Terrebonne on our way out. Probably some of the worst food I have paid for in a while, undercooked meat, small portions, don't eat at this place people, seriously. A red bull helped me make it back to Portland. Nate still had to get back up to Tacoma but before he left we stopped at Burgerville and got some sweet potato fries and a pumpkin milk shake, good stuff, good weekend.