The end

So, there’s not much left to the story, but here are some pics and all that good stuff.

We spent two nights in the little tiny 15X15 lookout tower.  It was freezing cold – literally.  There was a small gas furnace , but it didn’t do much in the way of heating the non-insulated walls of the little place.

Derek by the little stove

It was pretty good for thawing out our clothing and shoes, though, which was good, because they definately would have stayed frozen if we didn’t have the little furnace.

We spent most of the time melting snow because there is no water in the lookout.  That was going just great until I managed to stir the water with a spoon that had been used for instant mashed potatoes.  From then on, that one pot never seemed to be the same.  There ended up being mashed potato flakes in all of our glasses – but hey, what can you do, right?

The first full day, Derek and Chris went out and played in the snow.

Playing in the Snow

Chris playing outside

Leeann and I stayed indoors and I tried to get my hip to recover.  We sat and did crossword puzzles and read and stretched a little.  Nice and relaxing.  And!  the sun actually came out for a while and warmed the place up (meaning it might have gotten to 30 degrees inside the room).

Leeann In the Upper Loft

The second night (that night) we were freezing.  The sun went behind a large slew of nasty looking clouds that we saw rolling in around 3 in the afternoon.  Any heat that had collected in the room left quickly and was replaced by cold air due to the rising wind gusts.  We all got in our sleeping bags (in which we did everything that night including dinner, hot chocolate, and card games).

Derek Beating me at Uno

It kept getting colder and colder.

Finally, we all decided that we just needed to burry ourselves in our sleeping bags because it was so cold.  The wind gusts were probably around 50 mph.  I thought the whole place was going to blow over.  When suddenly – at probably 3 or 4 in the morning it stopped suddenly.  No wind.  Nothing.  It actually woke us all up.  It was like the eye of the storm -After being jolted awake by the silence we all drifted back to sleep till the morning came.

We woke up to a beautiful blue sky with no clouds in sight.  It was crazy!  The wind was totally calm, and the sun was out.  What an awesome day to hike back.  We ate a quick breakfast, packed up, and hiked out.  The hike back was uneventful, except for some beautiful scenery, and we  made it back in about 5 hours.  A much more delightful trip than the hike up there.

Getting ready to go!

After getting back, we drove into Oakridge to eat and then headed straight for Onsen Spas to do a little soaking and warming up.

Overall this trip was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.  I would say the only thing that comes close was Sea Otter Road race last year.  It was gorgeous once we were up there and on the way back.  Next time: lighter gear, more drink and food on the way up.  That’s about it!

Warner Mt. Lookout

As for training: I’ve been doing pretty good these last couple weeks. I just got done with a great off week (meaning 11 hours on the bike) – which also consisted of a little more Snowshoeing in Klamath Falls over Christmas.  This week it’s on to more base miles and alot of hours!  Yippee!  Race time is drawing nigh…..a little nervous….but hey, it can only get better from here!

The Hike of….what felt like death.

So, this last weekend, my boyfriend Chris, our two friends Derek and Leanne and I ventured out to Oakridge to do a little snowshoeing.  We had booked a 2-night-stay at Warner Mt. Lookout.  The website said that the hike would be about a 6-10 mile medium to difficult hike.  Well, we got all of our stuff together, which consisted of 4 large packs (filled with food, clothing, necessities), 4 sleeping pads (little ones), 4 camelbacks filled with water, 3 pairs of snow shoes, 1 pairs of skis, 4 sets of poles and loaded them onto two sleds (Target special!) and were ready to hike.  The sleds had been rigged so that there was rope going through the sides and coming out the front so that we could anchor ourselves to the sled by caribeaners in order to pull it up the hill.

Mile 1-2: We parked the car 11.6 miles away from our final destination and began to hike.  We hadn’t had a trial run, so the first 2 miles served this purpose.  The sleds kept tipping over because the weight of the bags weren’t distributed properly.  Derek’s bag was massive and hard to carry, and then just when we got on a roll (or walk), Chris’ skiis fell off the sled without us knowing and Leeann had to run back down the hill to find them.

Mile 3-5: up hill…the whole way.  The sled situation had started working a little better, so that was a relief.  We had already wasted about 1.5 hours trying to get everything in working order.  We had stopped a minute to rest and eat a bit – We saw the previous tenant of Warner Mt. Lookout trapsing down the hill.  He seemed extremely cheery, and offered “way points.”  Seeing as how none of us have a GPS system – we turned him down and he went on his way, but not before saying, “It does get a little arduous at the top!”  At about mile 5 my hip started hurting, so I couldn’t carry my bag any more. This was loaded to one of the sleds making whoever was pulling at the time very happy.  (My hip thing is due to a prior bicycling accident I had last winter).

Mile 6-8: Started being a blur.  By this time we were contimplating putting on our snow shoes.  We were all starting to get tired.  It was still completely uphill the entire time – and we were about at elevation which made breathing a lot more difficult.  We had stopped numerous times by this point for me to stretch my hip and to change pullers of the sled – and re-situate.  By this point it was also starting to get dark – and we knew we had to book it.

Turn off point: 3.7 miles to go:  Took some pictures – kind of relieved to see we only had 3.7 miles to go.  Ate.  Stretched, put on snowshoes (which we probably should have done a couple miles back after seeing how much easier it was to walk with them on in the snow).

Mile 9-10.5:  This portion of the journey took us the longest.  It got dark around mile 9.5.  It was cold.  We were tired and our camelbacks had frozen so we had no water.  Did i mention we had walked uphill the entire time?  This portion included some even steeper hills, so that was extremely exciting.  By this point everyone was too tired to carry a pack or pull a sled, so it came down to Chris pulling the heaviest sled up front (cause he is a beast), and then one person standing in back of the sleds and pushing on it with our poles so the other person could actually make it up the hill.  At about mile 10.5 we had completely bonked and everything was just a blur.  My hip was hurting so bad by this point that I didn’t even know if I would be able to make it up to the lookout.  We were really happy to see the 1 mile sign, and I almost cried – but I was too tired to even do that.

The entire time during the last mile all of us were just quiet and had to struggle to keep our mental toughness in line.  Every time I stopped to stretch (which was about every minute by this point), I would look back and see Derek bent over his poles, not even walking.  Leeann would then stop because I had stopped pushing on the sled she was pulling because she was too tired to pull.  And then there was Chris, still going like the energizer bunny.

Mile 11: The final sign to warner Mt. Lookout.  This meant that the forest service road that we had been following ended, and we began our trek into the forest.  HILLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ELEVATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  At this point were were at about 5,700 feet.  Talk about not being able to breath or recover.  We had to stop about every 30 seconds to catch our breaths.  30/5/30/5, etc.  Finally……mile 11.6 we coud see the orange glow of the lookout and we booked it.  By booking it I mean we stepped our pace up from .3 mph to .5 mph.  At this point I cried.  (just a little though).  I have never felt so happy to be at a destination in my life.  We quickly got up to the stairs, unloaded our stuff, visited the freezing cold outhouse, and trudged up to the stairs.

So – this was what I might call a 9.5 hour extremely hard tempo ride.  Good base miles, I’d say.

There’s more to the story, but I’ll continue it in my next blog because i have some other stuff to do.