7,000 Feet Up

I took a friend to Purgatory Chasm up in Massachusetts today because she’s never seen it. I have a few times and it’s a little glacial gouge/rip/sore in the Earth up there. It’s pretty interesting as you have giant boulders and escarpments that rise up to seventy feet above your head. I once rock climbed it over a decade ago without falling and smashing my legs.

It’s an near effortless scramble to climb over the debris that’s in that tiny gorge. 

The hardest “climbing” I’ve ever done was at Mt St Helen’s in 1993/96. No, I’m not making this up as I can point you to a friend who I was staying with way back then in Oregon.

You can pretty much drive up to the foot of Mt St Helens but then you have to park the car, get out and start humping your way up. When I went, the entire area was devoid of any life, any plants. I can report to you that the whole area, to the horizon, looked like the Moon.

I’m not a mountain climber by a longshot. What I have done is called "scrambling."  But I have hiked in some weird/odd/sort-of-inaccessible places in my life. Mt St Helen’s is a hike/climb that’ll beat your ass if you’re not used to being up around 7,000 feet. Oxygen isn’t as plentiful as it is here at sea level. I was panting as I was climbing into the blast crater and every step was a bitch because all that’s supporting you is sand and volcanic dust.

Why do I do it? I want to see bizarre places and things others usually don’t.

*****

Here’s a goofy story. My return to Portland a second time included, with what I thought, would be climb up Mt Hood. Mt Hood is 11,000 feet up. A week prior to flying out there I called the Timberline Lodge that’s situated about half way up the mountain. It’s a ski resort/base camp for the area. If you’ve seen Jack Nicholson’s movie The Shining, the “Overlook Hotel” in the movie, is actually Timberline Lodge.

Anyways, I called the girl at the desk there and asked what the snow pack was in late July. She told me about 18 feet still. She asked if I was going to do a climb and said that I’d have to register with the Lodge first and check in my equipment. I then said, “I won’t be checking in any equipment.” There was a pause on her end of the line when she asked:

“Sir? Are you a technical climber?”

I answered, “What’s a technical climber?”

She then told me I was to be restricted from climbing that mountain no matter what I said.

A technical climber is one of those guys you see carrying tons of rope, petons, grappling hooks, solar powered GPS devices and wearing -50 degree parkas and boots covered in aluminum spikes.

My friend M.K., later on , was a bit incredulous at my naïve belief that I would just waltz up that mountain. “Don’t you know how many real climbers die on that mountain every year?”

Nope, I didn’t. And being the fool I was, I tried going up. Thanks to the staff at Timberline for stopping my silly ass.