Quartzville Vids

Pure Hate - Upper Upper Quartzville Creek 9/16/07

Nick, Sera, Seth, Melissa, and I had ourselves some fun today on the canyon of Upper Upper Quartzville Creek (aka Pure Hate Gorge)... This spot got it's friendly nickname from a group of kayakers who apparently had a deathwish... Running the series of log choked falls and narrow gorges in a kayak at 100X the flow we experienced appeares to me (a non-kayaker) as suicidal... A quote from Jason Rackley's page:

"I first found out about this run through Eric Brown's description in Paddling Oregon. Eric has actually paddled this section, an impressive feat in my opinion. Of course, he doesn't recommend that anyone else do it, describing a log-choked, inescapable box canyon and unportagable, unscoutable class five with wood.

Eric sums up his description with these words: "No one is ever glad to have done this run. It has been described as 'Pure Hate'". "

Anyway, when the flow is down this makes an excellent canyon adventure! Here are the photos:


Team members: Seth, Nate, Nick, Sera, and Mel


Seth on the first wet downclimb


Sera styling the first drop


Right after a short rap, our only of the trip


Another sweet team shot


The reason kayakers don't like it: too much wood in the creek


Nice little swim


Parting shot

Mt. Hood Search - 9/8/07

On Saturday the Corvallis Mountain Rescue Unit joined a number of other Oregon high-angle rescue teams in a search of the north and east faces of Mt. Hood for the two climbers that went missing this past winter. Our team mustered up 7 folks, (plus an additional searcher from the local snowshoe club) to search the upper bench of the Elliot glacier. Although the setting and weather were quite beautiful, it was interesting to get up close and personal with Mt. Hood's ugly side (in late summer the usually beautiful and snowcovered northeast face shown in previous posts more resembles a sandy rockpile). I did gain some additional respect for the size and extent of the crevasses on the the Elliot, and although the efforts of 70ish folks wasn't enough to uncover further clues of the missing climbers fate I think it's safe to say that we made the best of the good conditions.

Approaching the Elliot


First peek into one of the big ones


Checking other cracks


Hi Lindsey!


Mike + Some dirty North Face Gullies


Some crag rats playing around in the upper seracs


Looking some more...


Jim finds a big one... This one was probably ~30 feet across and ~170' deep?


Jonathan having a closer look


Aaron getting nasty on a little overhang


Looking back on some of the search area

Latest Stuff

Here are a few photos from our trips over the past couple weekends. The first couple are of a little hike we did around Scott lake in OR. Then there are a few photos of a trip where our friend Tiff joined us out at Smith. Also, Mel lead her first climb there (that first one of her climbing shows her clipping her first bolt ever!!!). Anyway, that was a fun day but it was HOT! Then, this past weekend we had some more adventures over the hill. We snuck up on the freshly ignited GM fire (at the time had burned 5300 acres, now it's more than twice that...), did some mountain biking around Suttle lake, and then a little bouldering in "The Badlands". I don't think we found the right area for bouldering there, so we may have to go back sometime... Enjoy!