Greg's Wanderings

Tag: Hiking training

  • Final long training hike

    Final long training hike

    Last Sunday, I met some friends for coffee at St. Honore’s bakery in Lake Oswego. On the way home, my navigation suggested a route I had never taken before and I realized that LO was much closer to my home than I had previously thought. Close enough, that I could create a training hike that would take me back to the bakery as a mid-point rest stop.

    That evening, I used a route-mapping app to create a loop that took me from my Garden Home neighborhood to Lake Oswego via Tryon Creek State Park and then back again over Mt. Sylvania along Kerr Parkway.

    The weather was overcast, but quite muggy. But without the sun blaring down on me, it made for a pleasant 16-mile adventure.

    For the past two days I have been practicing my “trail laundry” tactics. After returning from hikes and taking a shower, I’ve been hand-washing my clothes. This is to both ensure the process I intend to use works and to make sure my clothes are dry by morning when left hanging.

    From this experiment I’ve learned two lessons that will serve me well on the trail:

    1 – wash socks after everything else. The first day I tossed all my clothes into the sink together. The water immediately became murky due to the dust that my socks had picked up from four miles hiking on dirt trails.

    2 – use a micro-fiber towel to help wring out clothes. My first attempt included hand wringing each item before hanging to dry. Twelve hours later, all items were still damp and by morning the socks were still too damp to wear. So for my second attempt, after hand wringing, I laid each piece flat on top of my travel towel. I then rolled up the towel and wrung it as hard as I could. After unrolling, it appeared that the clothes had lost perhaps half of the remaining moisture, which in turn meant they were all dry by the next morning.

  • 20-miler

    20-miler

    Wednesday morning, I took my dog out to pee at 5 AM. It was pouring rain. I had a 20-mile hike to and from my parents house scheduled and the thought of canceling crossed my mind. Then, I remembered that it rains in Spain in Portugal too. In fact, by the time I reach Galicia, the state where Santiago is located, there’s a 50% probability on every day that there will be measurable rain. So on with the hike.

    By the time I started walking at 7 AM, it was just the typical Oregon pissing kind of rain that really never gets you wet. It’s just more of an inconvenience. 

    As the crow flies, my parents house is only about 5 1/2 miles from mine. But with a US highway, an interstate freeway and the Willamette river standing between us, you have to make some detours in order to get there.   I spent some time the day before mapping out a route on AllTrails. The route initially looked pretty good but on closer inspection, I realized I’d have to do some on-the-fly adjustments to avoid some tricky intersections and scary streets.

    While most of my training hikes have been on forested trails or in quiet residential areas, this one perhaps best replicated the types of conditions I expect to encounter in the Camino: getting from point A to point B can sometimes mean walking alongside busy roads.  

    Walking streets in Portland, Oregon is normally a pretty safe endeavor.  The city is generally pedestrian friendly, many streets have sidewalks and motorists generally try to scoot over to give you a little extra space.   

    But not all streets are created equal and there are a few that a downright frightening to walk  with non-existent shoulders around blind curves.  

    I use AllTrails as my mapping App.  It shows all the roads, the cut-through pedestrian paths, intersections with walk signals and contour lines so you have an idea about how steep the grade will be.  

    It also shows streams and helps explain why it’s impossible to get to an adjoining neighborhood without traversing at least short distances on scary roads.  

    During my 20-miler, I experienced both some of Portland’s best and worst pedestrian experiences.  The photos included here illustrate the variety of conditions. 

    One of my favorite options is a path with dedicated foot and bike lanes and a small barrier between the car lane.
    The Springwater Corridor. No cars in sight. Just watch out for the bikes speeding past.
    SW Multhomah Blvd. A five block section has this divider posts to give you some distance from cars.
    SW Palentine Hill. Very limited shoulder and only a ditch to jump into if cars get too close.
    SE 17th Avenue has a nice wide pedestrian/bike lane with a median separating from car traffic.

    The drizzle I experienced as I set off at 7 am quickly disappeared.  Aside from the occasional drop falling from a tree I made it to and from my parents place precipitation free.  I made great time and added a quarter-mile detour in Sellwood to stop at Blue Kangaroo for coffee and a pastry.  Even with the detour, I arrived at my folk’s apartment around 10:40.  

    Stopping in at Blue Kangaroo for a cold brew and berry muffin.

    I carried my full backpack and did a little show and tell of what and how I had packed.  We then had a nice lunch before I reversed course just after noon.  

    In my way home, I didn’t follow my own policy of stopping every two hours to rest my feet.   While I made it home by 3:20, I paid the price for not taking a break midway to give my feet a breather.  After a good soaking in Epsom salts, they were as good as new.

  • A perfect day for hiking

    A perfect day for hiking

    We could not have asked for more perfect weather for our most recent Camino simulation hike. Today I was joined by eight others including three repeat hikers from my previous simulation hikes.

    With temperature starting in the high 50s, we were able to complete our 15 mile journey a little before 1 PM and the weather was in the mid 70s when we reached Waterfront Park again.

    As with our previous hikes, we stopped in the Sellwood district for a coffee break and then had a picnic lunch in Hamilton Park along the Terwilliger Parkway.

    Fancy goat house with adjoining chicken coop.

    This time as we were leaving the coffee shop, some locals asked us if we were going to see the goats. They described a house, just a couple blocks out of our path where they had a goat pen in their front yard. We made a little detour and saw the cutest goat pen, which also happened to house, rabbits and chickens in the front yard just a couple of blocks off of the main business district in Sellwood.

  • Trail Crew workout

    Trail Crew workout

    Not all my training is pure hiking.  On Thursday, July 17, I completed my fourth volunteer mission with Trailkeepers of Oregon as we worked to restore trails in the Columbia Gorge that have been closed since the devastating Eagle Creek Fire, which burned over 50,000 acres in 2017.  Eight years later, two key trails remain closed.

    Thursday, I joined a crew of seven working on the Tanner Butte Trail (Trail #410) which has all but disappeared as underbrush has covered the trail and grown tall.  On our crew last week, a couple of our team pushed their way through the underbrush for close to a mile marking where the trail should be with colored ribbon. 

    It was easy to see where our work from last week stopped, as we abruptly hit a wall of vegetation.  The photo below is the “before” shot of what the trail looked like before our efforts began.

    Somewhere in there is a trail.

    The work mainly consisted of using large lopping shears to take down the tall brush.  Then fire rakes were used to pull up some of the underbrush and expose where plants had taken root in the trail pathway.  Then it was work and hands and knees to clip the small brush (blackberry, Oregon grape and other viny plants) from the trail.  We also encountered two trees that had fallen across the trail.  As we had not planned for these, the largest saws we carried were 21” hand saws, which meant each tree (larger around than a telephone pole) took an hour or more for a two person team to cut a gap for the trail.

    After a hard day’s work, another few yards of trail have been cleared.

    After a full day’s work in the sun, we made about 100 yards of progress.  Just six more miles – and several more years – and this trail may be reopened.   I do want to stress that the trail remains closed to the public and the gate at the base is locked.  We were working under the authority of the US Forest Service, which allowed us to pass through the gate.

    If you love the outdoors, I encourage you to consider volunteering for a trail crew or making a monetary donation to help fund TKO’s work.  Cuts in federal funding have left a $500k gap in TKO’s budget for this year.  Any contribution of time or treasure is appreciated.

    One cool thing about our trail crew this time is that we had two women on vacation from New Hampshire who joined us.  They were touring Oregon for a week and one of them worked for a company that awarded extra PTO for doing volunteer work.  It was great meeting them and having them donate a day of their vacation to restoring this trail.