Ok so I have not been making posts for a little while now.  I apologize to anyone who may have noticed this small hiatus or whatever you want to call it.  I have been busy as usual though and things have been developing.

In the meantime I have managed to finish all of my classes at PSU and I am officially done with school (at least for the time being).  I did manage to get my car fixed, or at least back into street legal status.  The insurance company gave me a check for $2000 for repairs which I ended up only spending about $300 on.  I am still living on the remainder of that so things turned out better than I had hoped.

I have recently relocated to Government Camp, Oregon.  Govy as we call it is a tiny village on the foot of Mt Hood and allows me much easier access to snowboarding and to my new job at Timberline Lodge.

So living in the mountains again, I am very relieved to be out of the city again.  I already liked Portland more last time I was there to finish moving my stuff out of my old apartment knowing that I no longer lived there.  Portland is one of those places for me that seems more romantic with a little distance.  I am now closer to the mountain, closer the the earth, closer to the things I love to do.  I am looking forward to future posts with photos and video of my new home.

The gapers finally killed my car.

I was on my way to work at Mt Hood Meadows this morning at about 8:30. The road was pretty good most of the way up because it had been pretty warm and was raining down to probably about 4500 feet or so. I made it all of the way up to the Meadows access road without having to chain up or even really slow down for that matter. The access road however was another story. I got about halfway up it and the rain was turning to snow and the snow that was already packed on the road was turning slick as snot on glass. I approached a large group of cars chaining up and realizing that I wasn’t going to make it around them with enough momentum to keep climbing up into the parking lot I decided to just stop and back up to an open spot and over to the shoulder to chain up. I got out my chains and was in a hurry to get them on both because I was running late for work and because I don’t like being outside of my stopped vehicle on the side of an icy road. I had just finished clasping the inside of the driver’s side chain and was standing up to move over to the passenger side when all of a sudden I hear someone uphill shouting “look out!” I looked up just in time to see a big ass Ford Excursion sliding down the road sideways towards me and right into the front of my car. The driver was out in a moment and I let him have a piece of my mind telling him in some likely colorful language that he had almost killed me. When I asked him why he didn’t have studs or chains on he said that he was looking for a place to pull over and chain up and put it in four wheel drive. He didn’t even have it in four wheel drive! I eventually calmed down and we exchanged info and got the cars moving again.

I got to work a little late and didn’t get a lesson. I spent all morning in the ‘Fun Zone’ pulling kids out of the snow and finally I was able to get out of there a bit early this afternoon to get down the hill to try to get an estimate for the damage on my car. I got down to Sandy and found a body shop and got him to look at the car estimating almost $2800 in damage. Not good. The car only blue books for around that. Totaled. Oh well, at least the guy has insurance (as far as I know yet) and hopefully I will get a fair amount for the car and maybe get into something a little better. At the very least, he didn’t run over my head. So another day on the mountain survived and another piece of gear destroyed.

Well, I finally got my pass and got to do a little riding this season. I drove up to Meadows yesterday to work my first shift this year and actually got a lesson and also got to do a little riding. I have been a little worried about how well my ankle was going to hold up to the pressure of snowboarding. I am also very out of shape and was a little worried about getting thrown right into powder riding without any warm up days. It was good though and I got through the shift and was able to find a couple of stashes in the trees despite the holiday season crowds,

After work I rolled out and got stuck in traffic about 3/4 of the way down to Government Camp. I was just sitting in traffic maybe moving three or four miles an hour occasionally but sitting at a stand still for most of the time. Some kids in a car trying to pass everyone tried signaling to me to roll down my window and I kind of blew them off because the window doesn’t really work right half the time. I can get it down but I never know if it will go back up or not. After a while traffic started moving and I realized what they were trying to signal, my driver side front tire was blown out. It was flat and looked like it was about to come off of the rim and the chain was all wrapped up inside the wheel well. I got to get out and change the tire on the side of the highway in the snow with lots of traffic passing me. When I got the spare on and dropped the car down from the jack I noticed that the tire was running real low. I just had to limp back into Govy to try to get to an air-pump, which I found at the Chevron station. I inflated the tire and it seemed ok. I think it had just not been used for ages and had bled low. I had checked it recently to see if it had air in it but didn’t check the pressure so it looked like it was inflated but it was actually almost flat. It had nine PSI of pressure instead of the recommended 60. After I got into Govy and got the tire inflated I met up with a friend who followed me down the hill to just below the snowline where we know someone who let me park on his property and we drove back up to ride Meadows the next morning.

We got up and drove over to Meadows under sunny skies, the first sunshine I had seen in nearly a couple of weeks. We rode around for a while in the trees on Shooting Star and Hood River Express and then dropped into the Private Reserve for a few powder runs. The snow was nice and we were able to get away from the crowds there. Unfortunately it included a lot of hiking and skating down the runnout and we got wore out pretty fast. All in all it was a great day of riding though.

I slept in again today and decided to driver out to the river at about 10. I got there around noonish and there were lots of cars parked all along the way — a few as far up as the deadline at the hatchery. I parked there and hiked in. All of my usual spots were occupied so I was forced to try to learn new water. I hiked back upstream about as far as I could go before private land and found a good looking hole. I had actually fished this spot before too. I however did not know the way down to the bank from the hillside that the main trail traverses. I followed a small path that became smaller yet as it meandered down the muddy slope. Finally I was getting close to the bottom and the rocks I wanted to cast from. Suddenly my boot slipped and I took a slide on my ass for a good 15 or 20 feed down the rest of the bank. I thought for sure I was going in the drink but I landed on the rock ledge just before the water. I would have been fine if I had gone in anyway, it was pretty shallow right there but very cold. At least there is a hell of a climb back out of there to warm you back up if everything goes wrong.

I immediately broke off on a snag and switched to the bobber rod and threw out a massive birdsnest on the first cast with that. I was getting pretty frustrated with the day and was ready to just admit defeat and go home to get out of the rain. I decided to re-rig the drift rod since it was closest to working condition and rigged up a small pink pearl corky and some black yarn and cast out. After a few casts my day got better when I hooked a fish. I kept this one on and landed him shortly. He was a decent looking buck and of hatchery origin so I decided to bonk this one and have a fish dinner finally.

It’s been snowing down to a low elevation lately and normally that means good snowboarding. Well I suppose that the snowboarding would be good if I actually got to go snowboarding. I got up late again today but decided to drive up to Meadows anyway to try to get my pass and maybe take a few runs in the fresh powder. After a long drive and chaining up I finally got to Govy and immediately was disappointed to see a full parking lot at Ski Bowl. If their lot is full guaranteed that Meadows is crazy as hell. I drove the rest of the way anyway because I figured if I drove all this way I should at least go in and get my pass. Of course the main lot was closed when I got there and the parking lot crew wouldn’t let me in for even a few minutes, “park at HRM and take the shuttle” they told me. I didn’t feel like it was worth fighting the gapers to get onto a shuttle and spend an hour in transit just to get one or two runs on the tracked out snow so I just turned around and left.

I drove down to Sandy and decided to try some steelheading out. I found a spot to park and was surprised by how good the water looked. The low freezing levels were keeping the water at a fishable level. It was a little fast but was a perfect steely green. I tried out a pink corky with a bit of black yarn for a while before snagging and loosing that rig. I tied another and used some pink yarn this time. Still no action and eventually lost that to a snag too. I was working my way into a rocky section of the river since I figured that I would find the fish in the rocks as opposed to the sandy bottomed part but the rocks were taking their toll on my gear. I tied on an orange corky with some attached orange yarn that I found on the bank yesterday. Eventually I found a small backwater and began drifting just above and into it. After a few casts I felt a hit and I set the hook. The fish immediately went crazy and came to the surface and thrashed around throwing the hook. I was bummed out. I had been unlucky for the last several trips and I was getting desperate to try to get rid of the stink of skunk. I cast back out to the spot and after a few drifts another take. I set the hook hard this time and the fish went insane again, running downstream and taking line effortlessly. I grabbed onto the spool and stopped the fish. He started thrashing around and I expected to see the lure fly out of its mouth like the last fish. It held and the fish dove again only to appear seconds later leaping out of the water. This one was a jumper. I’ve never seen a fish catch as much air as this one did. He was twisting and flipping and running like mad. Finally he wore out and I got him to the bank. It was a big ole nate and chrome as a dime. Weird thing was as I went to unhook him I realized that the hook wasn’t even in the fish anymore. My lure was just sort of lying against its gill plate. I wondered how the hell the fish was still on the line and then noticed that the line was threaded through its lower lip, just barely. Interesting, I’ve never landed a fish hooked like that before. I cut my leader and pulled the line through, righted the fish and he took off like a rocket, no harm done at all. I retied the same corky and casted out again. After just a couple of drifts through the same slot fish on again. This one didn’t run quite as hard as the other and I had him to the bank in no time. Another chrome bright native. I unhooked him and he had plenty of swim left in him without needing to be revived either. I wondered if maybe these were the same fish. They came out of the same spot and they looked the same. The second fight was so much shorter than the first one was that I thought maybe he was just tired out from the first fight. Oh well, I guess I’ll never know. Sure was fun though and I was glad to have the river to myself, aside from a few welcome steelhead, instead of fighting crowds at Meadows.

I finally made it to South Dakota. I can’t believe the flying experience that I had to get here. I got up sort of late and tired in Portland the other day. I had a flight to catch at 10:50. Everytime I fly I get to the airport plenty early as they recommend. I always get frustrated because after getting checked in and through security I have a long time to just sit around and wait for the plane. In fact that is the thing I hate about traveling by public transportation in general. I hate having to spend way more time waiting than actually traveling. So this time I decide I am going to not get there way earlier than my flight. I figured that as long as I was there about an hour early that I would get to the gate just as they were about to start boarding the plane. Well as always I got sidetracked and then it ended up taking much longer to actually get to the airport than I had planned. I ended up getting there about ten minutes before my plane was scheduled to take off. They wouldn’t even let me check in and get a boarding pass. I ended up having to wait until almost 4:00 for the next flight. So much for avoiding the wait at the airport. My trying to shave an hour off of my airport time ended up costing me six hours and 50 dollars to change the flight. Stupid! I didn’t dare leave the airport because I was going to be damned before I missed another flight.

I got to Denver and had a couple hour layover that I figured would be best spent drinking beer at an airport bar. After a few rounds and some conversation with some fellow travelers I looked at my watch. Apparently my flight would be boarding already. I took off and hurried to the gate to get on the plane. When I got there the sign didn’t say Minneapolis like it should have and the gate was a ghost town. I asked the lady at the podium if there had been a gate change for the flight to Minneapolis. “The one that left an hour ago?” she replied. Only then did it occur to me that I had never set my watch to mountain time. Here I would like to throw in a short rant about time zones. How stupid is it that we can’t just have a universal time? Why can’t it just be 1:00 elsewhere when it is 1:00 here? People would be like “Well then it would be getting dark at noon in some places while it would be midday in others”. My answer to that would be “so what” — people would still know when the sun was to come up and set. It would be less confusing if you ask me. And I’m not even going to get started on my daylight savings time rant. Is it just to remind us that time is arbitrary or what? I just think that it should be stable.

Anyway, out of all the years that I have been traveling I’ve only ever missed one departure time before (that was a bus in Chile and I blame that on pisco and bars that don’t close until the sun rises) and now I’ve missed two flights in one day. I talked to the guy at the service desk and he told me that there wasn’t another flight to Minneapolis until the next morning. He gave me a card that got me a discounted room at the Radison. That was ok but I really just wanted to be done with the whole trip today and not have another entire day devoted to travel. I barely slept that night because I was so worked up from the day. The next morning I made sure that I got to the airport plenty early for my flight. I was now flying standby and I was a bit nervous that I wasn’t going to get on the flight despite the assurance that there was plenty of empty seats by several Frontier employees. I could have confirmed a seat for another $50 but after the last fifty and then the unexpected $60 for the hotel room, I didn’t want to spend any more. I did get on the plane and I even had an empty seat next to me. Nice. I really do have to hand it to Frontier Airlines. They managed to get me to my destination in spite of myself.

I got to Minneapolis at about 12:30 and my family was at the airport waiting for me. Man was I glad to see them. “Just get me the hell out of this airport” was all I could say as we walked to the car. We drove to the hotel and I finally got a little sleep. That night we went to the Guthrie Theater for a production of A Christmas Carol. It was pretty good, the set was probably the best part. They had several trap doors on the stage and the stage itself is set up kind of cool. It is sort of protruding out into the seats instead of being directly in front. The seats spread around the stage in sort of a semi-circle and they slope upwards pretty steeply making it so there is not really a bad seat in the house. I could see everything over top of the people in the row in front of us with no trouble at all. After the play we went out to eat and my sister and I had some drinks. Then we went back to the hotel and got a good night’s sleep.

The next morning we checked out of the hotel and went shopping for some snow gear for my sister. She wanted a snowboard lesson for her Christmas present but she had no snowpants or decent gloves. After a bit of an ordeal with traffic and malls we got the stuff and we were off to Buck Hill in Burnsville MN. We spent a few hours on the slopes and in the bar. It was fun and Danielle did pretty well. By the end of the day she could get down from the chairlift and was beginning to get some confidence. After snowboarding we left the cities and drove to South Dakota. That night we went out to the bars and had a good time. I ran into a couple of old friends and it was nice to be finally done traveling for at least a week or so. Today I slept all morning and spent the rest of the afternoon in my pajamas. After dinner I drove out to my friend Tony’s house but he was already asleep on the couch and I couldn’t wake him up by knocking. Oh well, I bet he is exhausted. His wife just gave birth to their third baby girl and I am sure that he doesn’t have an ounce of surplus energy. I will just have to see him later on this week.

I got a tip from the Oregon Fishing Forum that the ODFW had stocked West Salish Pond in Fairview with 50 brooder trout. Brooders are the fish that spawn all of the little stocker trout that we fish for in the summer at lakes and some rivers. Basically they are the granddaddy fish from the hatchery– some of them weigh in at over 8 pounds. I have yet to catch one. I tried both Friday and Saturday this week. No luck. I tried bottom fishing with powerbait, I tried spinners and spoons, nothing. Oh well, I got some pictures and I got out of the apartment. I did see a couple of fish caught that looked pretty big on Friday and I missed a couple of bites. I had nothing and saw nothing caught on Saturday. Finally a good storm was blowing in and it was raining and the wind was blowing. I didn’t wait the last hour until sundown.

I drove back over to the Wilson the other day to try again for some fall nookie and the river was looking a lot better. Not flooded out and brown but a nice green. I went straight to the spot that I had seen a guy bobber fishing and I had a fish on last time for a second or two. No luck there for quite a lot of effort so I walked back up toward the road and found the trail and followed that downriver for a little ways. I came to another big deep hole at the head of which the river squirts through a very narrow section of canyonland. The river is only 10 feet or so wide here so it gets very deep. I had seen a fish caught here the other day too so I decided to drift the deep gorge into the slackwater in the hole below.

I attached quite a bit of lead with a red corky at the end of about a two foot leader. I also added a big ole glob of cured salmon eggs and a liberal squirt of sand shrimp oil (the same bait I was bobber fishing above). I started drifting and realized how deep it really was, I had to cast way up into the canyon to give my rig enough time to sink to the bottom by the time it ended up straight out from me and I could get a decent drift. After a while I was bored and decided to try out my new steelhead rod that I had just bought that day. It would be a little light for salmon but I wasn’t catching any salmon, so what the hell. I rigged it up with the same thing except I had only one spool of 10 lb test mono for that reel. Suddenly I felt something different, not quite the way the bottom felt on the previous casts. I almost sensed the fish more out of intuition I think than I really felt it.

I lifted sharply to feel if there was anything to it and felt the head shake once. I set the hook hard and for a second I thought I must have been wrong and I was snagged on a rock or log because it didn’t move — I couldn’t lift it up at all. Suddenly I felt the head start shaking violently and it started to move up the current. Oh yeah, thats a fish, and a big one too. My light rod bent almost in half as the fish turned and took a run downstream. It took a few turns and tried to shake the hook again but it didn’t come loose giving me some confidence that the hookset was ok. Then all of a sudden my reel just started screaming and the fish was tearing ass downriver. I now knew that it was a big fish and it was going to be one hell of a struggle to get it to the bank with 10 lb test line and a light steelhead rod. The fish was still running like he wasn’t going to stop until he was back in saltwater and I knew if he got past the hole below me he was gone. He could either just get into the whitewater and really use the current or get me tangled in the big log pinned against a boulder at the tail out of the hole. I was perched on a little shelf on the cliffside and there was no way that I could try to follow the fish either. The only thing I could do was apply pressure to the spool and hope my gear had the backbone to change the fish’s mind.

As my rod loaded to max I saw the fish surface for the first time. Despite the distance he had covered I could still see that he was a giant, bigger than any fish I had ever caught — but I already knew that from the way he was running. My gear did hold and the fish stopped before the log. He then turned back upstream and took a run right towards me. I had to reel like crazy to keep up with him and apply pressure. Once he got back up he started darting back and forth across the current before taking another magnificent run downriver. I was able to stop him again and this time I had to work him back. Once he was in the deep hole again he just went to the bottom and I couldn’t budge him. I found out how undercut the shelf I was standing on really was because the fish was directly below me. I had to try very hard to keep the rod angle low so that he didn’t snap it like a twig. It must have taken 30 minutes at least, my line stretched over the rocks most of the time before I could get him off of the bottom. I just knew that the line was about to give due to over stress and abrasion. I had to get that thing off the bottom and into the current again to wear him down. If he gets a rest its all over. So I maxed out my rod again, tightened the drag way down and pumped the fish up into the flow of the river. He insisted on tucking into his little current break on the bottom but once I got him out he had to work too hard to get back into it. Eventually he was wore out enough that I could get him back up to where I could see him. He was almost done now and I knew it. He did have a couple of short runs left in him but I finally got him to the rock wall that I was on. Now just to get him into the net.

That was a bit of a struggle and thank god I had bought a new net with an extending handle because you need it with these longer rods. My other net wouldn’t have been big enough for this monster either, he barely fit into the big net. I got him in though and had to heave like crazy to lift him up out of the water so I could get the hook out. He was a big ole buck and getting pretty dark. Also it was native so I quickly released him to go and procreate. What a rush though. The fight lasted a long time, my arms were exhausted and my line was all frayed and wore out — literally seconds from snapping. I never did look at my watch in all of the excitement but I am sure it had to be at least 45 minutes to an hour since I set the hook. Man I can’t wait to get another one of those on the line.

Today was a pretty good day of fishing relatively speaking. I still haven’t managed to hook into a chinook but today the water was looking much nicer and so was the weather. The Wilson had a nice tinge of green to it and was flowing within its banks again albeit a little fast still. I saw a few stars in the sky this morning on the way out to the river indicating that it would be a clear day as forecasted. I missed the spot I was looking for on the way out and ended up at Mills Creek again. I arrived right around sunrise and managed to get a decent place on the bank. I looped up some eggs and began drift fishing, pausing as many drift boats passed by. I got in a few casts when two other guys showed up and started casting into the hole below me. Oh well, the one guy only snagged my line once before I decided to head upriver for a little more elbow room. I’ll combat fish like that if there is actually some action to compete for but as slow as it was I just wanted to enjoy the river.

By the time I got to another place the sun was up, covered by a thin layer of clouds still. It was still pretty damn cold out there. I drove to another spot that I scouted the other day and hiked down and began fishing a decent little drift. It wasn’t all that long before I felt something hit my lure and I just sort of quickly lifted my line and felt the head shake. Man braided line is sensitive. Also the hook set was so much more positive. With a little flick of my wrist I had the hook all the way through the fish’s lip and around and back in again — double hooked. The little steelhead couldn’t really put up much of a fight against my salmon gear, he did manage to get a little bit of line off of my drag for a second or so and take a leap or two before I just reeled him in. I might have kept him despite the size had he not had his adipose fin, but since he was a native back into the river he went and he still had a lot of swim left in him. He was a nice little bright fish. I figure that I must be on the spot so I drifted through there a bunch more times with no luck. Oh well, he must be one of the few steelhead in the river, it is still pretty early.

I drove a ways further up and scouted another hole that a guy was bobber fishing. I fished for a while in a smaller hole below that one and then drove back into town to take a quiz. I think I am going to head up there early and try to get on that hole right away tomorrow. That is if I don’t drive right past the spot like I did today.

Well today I decided to drive out toward Tillamook and try to catch a Chinook Salmon. I Just got a new salmon and steelhead rod and wanted to give it a try. I had bought a cheap Okuma Celilo the other day from Joe’s. I took it up to Eagle Creek to give it a test run and see if there were still any coho left in there. I managed to hook up with a fish pretty quickly but didn’t get the hook set good enough and he threw it a few seconds into the fight. I cast back upstream and drifted through the same slot again, felt a bump and set the hook — directly into the bottom of the creek. I spent a while trying to get the snag loose and finally gave up on that and decided to break it off. As I started pulling I decided to give the rod a quick jerk to finish the leader off. As I started snapping against the line I got distracted by something and looked away from my rod. Then I heard what sounded like the snap of my line but when I went to pull it back in I was surprised that it was still stuck firmly. I looked for my rod tip again and it wasn’t there! Neither was the top half of the entire rod. It was instead sliding down the line toward the bottom of the creek. I quickly realized that the snapping sound was my rod breaking and not my line. I almost freaked out because I knew if I didn’t catch the thing It would be harder to try to take the rod back for an exchange. I did get a hold of the thing and pull it out of the water. then I grabbed my line and I figured I would just break it off with my hands but as soon as I started pulling on it, it came loose. I was a little bit annoyed by the whole situation. I had gotten up before dawn and driven an hour to hike a mile into a fishing spot just to have my brand new rod break within the first 15 minutes of use. I was hoping that Joe’s would exchange the rod and would do so without the reciept because it was in my apartment and I didn’t want to drive all the way home and then backtrack almost all the way back. I must give props to Joe’s though. They took the rod back no questions asked and the receipt thing was no problem at all. I ended up spending another $25 for a Berkley Air IM7 instead. I lost faith in the Okumas after that. It was bad enough breaking the thing on a snag, if I had lost a fish because of that I would not have been happy.

So anyway, this morning I drove out to the Wilson to try it for the first time. It was sort of raining when I left and I wasn’t sure what the water would be like when I got there. Finally the headwaters of the Wilson appeared through the misty twilight. I could see water up around tree trunks and brush. The river was getting plenty high. I drove on for a while and found a spot I had read about at Mills Bridge. I saw a guy hook a fish right away, at least I think it was a fish. I didn’t stand around to see if he landed it or not. I was back to my car getting my gear rigged up. I fished that spot for a couple of hours, the river was getting real blown out and I got nothing. I didn’t see anybody catch anything — in fact I never saw a fish the whole time. I finally was wet enough an bored with that spot so I decided to try to find bank access a little further downstream. I guess there really isn’t any, the river is pretty much all blocked off by private land once you get that far down. I went to the Tillamook Bait Shop to buy some more eggs and ask about it and she confirmed that there really was no public access to the lower river.

I decided to drive out to the coast to see the ocean as I haven’t been out there for a while. I went to one of my favorite beaches in Oceanside and walked along the beach for a while.

The surf was really crashing out there. Typical winter storm swell. I was going to walk out to the edge of the surf to take a look at the water. When all of a sudden it just surged in and next thing I knew I was halfway up to my knees in it. I started running back to shore trying to get out of the water before it made its way into my boots. Too late, I could already feel the chill seawater seeping down around my ankles.

That was enough of the ocean so I drove back up toward the coast mountains. I was ready to start heading back toward Portland, scouting spots along the river as I went. I found a few more spots with some interesting looking water above the tidewater. I hiked down to one hole that looked particularly interesting with a guy flyfishing on it. He said he hadn’t had any luck but a couple real dark salmon were taken out a little further up. Just as I asked him if he had seen any fish roll nearby he set the hook. I was stoked because I thought I was going to see him catch a big ole nasty nook with his fly rod but it turned out to be just a little cutthrout trout. He released it quickly and I walked back to my car.

I did end up finding another little back eddy that looked interesting and decided to try to drift fish it for a little while before going home. There was still another hour or so of light and I may as well use it. I did and I still didn’t see a fish. I did have what felt like a strike but when I set the hook nothing was there. Could have just been a rock I guess. As I drove home it stopped raining and the sky even cleared up momentarily. Maybe the weather will stabilize and the river will be in shape in a few days and I can give it another shot.