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  So we drove down to Silver Falls to get started off with a 5 mile hike of the falls in winter.  At the South Falls day use area we discovered that a large portion of the Canyon Trail had washed away and the trail was closed.  We drove back to the Winter Falls trailhead and parked, we were able to walk down past the base of Winter Falls – which was running at full strength – but we were challenged by a “trail closed” chain across the bridge. We did a bit of scoffing at the law, swung over the chain and proceeded to hike toward North Falls in an effort to avoid any pesky park ranger types that might be lurking closer to South Falls.  We really enjoyed the beauty of the canyon dressed in a fresh coat of the fluffy white stuff.  The water level was super high and all of the waterfalls were roaring so the reward to effort ratio was quite high.  We covered perhaps 3.5 miles, burned 1,500 calories, had 1.52 hours of moderate activity and took 12,000 steps…wooo hoooo.

I hiked 10 miles. No really. I hiked 10 miles. We went to Herman Creek today, we planned a 8.2 mile hike, then there was an additional 1.4 miles because the campground gate was closed.  I did not do the .2 miles part of the hike – I did not want to make Christine wait that long for me but then on the way back to the car I went right when I was supposed to go forward and ended up adding a liitle over a mile as I circled around to the car through the woods – so I hiked 10 miles. I am really proud of that – we did it in under 9 hours too meaning my hiking time is up a little over 1 mile per hour. I’m so stoked!!

Ok – Corey and I bought a house and I lost my wordpress password so I completely lost all connection to this site.  I have kept all of the hikes posted on flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/athleticphatdyke/ so everyone can see what we have managed.  I am getting back to hiking again now that the house is liveable and we are moved in.  Expect to see more entries as I have also solved my password dilema

We did it. We did it. We didn’t think we could but we did it!!

16 miles, lots of rain, lots of up. We hauled our buts up to the 7.5 mile campsite on Eagle Creek.

We walked Tunnel Falls. I’ll post a video.

Then we camped, Christine discovered she had no tent poles,  Eep

So we get all settled in and it is just about to get dark – and the first raindrops fall.

Did I mention it takes some practice to get the rain tarp on the hammock set up just right?

So Christine ended up camped under my hammock to get out of the rain, it was about 20 degrees colder than it was supposed to be, and it rained off and on all night.

So we were up quite early and booking it back toward the car at double time.

I slipped into the creek up to my knees. Thank goodness for the emergency back up pair of wool socks or I would have been squelching all the way to the car!

I am glad we were up early – as we got closer to the car the crowds were just getting started. I can see why the experience hikers all say to hike Eagle Creek in the winter.  The easy grade and gazillion waterfalls make Eagle Creek a summer super highway.

Sunday April 29th Christine and I hiked Starvation Creek up to the Hole in the Wall Falls.  It was so lovely.  There we lots of amazing flowers with very short bloom windows so I took a ton of photos.  I took so many photos I ran out of battery just after the halfway point of the hike.  I was bummed as I had left the spare battery in my other pack.

We got back to the car and I took the camera off of the chest strap on the backpack and placed it on the hood of the car *insert drums of doom here* and opened up the trunk to get place the pack in the car and get out the spare battery.  What followed in my head was this sequence:  I put the pack in the trunk, got out the battery then walked around the car and grabbed the poles from where they were leaning next to the camera. I placed the poles in the car and Christine placed her things in the car.  I closed the trunk and got into the car.  I realized I did not have the camera or the cell phone – oops.  I hop out of the seat and go back to the trunk – grab the cell phone – hmmm no camera. *hear that drum?*

I check the roof of the car – no camera, inside my brain a little voice says. “I must have tossed it in the back seat. I’ll just put the battery in when we get to the next stop.” *ta-dum ta-dum ta-dum*I close the trunk and get in the car and off we go to our next hike destination.

Sigh. Needless to say what happened in my head was not what happened in the real world. Now the camera is gone and I have lost all of those beautiful flower pictures. I am very sad. I loved my camera very very much and I feel just really stooopid to have lost it in such a totally avoidable way. 

I take strattera for my ADHD, it generally really helps me maintain strength of focus and follow through. Sigh – I guess it just did not work on Sunday.  Corey says that I really have to accept that I do the “I must have” whenever I get confused about a sequence of event; and that I really should just stop and redo the actions rather then assume that I did anything at all.

So goodbye really really nice Olympus Stylus 800 camera. 

I loved you and I will miss you very much.  You took really amazing macro shots and travelled well.  You were shockproof and all-weather (which was awesome cause I took you out in the rain all the time). I especially loved your large lcd screen – no more squinting in a tiny eye hole!

This table was built to help the family rate and understand the opportunities for Jame’s summer internships.

Since the turn of the New Year I have been really caught up in the new fitness and eating plan.  The really good news is I have lost 24 pounds, the not so good news is I have fallen way behind on recording my adventures.  Gee – I guess that really isn’t so bad after all .

So far I have picked up a backpack (lowe alpine contour light M), a big agnes buffalo park sleeping bag (40°), a hennessy hammock (deluxe a-sym) and a marmot precip rain jacket.  I feel like a real hiker.

This is pretty close in style, the contour light M is a few years old so I could not find an exact picture.

I am a very big girl and I wanted to be very cozy in my bag.  Thank you Big Agnes for the park series bags.  I have climbed in to test the bag and it is roomy and feels just right for me. Once I slide a pad into the built in sleeve I think this bag will be just perfect!

I do not like to sleep on the ground. I do not want to carry a tent and a tarp and poles… from all of my reading this hammock seems like the answers to my dreams. I can not wait to test it out in Matthew’s front yard.

I was thrilled to find that I now fit into the Marmot xxxl range. Sigh – I’m not sure to be happy or sad at that statement, but at least I will be dry in my Marmot precip jacket.

In a few weeks we are going to do a shakedown overnight at Chris & Matthew’s house to make sure we won’t kill ourselves with crazy mishaps miles from help and the convenience of a nearby sofa and television

So I am going to be doing a lot of hiking this year.  I want to build up to 10-12 mile hikes in 1 day by the end of they year.  I also want to do a few overnight hikes where I hike in, camp, then hike out the next day.  In order to do that I have a few things I need.

Tent: A 1-2 person light tent, something I can pitch with my trekking poles would be cool. I am carrying 340 pounds already, no need to add too much to that.

Sleeping pad – My daughter has a way cool air-bubble one. I am fat – I really need a good cushion against the ground.

Travel pillow- Ok – so I am spoiled

Sleeping bag – I guess a 30-40 degree would be warm enough for me since I am always really hot and we will not be camping out any earlier than April or later than October.

Cookset – a small lightweight stove and eating tools.

Water purification set. Mini first aid pack.

Backpack – Gotta have something to put all this stuff in.  My back is 21 inches and I am looking for something around 3000 cubic inches.

Personal Hygiene pack – um, I may miss a shower but that is about all the dirty I can handle

Desireables: These are things I could most likely live without, but would like to have.

headlamp, stuffsacks, booklamp (cause I can not be away from a book for more than 16 hours), knife.

   We drove for a longgg time to the secret mushroom picking location.

Anyway – her bucket was like totally full!

So we split them up into both buckets and headed out – Christine found the motherload of mushrooms and soon we had two buckets full.

Everywhere we looked were glorious beautiful Chanterelle mushrooms.

So we found a quite place by the pond to take a break.

We just could not stop ourselves from picking just one more mushroom.

So we ended up with two complete buckets and a full sweatshirt. 21 pounds of fresh mushrooms.  Woooo hoo!

It was a very good day – we ended it by heading home for some dead cow smothered in gogonzola mushroom sauce.

Woo hooo…. I got a slideshow up for Jame and one for Eagle Creek.  I have now figured out how to integrate theme pages and personal pages.  Yay for me.  I interviewed for a job that Corey applied me for this week.  I got called back for a second interview next week to meet the entire team. Talk about intimidating! Corey rebuilt B’s computer this week (the power supply died). Oh, and it rained.  a lot. 

It was a good week.