Saturday, 07-November-15

Saturday: hike Starvation Creek with Dave and Anthony, get pizza afterward, Ollie does well

So Winter in the Columbia River Gorge is a lot different than the Winter that I’m used to from New England.  As of November, it had basically just been a series of gross, rainy, cloudy, and unpleasantly cool / wet days.  We hadn’t had any snow, and it hadn’t gotten cold enough to have that really *crisp* feel of New England early winter.

So, a group of us got together and did some hiking.

Ollie, the dog that Sarah had just adopted earlier in the week, was coming along with us – this was set up to be her introduction to mountain hiking, and we were curious how she’d fare.  Ollie is basically a black lab, with a generous portion of border collie mixed in for good measure… so we weren’t particularly worried about her keeping up.  The worry was how long she’d be able to do so – she was still a puppy, after all.

So we all met up at the trailhead for Starvation Creek – Myself, Sarah, Ollie, our friend Dave, and my coworker Anthony.

The trail itself was, in a word, steep.  By steep, I mean “ohh my lord how am I still walking upward?  How many more up can I hike?”.  But we pressed through, and got some amazing views for our effort.  After a few hours Sarah and Dave headed back with Ollie, since she was starting to lag behind a bit, and Anthony and I continued on for the summit.

Which we totally reached.  We definitely didn’t turn around maybe a mile or two after splitting ways with Dave and Sarah.  I don’t know what you’re talking about.

To celebrate our totally actual and legitimate summit, we all ate some pizza.  It was delicious.