Tag Archives: Horsethief Butte

May4

BCEP – Showing people the ropes at Horsethief Butte

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Last year, I took the BCEP class with the Mazamas – Basic Climbing Education Program. It was interesting; a great chance to review my well-trained skills, practice some that I hadn’t used in ages, and get to meet some new climbing and outdoors people. It was fun, and ticked all the boxes that I had hoped that it would.

My faith in the outdoors community reinvigorated, I quickly and happily volunteered to help teach BCEP this year. I was expecting to assist with the same group that I’d taken the class with the previous year, since leaders tend to continue teaching year over year, so I was a bit surprised when I was placed with a different group… but it turns out, this new group was just starting out – the first year the leader had led a BCEP team on their own.

The chance to help out with a new group, and to help build a similar culture of excitement and optimism for the outdoors? All while getting to show people the unbridled joy of rock climbing? Of seeing new views off the side of a mountain?

Well. Sign me right the heck up.


Sunday, 02-Apr-2023


As mentioned, I have a special spot in my heart for Horsethief Butte. It’s not a soaring crag, it’s not a massive crag, but it is the first crag that I climbed in Oregon – which for me, sets it apart from all others in the Pacific Northwest.

We arrived early – I’d been put in charge of wrangling the students, and thankfully was successful in shepherding them all from the campground to the parking lot with a minimum of fuss and stress… and while still getting some breakfast and coffee into me in the process.

There was a little, of course, but… minimal, thankfully.




The climbing of the day was short and sweet – we set a few routes, we showed people how to rappel, to climb, and to belay, on their first exposure to vertical rock. All the skills had been taught before, of course, but… As we all know, there’s a difference between learning something in a classroom setting, and doing it for real. Especially when the “classroom setting” is a 20 degree grassy slope, and the “for real” is a vertical cliff a solid 20ft tall.


That’s the fun of teaching, though, and absolutely why I was so excited to assist with BCEP this year.

I got to man the rappel station for a majority of the morning, helping people through the whole process from initial safety through to them arriving on the ground below safely. I was fortunate enough to see people start out on their first rappel, hands shaking as they set up their equipment and checked their anchors… and then see them at the end of the day, confidently confirming their gear before hopping off the cliff like a pro.

Everyone got quite a few routes in, and thankfully I wasn’t an exception to that! Nothing huge, and nothing particularly challenging… but they were fun none-the-less, and I was absolutely thankful for the opportunity to get my hands on the rock!



(Ed Note: Ben doesn’t have a list of the climbs that he did, since Horsethief is only mediocrely well documented. He climbed primarily in the back area sort of near the slabs, top roping a few 5.6s and maybe a 5.7)

Apr19

BCEP – A weekend at Horsethief!

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Who are the Mazamas, you may ask? And what’s BCEP, you may enquire? Well, let me fill you in dear reader. When I first moved to Oregon, I pretty quickly heard about a mountaineering group in town called The Mazamas.

Similar to the AMC back in Boston, they teach classes and do conservation outreach projects. Over the years, I’d interacted with them tangentially – attending a few classes, volunteering with a few groups, but I’d never been able to actually take a course officially. I’d applied to their Advanced Rock climbing class, but wasn’t accepted for one reason or another.

Now, nearly seven years after first moving to Oregon, I was trying again. This time beginning at the bottom – while you may notice that I’m not quite a beginner when it comes to the outdoors, I was tired. These last few years haven’t been easy, and I was just tired of fighting… the chance to just sit back and meet new people while enjoying a few group hikes was more than worth the price of admission.

Saturday and Sunday, 26-Mar-2022 & 27-Mar-2022


When I first moved to Oregon, back in the Spring of 2015, the first climbing spot I went to explore was Horsethief Butte. My friend Brian had come to visit for our mutual birthdays (his in June, mine in July), and we had a blast exploring a new area and new type of rock.

Since that adventure, I’ve been out to Horsethief quite a few more times… but none in the last few years. Smith, Vantage, and a few other crags have captured my gaze with their taller walls and easier camping.

I’d heard that BCEP teams did their “intro to rock climbing” courses at Horsethief, of course – back when I lived in Hood River, I’d learned to keep tabs on that so that when I did go out, I could avoid the mob of Mazamas laying siege to the entire area… but now, it was my turn to lay siege!

Our start time was a bit later than the usual start time for a hike – 8:00am, instead of 7:00am, which might not seem like a lot… especially when the meeting point is half an hour farther away than the usual ones… But you know what? That extra half an hour of sleep in the morning can sometimes make all the difference, and I was feeling excellent when I finished parking.

I threw my pack on, met up with everyone, and soon enough I was back in my element!

Rock! Anchors, ropes and cords! Equalized anchors, carabiners set opposite and opposed, and lockers interspersed as necessary. Rapelling and belaying, exploring and wandering.

I.
Had.
A blast.

There were a few different BCEP groups set up, laying siege to Horsethief, along with a few other non-affiliated groups of climbers sharing the space – leading to a rather raucously energetic environment for the day. Our team had set up a few specific practice stations – Belaying, rope travel, various types of climbing, all of the parts I’ve come to know and love. I worked through them one after another, enjoying myself and helping out however I could… all while keeping an eye out for opportunities for some excellent photos of Mt. Hood (and the cliffs!) peaking out through the clouds.


I rotated through various other areas throughout the day, mostly staying with my own group. Nothing against the others, of course, but it’s been an amazing opportunity for me to get back to my roots of teaching climbing, and reviewing the various skills and processes that I’ve been using for the last 15 years. I’ve learned new names for knots, different ways of tying things, and confirmed more than a few skills that I’d taught myself in years past.

One cool aspect – I ran into some friends from Boston! They were in a separate BCEP group, hence why I hadn’t run into them before, but… Hey! Small world!

In short – the day was amazing! We climbed, belayed, and had a simply glorious time… possibly getting a bit too much sun in the process, but… hey, that’s part of the fun!

This was a full weekend adventure though, so the fun didn’t even remotely end after the climbing did! Once we finished up on the walls, and packed in all our gear, we made our way East to the campsite for the evening – A spot I’d heard of before, but never actually had occasion to visit; Maryhill campground.

It… I mean, it was nice, but it wasn’t really anything to write home about. Your standard issue roadside campground, partially made for RVs and partially for campers, it was pretty much exactly what one would expect from a campground. The main items of note for us were the cooking area, and the firepit – two areas I’d normally ignore, but in this case… well, we had five groups all camping together, so the communal areas became quite critical quite quickly.

Almost as soon as people started arriving, people started cooking.

Did I mention that my BCEP leaders are amazing cooks? Let me reiterate it – not just the leaders, but freaking everyone in my BCEP team is an amazing, simply ridiculously good, cook. I hadn’t had a chance to prepare anything ahead of time, and it turns out that was definitely for the best – we had so much food, of such amazing quality, that everyone was absolutely stuffed by the end… with quite a bit still left over.

We did our best, of course, but soon enough had to throw in the towel and roll ourselves over to the second communal area of the evening; the firepit wasn’t going to start itself, of course.

The rest of the evening was a continuation of amazingness.

Great desserts, excellent company, and tons of stories and conversation around the fire. It was great, and intense, and… strangely a bit melancholic for me; I’ve missed this type of camaraderie, but hadn’t been fully aware of how much I’d been missing it. Being thrown back in was… interesting, and a bit intense for me. No matter how much time seems to pass, I keep getting reminded of just how much healing I still have to go through…

Emotions aside, the evening came and went in a flurry of positivity. I heard stories of climbing on far off continents… and even some nearby places – I ended up spending quite a bit of time talking to two polar opposites: one guy who learned to climb the same places I did (up in New Hampshire) and one lady who’d first climbed in her hometown in France.

Hearing the differences in backgrounds, and being able to add in my own, was like coming back home after a long time away from town… as strange as that sounds. It’s something I’ve known about myself, but I’m being reminded of with this BCEP group – I’m neither a true introvert, nor a true extrovert. I need both to be happy, and it’s been way too long since I’ve recharged my social battery around a campfire.

The night went on, the fire burned and died low, and I slipped back to my tent before sleep overtook me.



Sunday morning broke, but I was already up… as crazy as that sounds. Coffee was brewing, a pancake scramble was sizzling, and I was doing my best to wake myself up to the adventure of the day.

Our group was done for the weekend – of the five BCEP groups at the campsite, three had climbed on Saturday and two were going to climb on Sunday… with our Saturday complete, most of the folks were sleeping in and heading home later in the day.

I’d volunteered to help another of the students teach a boyscout group how to climb, though, so was up and at ’em early, since Mazamas and Boyscouts both have some weird obsession with the dawn…

I ate, cleaned up, packed up, and rolled up to the parking lot ready to rock the day. This one was a lot more chill – I wasn’t leading, that role fell to the other guy, so all I was doing was acting as a backup. Confirming knots and anchors, and making sure to keep the scouts from getting into too much trouble. It was lovely, and gave me a chance to relax and appreciate the cool morning and beautiful rock.

Stepping back a moment though, I want to comment on a cool part about the scouts we were teaching… while it was the boyscouts, as far as I’m aware, the group was actually just two kids – a brother and a sister, earning their climbing merit badges. They were young, maybe 6 and 9, but impressively capable for their age… and both had their requisite 3 climbs, 3 belays, and 3 rappels complete before the day got too hot.

Before heading out, I took a few extra minutes to enjoy the cliffs one last time… the drive back to Wilsonville wouldn’t be too long, and I wasn’t going directly home anyways, but I still made a point to appreciate the stillness of the gorge. There were calls and sounds from the nearby BCEP groups, of course, but… I’ve been around climbing areas for long enough that those faded into the distance for me without much thought.

On the way home I stopped off at a friends house for dinner, getting to try Sonoran Hotdogs for the first time (Ed note: See the recipe, below!) and watch a few episodes of PeaceMaker. Sort of a socialization cooldown for me – instead of going directly from “60 people around a fire” to “alone at home with my thoughts”, I was able to step it down… not a bad plan, especially when the socialization is such a “new” experience for me in recent years!

An amazing ending to an amazing weekend.



Sonoran Hotdogs!
I’ve visited Arizona quite a few times, but somehow never had one of these… and holy crap was I missing out!
– Wrap hotdogs with bacon, and grill ’till the bacon is fully cooked and maybe even lightly charred
– Toast some sweet potato buns
– Put the hot dogs in (removing any toothpicks used to hold the bacon in place!!!), and top with the following:
Pinto beans
Diced tomatoes
Diced onions
Yellow mustard
Mayo
Jalapeno sauce
– Serve hot, with a single hot pepper on the side


References for first adventures:

https://talesfromthehutt.com/2015/08/31/my-birthday-weekend-the-fourth-weekend-that-im-in-hood-river-oregon-and-the-west-coast-saturday-ribs-and-climbing/

https://talesfromthehutt.com/2015/08/29/exploring-the-rock-climbing-of-hood-river-horsethief-butte/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoran_hot_dog

Oct8

A low-key adventure weekend – climbing Horsethief and The Beacon, along with exploring Hood River.

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A low-key adventure weekend – climbing Horsethief and The Beacon, along with exploring Hood River.

14-Aug, 15-Aug, 16-Aug

So this weekend was, originally, going to be an alpine weekend. Drive down to the trailhead in the evening of Friday, take a quick few hours worth of nap, then start onto the trail sometime around 03:00 in the morning. Summit before noon, and then head back down to grab some well-earned burgers.

Instead, it rained on our mountain… and this isn’t a mountain that you’d want to ascend in the rain. We’d aimed for Three Finger Jack – a 5-mile approach, followed by a 5.2 traverse and a 5.4 chimney. Both made up of loose, frictiony rock moves… not something pleasant or safe to do when it’s even partially damp.

So we stayed in Portland Friday night, then Hood River for Saturday. Horsethief and The Beacon were our goals – I’ve already discussed Horsethief, but The Beacon is described as “The best climbing in Northern Oregon… even though it’s in Washington”.

Friday, 14-August-2015

The weekend started when I met up with Sarah in Portland, tracking her and her dog Jasper down as they took their early evening walk. We discussed plans; how we’d planned on doing Three Finger Jack, but that the weather was starting to turn against us, and what other options we had for the weekend.

We flopped back and forth, debated, called Dave (the third member of our rope-team), discussed options, and finally ended up canceling the plan completely. In its place, we aimed to meet up with Dave in the morning, and do some low-key adventuring around my place in Hood River instead.

With the plans locked down, Sarah and I turned our attention toward dinner – we were in Portland, after all, and had roughly infinite options of where to go. We finally settled on a small Pizza place near the house – since it had the advantage that we could easily walk both of the dogs (We had Sarah’s roommates dog with us as well) there, and then keep them with us thanks to the outdoor seating.

We walked over, relaxed and chatted and dreamed about where to go over the next few days, and about bigger adventures that we could take over the course of the next few months.

That discussion ended up being a pretty in-depth one; we kept it going as we walked home, and then continued dreaming late into the night… possibly too late, with how early we were aiming to get up in the morning. But trip planning and telling stories about previous adventures got the better of us, though sleep did finally happen at some point.

Saturday, 15-August-2015

We started out early… but not excessively early.

Definitely nothing like the 03:00 plans that Three Fingered Jack had called for, at least. We had time for a quick bit breakfast before heading over to Dave’s house, where we traded cars, packed up the climbing gear and basic other stuff, and headed out to our first adventure location of the weekend: Horsethief Butte! You know, the nice and quiet crag that I’d started exploring… We all figured that it would a good spot for an uncluttered day of climbing.

Nope.

What did we see when we arrived? Three vans, with the name of a local church group on the side. A fair number of cars too.

But we didn’t give up, being the tough and resilient adventurers that we are. We headed in anyways, braving the storm and figuring that we’d at least find a few good routes to set up and play around on.

And we did find some spots… But not nearly as many as I had been hoping for. These groups were sieging the entire area, setting up dozens of ropes for the 60+ kids that were mostly hanging around. I mean… they even had a poop tube, so that people wouldn’t have to walk the ¼ mile back to the restroom at the parking lot. They had multiple huge Gatorade buckets, and massive piles of gear strewn about.

It was impressive, but I can’t complain too loudly, because at least it’s better than sixty kids running around a tiny soccer pitch, screaming and crying. Climbing is always ideal.

So we put up a few routes, and enjoyed ourselves as best we could.

Side story: The kids were screaming and carrying on as they climbed. Cool. But it started getting a little much… so Sarah headed over and politely asked one of the leaders if he could, and I quote, “keep the death-screams down”. For good reason – death screams mean injury, and we’d been kind of on-edge constantly looking around the corner to see if someone had been hurt.

So he said he would, and soon enough the screams ended. And were replaced by “Ohh god I’m dying ohh no! Death screams!” Literally the words “death screams”, at full-tilt.

So Dave one-ups them by screaming “Does anyone need medical attention?! I have a first aid kit!”

They finally quieted down to more normal kid-levels after that.

So from there we continued climbing, moving around, and setting up routes. I couldn’t list the specific climbs that we did, since I don’t really know any names for the area… But Sarah lead a chimney, I led a few face & crack climbs, Sarah met a lizard on one of her routes, and Dave showcased his level-headedness when leading sketchy sections. It was a fun, yet relaxed (aside from death-screams) day.

Once we finished up and headed toward home, we were kind of famished… so we hit The Mesquitery for dinner… You know, since I’d been there a few times before and it’d been quick and simple. But it was a weekend, and for some reason they were super slow… our Burgers took nearly two hours to get to the table. Thankfully, our soup came out earlier, and the appetizer does come out a bit earlier as well… but lesson learned – don’t go there on the weekends, if you’re hungry and looking for a quick meal.

Then we hit a pub afterward, a small British-inspired place down the street. Drank some beers, chatted with some people, and then took the walk back to the house. A good night; relaxing and low-key. Even if it took a little while to get fed, heh.

Quick note: I felt tough, since everyone had mentioned how cold it had gotten that evening. I thought it was kind of warm, actually…

Sunday, 16-August-2015

Sunday is a day of rest and relaxation… so we woke up slowly again. But instead of getting up super slow, we still got up in time to get some good stuff done – breakfast, guide book review, and time to form some schemes for the rest of the day.

The decision was to explore Beacon Rock – a pretty famous climbing area on the Washington side of the Colombia River Gorge. So we ate, drove over, and started up the South East Face, the most famous of all the famous climbs up this famous rock.

Famous.

So I lead the first pitch of the 8 pitch climb, and then belayed Dave up, followed by Sarah. We were originally going to continue up for a bit, but unfortunately there was roughly a million people in line to climb the route… and a lot of them weren’t being particularly safe or pleasant.

Like… they were starting to climb up “alternate” routes to cut other parties off… and by alternate, they were climbing random spots and just getting in everyones way, while being rude / unsafe.

So, we moved on. We headed back to Portland, and dropped Dave off at his house after doing a thorough review of the gear, and taking some time to clean everything up.

Then, with the whole rest of the day/evening in front of us, Sarah and I took our time to enjoy Portland. We got slightly dressed up, leashed Jasper up, and wandered over to the grocery to get ourselves some dinner.