billy the mountain - on top of a mountain.

photo courtesy of pat.

As I previously mentioned, I spent a few days this past week hiking and camping here in Oregon. My friend and I started driving east Thursday afternoon after he got off from work. We decided to camp right off the old Barlow Road in the eastern part of the Mt. Hood Wilderness. The Barlow Road was created in 1846 as a passage over the cascades, and is part of the 2000 mile oregon trail. The idea was to get a head start on Friday to get down to the Bend area for an early climb to the top of South Sister. I usually like to bring growlers to campsites, and I had one full of walking man 09 stumblefoot that I picked up a month or so ago, so I thought it would be a good time to get into that. For such a big beer, it went down dangerously easy. It's a good thing we were limited to 64 ounces; otherwise things could have gotten sloppy.

That was some tasty beer.

The next morning, we were up with the sun. After cleaning up camp, we were on the road south to Bend for a few supplies (beer), and then out to the Devil's Lake trailhead to start our climb to the summit of South Sister.

Unbeknownst to my hiking partner, I loaded my pack w/ something special for the summit. I wanted to bring a celebratory beer from my stash to enjoy on the third highest place in the state, and after digging and digging for something that I thought would be appropriate, I discovered a bottle of Upright Brewing's Billy the Mountain in the back of the cabinet, which I thought would be just about perfect.

After the grueling 5000 vertical foot ascent to the summit, we caught our breath and I produced my precious cargo. The beer was a hit; and extra delicious at 10,400 feet.

PedXer knows how to party.

After the leg quivering and scrape inducing scramble/controlled fall/tired trudge back to the car, we drove back into Bend to get a motel room for the night. A proper shower and few pints from Bend Brewing completed the day.

The next day we drove through the John Day area and checked out the river, the fossil beds, and a few neat little high desert towns before heading west again, back towards Mt. Hood. One final night in the woods near our last campsite went down with a 6-pack of Torpedo we found in a cooler in Maupin, as well as some left over session blacks from the night before. We were early to rise with full bladders and headaches, and got back to Portland by the time most of our friends were waking up.

It was a good weekend.