23 August 2009 - Spring Mt. Oregon

I've been missing Mom lately so K & I packed up the car and headed to eastern Oregon for a quick weekend visit. We had a really nice time with Mom, and for a bonus Joe came down from Boise for the day. But this blog is all about recreation, not family reunions, and La Grande is in the middle of a great outdoor recreation area. There’s lots of good places nearby and Mt. Emily is one of the best: when D was in school, a highlight of our summer vacation was taking our mountain bikes to La Grande and riding around on the summit roads and trails; in the spring, the wild flowers are awesome ; in the fall, Mom & Dad would go up there to pick huckleberries and later in the year my little brother would hunt bear (don't worry, he never killed any); and in winter I always try to arrange my visits to the folk's house to leave time for a side trip to the Meachum Divide cross country trails. (http://www.onc.org/bmnordic/).

I heard there was some rock climbing up there too, so this trip I decided to do a little scouting. Web research quickly pointed to Spring Mountain as the place to go so on the drive home we stopped to check it out. One of the developers has posted a nice list of the routes on his personal web page and the area is also covered in Rock Climbing Oregon. It's practically right on the way home, closer than Mt. Emily proper -- I don't know why I haven't done this before.

We didn't have time for a real climbing field trip, but we had to do at least a couple of routes while were there. The guidebook calls Hawaiian Slab "One of the best 5.5s in all of Oregon's backcountry" so of course we started there. I'm not exactly saying it was a sandbag rating, but it sure didn't feel 3 grades easier than Aloha Direct, the route right next to it and the only other one we had time to play on. But the rock was good and the routes were fun so I'm sure I'll be back later.



If you interested, there's a couple more pictures here: on this Picasa page