4th Training Hike - Mt Hood Govenment Camp Trails March 14th, 2010

We just kept on having the best luck on our training hikes - not warm and sunny this time!! And that's very good because we went to the southern foothill of Mt. Hood for a round of snowshoeing on this hike. There were numerous trails that meandered around the town of Government Camp covered with a blanket of fresh snow. (Click on the map on the left for a blowup of the map.) A week ago, we were all worried that there might not be enough snow and that it was going to be a muddy and miserable experience!! The condition was a lot better than we could have ever hoped for. We were to start our hike at the very western end of the Crosstown Trail, follow it up to Glade Trail, and go as high as we could until noon when we stopped for lunch.






Mercifully, the trail started this time almost flat or with very little incline if any for the first 20 minutes or so until we took our quick gear check. From there on, it got steeper and steeper as we gained elevation. It gave us a nice way to warm up and to get used to walking with those plastic planks strapped on our feet.


Almost everybody was using MSR's snowshoes which were two pieces of plastic boards with crampon teeth on the bottom and a set of bindings on the top. I had used them few time this season and had been very pleased with how they performed. The only complaints I'd had with MSR's snowshoes so far were that the bindings were not as easy to operate as, say, Tubbs' and that those plastic planks made rather loud clop clop noise. The noise issue probably wouldn't have been much of anything if only few of us were using MSR's but, when that many people were stomping on them, it made it kind of hard to have conversations at times.


But then, one of our training hike leaders, Daniel, in front of the group maintained our pace just fast enough to keep us panting at all time and therefore not yakking whole a lot anyway. I could feel that my effort to bike everyday had started to pay off a little though. Despite the increase in my pack weight from 23 lbs last time to about 35 lbs this time, and even though I was still pushing myself pretty hard, I felt like my comfort and confidence level had gone up a notch or two since we started our training hikes. I have to remember to take the side shield off my glacier glasses before our next hike as they kept fogging up every time we stopped.


In the steeper section near the end of the uphill hike, I wanted to try to practice a little a climbing technique called rest step that would give the leg muscles a momentary relief each step while climbing. I wish I could find a video clip online to show what it looks like though. Put simply, the technique goes something like this: Take a step. Straighten that leg and lock the knee. As you move to take the next step, place the weight of your entire body on the locked bone structure of your back leg. As you swing your leg forward to take the next step relax the muscles in that leg. Though our faster pace made it a little difficult to do that, it seemed to have made the slug a bit less slug like once I got the rhythm down. I am hoping that they would teach us how to do this properly when we go back to Mt. Hood for our climbing clinic in April. I have always thought this was an easy yet very effective way to conserve energy. It could make our climbs a lot more enjoyable for everyone.


By the time we took our lunch break around noon, we had gone from 3,600' at the trail head to several hundred feet below the Timberline Lodge, about 5,200' or so. One of the training hike leaders said that that was the highest they've gone on any Mt. Hood training hike. We probably started around 10:15am so that was a pretty good pace considering we were snowshoeing. We picked relatively a flat spot off the side of the trail and started devouring our lunches. My standard meal had always consisted of salami, cheese, trail mix, and dried fruits since we started training. They always tasted ten times better in the woods but I think I will try to come up with a little more variations for the future hikes. TMI: I was reminded by the dark color of my pee that I needed to increase my water intake. It's so easy to slack off on hydrating on the trail. Not good. Steve, another training hike leader and also a physician, said that he would usually drink about 8 quarts of water on a day of hiking.



We probably scared the people at the restaurant when we showed up like a pack of wild animals drawn to the smell of a wounded prey with our fangs showing and our eyes glaring. It's funny that I had never noticed this place in Government Camp though. It's not like there were much other choices. In any event, we needed to replace the calories we had just burnt and that we did. I have a feeling we will be ready to eat our own guts and ask for seconds by the time our big days come.