A little more on McNeil Point
Before we camped in the McNeil Campground along the banks of the Sandy River with some friends from Atlanta last weekend, before I hiked the Timberline Trail with four other adventurers a week earlier, and before Oliver and I returned to McNeil Point up the Mazama Trail back in July, I felt like I knew a decent amount about Fred McNeil.
A journalist for The Oregon Journal for nearly 45 years, from 1912 to 1957, McNeil was a huge fan of Mount Hood. According to the preface of McNeil’s Mount Hood: Wy’East the Mountain Revisited, a 1990 re-issue of McNeil’s classic Mount Hood book, the Cascade Mountains captivated him from the day he arrived in Portland from Illinois in 1912. He “pursued and reported events on the peaks with a passion” and “became personally involved in their protection as well as their development, especially for skiing.” If something happened on Mount Hood — someone got lost, a plane crashed, a fire broke out — McNeil would instantly turn his news focus to the mountain, no matter what else was going on.
Oliver at McNeil Point.
He also enjoyed the mountain, hiking all over it and climbing to its summit long before the road was blazed to what would become the site of Timberline Lodge. He was a member of The Mazamas, the Cascade Ski Club, the Wy’East Climbers and other mountain organizations.
According to the preface of McNeil’s Mount Hood, written by journalist Tom McAllister, McNeil made sure that a story about the long closure of Lolo Pass Road landed on the front page of The Oregon Journal. The closure had been designed to keep people out of the original bounds of the Bull Run Watershed. Even after those boundaries changed, however, the closure remained, blocking access to some of the mountain’s most incredible west-side geography. After several stories and photos and a supporting editorial, the gates to Lolo Pass were opened.
Which is a great legacy, because otherwise it would be much harder to get to places like McNeil Point and the quiet McNeil Campground, both, of course, named for Fred McNeil.
Most of this I kind of remembered from my own research. But I’d forgotten something else about McNeil.
As we rolled out of the campground last week, headed toward Timberline Lodge and then Lost Lake, I stopped to read a plaque near the campground’s entrance. It sums up nicely McNeil’s life and his love of the mountains. It also notes that McNeil “rests four miles eastward and upward at McNeil Point.”
His friends hiked up to the point and spread his ashes there in July of 1959.
Timberline Trail 2013 — a sneak peek
Just over 40 miles — and lots of huge vistas, rushing rivers, deep creeks, raindrops, knock-you-aside wind gusts, friendly faces, and alpine adventure — later, and the Timberline Trail is behind us. There will be plenty of details and images to come, but for now, just a quick look from another epic trek on this classic Mount Hood trail.
Mount Hood Snowcats — in LO?
We took a somewhat impromptu family bike ride up to George Rogers Park in Lake Oswego on Sunday, mainly to check out the boats in the Oswego Heritage Council’s annual Collector Car & Classic Boat Show. A slight bicycle malfunction, however, sent us into the car show in search of a gearhead with an allen wrench instead.
We found one, thankfully, and also ended up finding something I never would have expected at a classic car show in Lake Oswego:
It’s an old-school Tucker Sno-Cat from 1968. No one was around to talk to while we were there, but I know from my research for On Mount Hood that snowcats in general have a long history on Mount Hood. Back in 1936, a WPA foreman came up with one of the very first snowcats ever while working on the construction of Timberline Lodge. The lodge also featured one in a great postcard for the ski area back in the 1960s and again for its spring ski pass this year. It’s a Tucker, just like the one we saw. (Tucker, by the way, is still headquartered in Medford, Oregon.)
The snowcats are still widely used on Hood and all over the mountain ski areas for everything from grooming and creating terrain parks to search and rescue missions, climbing shuttles, and as a way to get up to the one-of-a-kind alpine lodge on Hood known as Silcox Hut.
So, just kind of a cool little Mount Hood/Sno-Cat discovery while we were otherwise out and about. A few more pictures:
2013 Pickathon Pics
Another successful and memorable Pickathon has come and gone, though it lingers: the music, the people, the art, the food, the kids, the lighting, Marco Benevento’s 2 a.m. Monday morning set way up in the woods that seemed to be just warming up when we peeled away around 4.
I didn’t get any shots of the Mountain View Stage with Mount Hood this year, though there were times when the mountain rose off in the distance while great tunes happened right there. But Amy and I did capture a few moments from the weekend that help to share a little bit of what went on. Such fun…
The main stage at Pickathon 2013.
Obligatory hula hoop shot.
Lake Street Dive at the Pickathon Cafe. Nothing more to say.
Spencer took ownership of this trail.
A little artwork along the loop trail.
New friends — and new boots — at Pickathon.
I had to work during both of Dale Watson’s sets, and even though a highlight of Pickathon 2013 for me was volunteering, I was bummed to miss him and a few other acts.
The rest of the crew got to see him and even meet him later on. Even signed Spence’s new ukulele. (A classic Madeline move below . . .)
Speaking of the new ukulele…
The kid busking thing has kind of become standard at Pickathon these days, but they still reeled in three bucks and some change.
We had incredible burgers from Kuza Burger — so good that we went back twice over the weekend — but we couldn’t resist giving the donut sliders from, I believe, Red Tomatoes, a try. Not as good as Kuza, but how to resist a cheeseburger served on a fresh-made donut?
Rockin’ out with King Tufff after their daytime set . . .
And late night . . .
Crashed out, filthy, and so content at the Woods Stage — kind of how most everyone feels after another great weekend at Pickathon.
Pickathon 2013
It’s kind of a stretch to connect Pickathon, the annual indie music fest happening this weekend in Happy Valley, with Mount Hood, but I’ve been doing it for a while now, whether it’s sharing a picture of the Mountain View stage, which offers a glimpse of the mountain in the distance, or using a line from the Heartless Bastards’ song “The Mountain” as an epigraph for the first chapter of the Mount Hood book. (I first got turned on to them at Pickathon 2010.)
Not sure I have any new connections to make between the festival and the mountain just now, but who knows, maybe I will after this weekend. In the meantime, a few images from last year’s Pickathon to get ready for this year’s . . .
Not much to say at McNeil Point on Mount Hood
When it’s this nice of a day, when the mountain is this beautiful, when there’s nowhere else you’d rather be, there just isn’t much to say.
Mount Hood from just above the McNeil Point shelter today, July 14, 2013.
On MOUNT HOOD 