Hosmer Lake Sunday

Hosmer Lake in the Cascades is a pretty good place for a float.

Clear water, mountain views...

plenty of napping options,

and the water is so clear

the only thing we are missing is the white sand beach..

at least we had a white beach the night before on the side of South Sister.

Sometimes images speak louder than words.

And music too.

It was a great week and all, but then we realized we could have been doing this.

Minam River in the Wallowa Mountains

Kirk and I spent a week backpacking in the Wallowa Mountains with our packrafts, boating out on the Minam River. The spring melt had the water levels rising and falling every day, but we managed some good river time.

We saw a bear during our float in Minam Meadows

Stay tuned for more details, in the mean time, here are a few photos...

With 7 days of food our packs were a tad heavy...

We ate morels almost every day!

The snow level dropped some while we were out

Minam Meadows....yes please!

A cold and rainy departure

Shredding the Knar

Kirk has a unique way of portaging

Learning the Hard Way

Seems I still need to learn the hard way.

I started to wash out my titanium cooking pot from our trip to the crooked last weekend and noticed it had gotten pretty banged up...

How did I do that?

Then I looked at my boat...

No, that is not a crop circle

Ahhhhhhhhh! As I was navigating the shallow and bumpy river, my pot had been at the bottom of my dry bag ripping into the floor of the packraft and now I have my first patching job. Dang. Not even with a good story.

Don't put anything hard at the bottom of your dry bag.

Lesson learned.

Doh.