Project Pegasus

Music by Paul Bishop

I seem to have developed a knack for finding new challenging lines for myself, another tall tower type climb, I hit the top yesterday and was going to commit to the top out, but a hold broke. I hit the stack of pads just fine, no hurts. But after that I was ready to call it a day and come try again. That rock is not going anywhere. We also moved rock for two new fall zone areas, one of them is complete, the other one will require some more large stone shifting, we did quite a bit of that yesterday, and quite frankly, we wore ourselves out. By the time we got to climbing, we were both nearly toast. Developing is never easy.

 

More Boulder Developing is happening at Funk's Island Thanksgiving Weekend!

Funk's Island is in the most convenient spot possible if you are a Portland area climber/ boulderer looking for some winter climbing. Right on the Columbia River on the Oregon side, the low elevation means that it will be unlikely to get snow unless we also get it in town. It also gets full sun on it's southern face, so if the sun is out, you get a little micro climate from the refracted heat off the rock wall.

Three of us local boulder dudes(boulderers not only sounds weird, but it looks weird set in type as well) have been working on flattening fall zones and making the possible a reality this year. We have trundled rock and cleaned a handful of great looking lines, a few are still in the project phase, more await with the simple expedient of cleaning a boulder, or making a fall zone safe. I was out there yesterday for a few hours, developed two more new ones, and the plan is to go out Friday again, so if you'd like to join in, leave a message on our Instagram @pnwboulderingassociation or just meet us out there around 930-10 am. Take I- 84 east to the Cascade Locks exit, go through town, at the stop sign at the end of town, instead of getting back on the freeway, go straight, you will parallel the freeway for maybe a mile and a half, then come to another stop sign at Wyeth Road. Go left under the freeway and boom! there it is.

These climbs are all on the sunny side, the rock is a very interesting volcanic type that appears to also be igneous? It has quartz patterns on some of the exterior faces. Quite different from the rock at nearby Cascade Main.

The northern faces consist of two distinct zones that are split by a road, we have developed a little on both, but much more potential awaits. These next few photos are from the "Riverside"cliff(for lack of a better name for now)

There are probably more photos from this session somewhere, but this is one of the spots we need to return to, in this case with a shovel to remove dirt from the tops of several climbs. Yesterday I also brought the Big Pulaski with me for moving the loose rock to make fall zones better. 

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This next one is from the Division cliff section, Sam has a project on a rad looking arete nearby, and I had been eying up this prow next to it. It will also yield a slab route, a crack climb, possibly another arete, and seeing possibilities for some top rope action as well. If you show up, bring your work gloves, brushes, we got. This is Cygnus, a super fun V3.

  

Apocalypse Meow. A Local Boulderer Going to a New Level!

  My name is Paul Bishop,
I am not a sponsored climber. I wish I was, even a shoe sponsorship from Evolve would be rad, but I would have to insist that Tymun also got the same deal. We develop new climbs, mostly boulder problems, simply for the thrill of climbing new lines. Half the time the end up being Vb's or V0's or V1 or 2, which is great! I love doing those kinds of routes. Every once in a while, you get a very challenging climb, at least it was for me, I have been climbing V5 outdoors in the Gorge, knocking on V6's door. This is a solid V5, we think, crazy thin moves, desperate top out,

The Discovery of Three Ravens

Kona and the Three Buttes.

Scooter and Kona at The Tower of Power.

   The Story of Three Ravens.
   I had started camping up along Panther Creek outside of Carson, Washington, at the recommendation of my buddy Mike H. At that time I had my lab, Andromeda, my ridgeback hounddog mix, Cepheus, and I was still living in St. Johns. This had to have been way back in 2010. I had just discovered the Bridge of the Gods Boulders by accident, and on an Easter Morning, happened to meet Matt from the Circuit Gym in Portland, and that day he showed me the upper "Dome" stuff.
  Panther Creek had become my camp after seeing crazy refuse near the BGOT area; not that it's much better, just more spread out. For some reason, lower level campgrounds invite trash, but in the deepest of winter or early spring, it's all you've got.
  One early spring weekend, I had got there early enough to get the good creekside site that is almost always tidy, and we set up the tent and got the fetchathon going. Andromeda was still around then, so she and Kona must have been jousting it out.
  Near towards twilight a BMW sedan went up the road past the camp site, this is a gravel forest road, mind you. I knew they were lost, and didn't know where the hell they were going. I've hiked up that road, it dead ends to nowhere. Sure enough, not twenty minutes later, they came back down.
They stopped by my camp and showed me a curious book, called Curious Gorge, written by Scott Cook. It showed directions to a Lava Tube Cave just up the road. I pointed them in the general direction, but had not been so far north myself, and yet, it piqued my curiosity.
                                                                   ...
 Probably a few years had passed between the recession and my crazy movements through weird houses in Portland. At some point I moved into an apartment/shop space in SE, which is how I met Leslie and her whole crew of kids ands dogs, which could be a story on it's own. I spent a summer working on a cabin out in Molalla, doing some exploring, but more around rivers and coastlines, seasons passed. At some point, Cepheus, who was 13 years old, died of a winters night, his friend Andromeda, followed 6 months after. Scooter, Sadie's Aussie Shepherd, was at the house at the time and helped me through my darkest moments, with just a lick and a nudge to go for a walk, that dog saved me.
  At some point, I took a job with a contractor for some months, I guess this was 2016, I was making good money, and figured on the weekends I should explore more. I found Scott Cook's Curious Gorge used at Powell's on Burnside for 10 or 12 bucks, I found the directions to the Fall's Creek Lava Tube and we were off!
  Almost all of these early exploratory journeys feature Kona, the Rottweiler, she's another big dog in our circle of big dogs, she was always out at the Molalla River with us, after my two dogs passed away, and then Sadie came back for Scooter, it was just me and Kona as far as adventures go. She's a Mama's girl, her Mama don't like hiking no more, but Kona can't get enough.
  Anyway, we got to exploring deeper and deeper into the Pinchot up that particular set of roads, we found the lava tube, too gnarly for a dog to go into, and also a mountain bike trail network. I made a mental note to come back minus dog so I could A: Go into the Lava Tube. and B:Go ride the trails.
We both went back home happy, but for myself, I had schemes going already.
  So at some point in September of 2016, I rode the brand new section of the Falls Creek Trail. When I got to the first lookout, I was like, "looks like there's boulders down there." I hiked down and found some decent sized boulders in the Talus, then rode back to my car to get back into town for a map. Needless to say, I found the way in, and since 2016, 80 plus boulder problems have been sent here, more to come.

Wind Over Mountain. V4

Bouldering on Funk's Island.

Funk's Island Bouldering Development.
   This is a former quarry along the Columbia River just east of Cascade Locks, Oregon. Google has virtually no information relative to the place at all, and conflicting reports occur on the actual name. I've heard it referred to as Government Island, but there is already a Government Island in The Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver. The confusion is further added by the fact that there is a Funk's Island in Newfoundland. Until I can access the reference stacks at the main Multnomah library branch in SW, I think we will be forced to settle for conjecture.
 With that in mind, Tymun is one year younger than I, has lived here his whole life, and grew up in a family that went out for hikes in the Gorge all the time, he states that it has never been operational in his memory, so we can eliminate the last 40 or so years. As we recently began developing fall zones for some of the more interesting looking bouldering possibilities, we keep running across strands of low voltage wiring with black and orange plastic sheathing, clearly blasting leads. The best guess based on our empirical evidence would be that the quarry stopped operating in the early 1970's at the latest, possibly as early as the 1960's.
   The rock is interesting and unique from other nearby bouldering areas, showing a more mica like content with some quartz crystallization here and there. So far we have only developed a handful of boulders on the South Side, and another small group on the North. Some rope climbing has been done out here, but climb at your own risk, as nothing is truly "developed". At some point a simple map will get made to at least point one in the right direction.

If you are interested in getting in on the development of this area, you can contact us on Instagram @pnwboulderingassociation.

The Meeting of the Grungejumpers

  I've told this story a few times, it's one of those weird coincidental things where the points of the compass just line up. I had been developing up at Three Ravens for about a year and a half maybe, I went to try and get on up there in April, but the road was still under snow through the hills to Four Corners, so I had to turn around and figure out a plan B. I had seen the roadside stuff at Rock Creek outside of Stevenson, a local who liked to talk to me about my vintage Volvo 240 wagon had told me a year or two back that there was good rock up there, so I figured what the hell. Worst case scenario I end up at Bridge of the Gods. This was before I had gotten a real tour of Cascade, and before the Portland Bouldering guidebook came out.
  Any way, I went up there, and then hiked over the large roadside boulder to find the gem in the open field up there with Juggernaut and Supernaut. Sent those as FA's and then wandered down that ridge, fairly close to where the trail now goes. Kudos to Tymun Abbott and his Dad for making that happen!
However, I digress. I came up to that first really big boulder, that we now call Big Bertha, and was totally freaking out. I'm like WOW! So I start to brush a bit to see what the rock quality is like, and it's SO GOOD! I take a picture of the half cleaned stone(the thing is huge) and posted it to my Instagram account later that night(this was before there was a @pnwboulderingassociation), and almost immediately after posting this guy leaves this comment on my feed "great job up there" or something like that; so I'm like, who the hell is this guy? I go to his Instagram page, and am immediately floored. I'm like, he's doing what I'm doing, only, it looks like he knows a lot more spots! So I sent a comment back, I guess he had been following my woodworking, and then when I got back heavy into climbing again it did not escape notice.
  We got to chatting, met at Cascade for a tour just after the burn, then we joined forces and set into developing Rock Creek Boulders in earnest. The rest is history. That first year we developed 9 crags and sent an average of 250 First Ascents each. And we keep finding more. It's only a matter of time before the Columbia River Gorge gets recognized for the bouldering Mecca that it truly is.

Put Your Brush Where Your Mouth Is

We were at the Church Street Bridge Boulders in Idanha, Oregon. Just Kona the Rottie and me for the weekend to do a few winterization repairs at the river cabin.
  I brought my bouldering gear, because I remembered seeing quite a bit of rock around Detroit Lake, and Idanha is just east of there. We found some rocks right down the street at the Church Street Bridge. The second day I was cleaning a triangular boulder right on the water, which would become "Trout Fishing in America", an excellent V5, when I got a little too excited with my brushing and flipped my favorite soft bristled brush into the water. Kona was already in the water, curiously eying the leaping cutthroat trout, but not really trying to get one. When the brush went in, I'm like "Go get it!" She swam in like she knew what I wanted, but then swam right by the brush. I can't help but think my old lab Andi would have grabbed it, but that dog is long gone.
  Then I'm off, running down the river bank trying to catch up with the thing. I used my bamboo pole to fend it closer to shore, stumbling, cursing, it's almost at arm's length; I step out onto a root and grab it. At that same moment, my foot slides off that root and into the water, but is now trapped just below the ankle in between two roots with the current worrying at it the whole time. I thought for sure I would lose my shoe, but I grabbed the little loop on the back and somehow pulled it free.
  Lucky for me, I had a dry pair of shoes back in the cabin and it was sunny and 65 that day. Later that night it would plunge to 30, the stars shining like diamonds with the Milky way clearly visible. It was also my first time seeing the Andromeda Galaxy in quite some time, my 10x50 binoculars captured that quite nicely.
  We will be going back to the cabin in the spring, and the area will yield more stories, but I will remember this one for a long time to come.

Lost Highway Boulders

This area was discovered completely by accident the day before Halloween, 2019.
   I had spied what appeared to be a talus field on Google Earth somewhat north of the Han Solo boulder on the fringe of the Cascade Locks Boulders. I did indeed find the talus field, the route that I took in was insanely difficult though, and as evening came down, I decided to try a different way out. I thought I would end up in this big open field that we had hiked through before, but apparently that was quite a bit higher up than my location on the hill. After stumbling past multiple decent sized boulders, I began to see some big boys here and there. Then a really big one, and a nice tower nearby, eventually I found an old track, which turns out to be the old highway bed, before a boulder slide rerouted the road down lower.

 

Apocalypse Meow. V5.