Gorge Winds

Murray, Kimberly and I headed down to Hood River for an orienteering adventure set up by Dave Russell to help us prepare for the Desert Winds race on May 10th.
Forecast was for snow, and we hit a snowstorm on the way down, but it would turn out to be a beautiful sunny weekend.

First I picked up my new mountain bike at Mount View Cycles, who gave me a significant discount (and no sales tax), so I was quite happy. Then we pulled out maps and grids and plotted 30 CPs onto 3 maps, and headed out. After shuttling some cars and gear around, we hit the start about 2pm. Our plan was to do some of the course in the dark - woo hoo!

The initial three CPs were on spits of land separated by a short swim. We decided to skip the swim given the temperaturs and run around, promising ourselves that we would practice the swim later. We transitioned into
the kayaks and headed east down the Columbia River with a 10 knot wind at our back.

Most of the kayak CPs involved stopping at a beach, getting out and trekking to one or two CPs, then going back and getting in the kayaks again.
This was useful to practice our transitions.

After a couple iterations of this, we stopped at a secluded spot near the Syncline, and trekked over to where Dave's friend Clint left the truck containing our mountain bikes. I had not even been on my bike at this point, so I took a minute or two to figure out how to shift the gears and such. Then we were off for some steep climbing up to the top of the inclined mountain. To our left was a spine-chilling drop. After a good workout to the top, we were rewarded with some beautiful descents, including a little off-trail descending action which involved jumping a barbed wire fence back to get back onto the trail again.
One of our CPs was almost forgotten and we cruised the final windy singletrack back down to the road and Dave's truck. Clint joined us for part of our trip and took our bikes back home as we TA'd back to our kayaks and headed further upriver.

A few more kayak/trek transitions followed, including a quick foray into a vineyard and a caving expedition through a very short abandoned tunnel right along the water. Did I mention how beautiful the weather was?
As darkness descended, the winds calmed down as we headed one last time across the Columbia to hit a checkpoint that was in a small lagoon. I almost ran aground on the sandbar surrounding the entrance to the lagoon as I didn't see it until I was in 8 inches of water. One final trip back across the Columbia brought us to the TA for the final trek.

The final trek found us sidehilling up a gully and steep slope to reach
the more gentle ridgeline of the mountain above. We followed the ridgeline
over several knolls and summits, and eventually scrambled back down a very
steep, rocky ridge edge to the finish where a car was waiting for us. We
finished a little after midnight under an almost full moon.

Thanks Dave for hosting a wonderful expedition in Hood River!