2011-05-29 45 -122

Location

In a powerline right-of-way in Forest Park, off of Skyline Drive.

Participants

Jim

Michael5000

Plans

Jim: Looks possible - I'm strongly tempted to give it a try.

Michael5000: Not known for his geohash planning.

Expedition

Michael5000

I actually thought to ride my bike the hilly 15 miles out to this hashpoint, and boy I'm glad I didn't. Despite that there are tidy suburban homes not 1000 feet away, this one is a brutal bushwhack.

From Skyline Drive, there's a very sweet little path through the trees that gets you about 150 feet from the hashpoint. But from there, it is a steep ravine wall littered with felled timber and brushy growth. "This is stupid," I thought, looking downslope: "I'm not dressed for it; I don't have proper shoes; and if I was to break a leg or something I could literally die before anybody found me." Then I started down.

Well, it gets worse the further down you get, and unfortunately for me my GPS doesn't have a compass -- I couldn't keep enough momentum going to get a good directional heading. Some of the toughest bushwhacking was what I thought would be the last 35 feet, but when I was able to check in I was 60 feet off; I'd passed the hashpoint wide right. But eventually I got there.

Climbing back up is easier than climbing down, right? And happily, the log that my feet slipped off of in opposite directions was only a foot and a half off the ground. It was an anxious foot and a half on the way down though, I'll tell you what.

Jim

Jim headed up there after finishing up some errands in Hillsboro. The first challenge was to find the parking area that I thought was there based on Google Maps. I finally ended up parked right at end of the aforementioned path, where I could get off the pavement, even if it wasn't very far. There wasn't anything resembling parking in any of the nearby planned developments, so I'm glad that space was there.

I then wandered up to the gate, planning on going up the path a bit to see what the situation looked like before changing footwear. Stuck in the gate was a little note that said "Geohashers."

It turned out to be from Michael5000, and warned me that there was a lot of bushwhacking in my future. I immediately returned to the car and changed to boots and grabbed my trusty walking stick from one of the McMinnville hashes. I headed up the path, which sloped upward fairly quickly. Now, if I had really examined the terrain map, especially with the advantage of hindsight, I'd realize how sloped the area around the hashpoint was. However, it's hard to tell quite where the path goes. (In fact, I wasn't even sure if the path went very far.) I also forgot that, given that it was a power-line right-of-way, the towers must be accessible, but they don't give a hoot what happens to the ground between the towers.

Well, the area under the power-lines themselves is pretty inaccessible. I headed up the path, and stopped at about 150 feet to the hashpoint. I started to try to go down, but got slightly stuck trying to get over or around a log. I was happy I had my walking stick to help climb through/over the brush.

I backed up to the path, which was about 20 feet higher up than I thought when I turned around, and headed further down to try another route in. I noticed that the brush appeared trampled down, as if an ~~idiot~~ geohasher had just been recently through the area. It looked a little better at the start, but looked worse further down. Then I had a really clever idea. I figured if I went up to the next tower, I should be able to come in under it and it should be much more clear.

Nope.

Based on how the slopes I was finding, and how sturdy I was feeling, as well as with Michael5000's warning to be safe and careful about my footing, I decided to declare Mother Nature the winner. I headed back down the path to Skyline Blvd and headed on to my next errand.

At least if Michael5000 had fallen and broken his leg, someone would probably have found them before he died, as long as he lasted until mid-afternoon.