Submitted By: The Mountain Trolls
The Quest: Recuperating With The Ice Man
The Challenge: Hot Spring Snowman!
Find snow (we've got plenty here on Mt. Hood!). Take that snow to a genuine Oregon hot spring. Build a snowman and take well-deserved soak. Pictures with snowman are mandatory. Half credit for just finding the snow and building the snowman. The mountain trolls would be happy to quest with you, should you accept this challenge!
Tristan's Note: I'm kind of skeptical about this winter activity in the summer time, but ok! If it means we get to soak in a hot spring then we are in! Also I think this one will actually be relatively complicated Wombat, its got a time sensitive element to it so lot's of xp?
Challenge Accepted!
Wombat's Ruling: This sounds tricky and potentially grueling. 800 exp, 9 hours charity. (Wow, 9 hours!) Have fun storming the castle!
Update 7/8/2018: Well this was it folks, our most difficult and complex quest to date, and also undeniably one of the most fun! Thank you for the massive xp value rating on this one Wombat, it was deserved.
Ok so here we go! We visited The Mountain Trolls in their Oregon based cave way back at the start of July. It was not actually a cave, but an absolutely gorgeous home set in forests and directly situated along the Pacific Crest Trail. Also since they are going to be pictured in the photos I should probably reveal that the Trolls aren't actually trolls, and if they are they are very good looking ones. They are two fantastic people called Eric and Liz who did a damn fine job of hosting us for many days and allowing me to win at table tennis...
The first part of our quest was to drive up to the Timberline Lodge, which a lot of you will recognize as the hotel from 'The Shining'. It's such a cool place, constructed on an epic scale out of local timber back in the 30's as part of the CCC work program.
Anyway, it was an elevation gain of roughly 5000ft in 30 minutes along winding mountain roads, so by the time we got out of the truck Zora and I were both suffering from altitude sickness. It passed for me relatively quickly but Z had to do the rest of this leg whilst looking quite green. She's a trooper.
After checking out the architecture and having a drink of water we set off to hike up to the snow line. This is the oldest ski resort in North America, and the only one to have snow sports year round.
The views on the way up were incredible! You can see a vast swathe of the state from all the way up there. Plus there were beautiful wild flowers and some pretty hardy bugs buzzing away, making the most of the beautiful weather we were lucky enough to have.
We stopped briefly before reaching our goal to appreciate the novelty of being able to make snow angels in July. It was bizarre and wonderful!
Our target was the last gondola station on the way up, where the snow line was, and where we could get some nicer powder, rather than the glacier ice that was still present further down. We packed our cooler with as much as it would hold, took a couple of victory selfies, and gratefully started to head back down.
There was a vague idea that we would take the snow to Bagby Hot Springs on the same day, but that seemed like entirely too much effort. We had done a 2.5 mile hike with 1000 ft of elevation gain already, and we were tuckered out. So instead we retreated to the cave and put our snow into the freezer.
The next day we headed South about 2 hours to the trail head of the hot springs. The countryside in this area is gorgeous. Lot's of steep, wooded valleys with shallow clear rivers burbling along in the sunshine. It was nice to have Eric do all the driving, it gave us both time to look out the window and appreciate the environment without worrying.
The hot springs were a mile and a half down a beautiful trail, which was only spoiled by the fact that someone had covered loads of the trees in bloody glitter! It was probably some adorable child trying to attract fairies but Zora was not happy! (Zora edit: Nope. Let's be honest here, it was most likely a lot of people old enough to know better. Shameful.) Fortunately we were there to relax, and it's hard to dwell on anything when there are baths full of lovely hot mineral water ready for you to jump in. It was not the easiest hike in since we were carrying a cooler full of ice containing the smaller cooler full of snow, but we all took turns schlepping the load and we made it!
So here it is, the quest fulfilled, a snowman, next to hot springs, in July! He lasted long enough for us to bequeath him to the next group of soakers, who arrived as we were leaving. They were very tickled.
This was a brilliant quest, and a wonderful way to see so much of Oregon. Thank you both!
Wombat's Judgement: Wow, really hard work! This may be the most involved quest so far, and probably the best writeup. Therefore, in recognition of Zora's travails, and the quality writeup, I'm awarding 200 bonus exp, for a total 1,000 exp, 9 hours charity. Congratulations!
