Back in late March, work took me to Portland, Oregon, to the Western Political Science Association‘s annual conference. As far as academic conferences go, the WPSA is a nice one, and you don’t need Portlandia to convince you that Portland is an awesome city. But there is also great rock climbing in the Pacific Northwest, and I hoped to fit some in. Fortunately, Chris, one of my many friends in Portland, made this possible.

Smith Rock is fabulously beautiful state park in the Oregon high desert, east of the Cascades. (For the geographically challenged among y’all, Portland is west of the Cascades, like Seattle, and therefore wet while the desert is dry.) It’s also one of the iconic rock climbing areas in the United States. And that’s where Chris took me.

The iconic Smith Rock view.

It was a bit iffy whether anything was going to come of the climbing. The trip was planned for one particular day that matched both our calendars, but about a week out, the weather forecasts started to look somewhat, well, volatile. I landed in rainy, cold miserable Portland on a Wednesday. Rainy, cold, and miserable can be the standard conditions in the PacNW west of the Cascades much of the winter, but this was a bit unusual. In fact, that day, there was quite a bit of snowfall. One particularly disheartening weather report from some town somewhere between Portland and Eugene reported 32 inches in 24 hours. That’s more snow than we had gotten in Michigan this whole winter!

96 inches of snow. Top that, Midwest.

At 6:30 on Thursday morning, Chris picked me up at my hotel. Our plan was: let’s hope the highway passes across the Cascades are open, and let’s see what the conditions are like at Smith Rock. Well, we were pretty lucky. The passes were open, but it wasn’t easy. There was a “chains or traction tires” requirement around the highest parts near Mt. Hood, and snow was still falling pretty heavily. I generally don’t mind driving in the snow, but I sure as heck was glad Chris was driving. The drive usually takes little less than three hours; our trip definitely took more.

Also, in the small town of Terrebonne, which neighbors the state park, there was still some snow on the ground, but the sun was out, and it was clear at least south-facing rock was going to be climbable (once we’d had our hearty breakfasts in the awesome Smith Rock Restaurant and Cafe in Terrebonne).

We had thought we’d be the only climbers in the park, it being a weekday in late March, but there were lots of people. It was a spring break week for lots of PacNW universities and, apparently, Canadian schools as well. And as the temperatures soared to the upper 40s with the sun out, lots of these 20-somethings from up nort’ thought it was the perfect weather for shirtless climbing. One Albertan dude, clearly trying to live up to the Canadian accent stereotype, was heard saying, “Oo, it’s saw nice and worm, we don’t need the toque or the booties, eh.”

Just to be clear: that’s not me in the photo.

The climbing for us was great. Because Smith Rock was developed relatively early for sport climbing (sport=bolts in the rockface for you to clip into), the attitude used to be “let’s make it feel as scary as traditional climbing,” which meant that the first bolt is often about 15 feet up the wall. Fifteen feet is a long way to fall onto a very sloping ground. But we managed the beginnings, as well as the rest of the climbs, and it was good.

We did a couple of single-pitch climbs, and then Chris wanted to take me to the north side for some multipitch climbing. We had a very enjoyable hike out there, only to discover that the site Chris had thought about was closed because of raptor nesting. Bastard raptors! But, oh well, the hike was quite nice, both out and back.

It was just one day of climbing, but I totally loved the new experience. The rock itself was very different from the red sandstone of Red Rocks. The tuff and basalt reminded me of granite in terms of their sharpness and hardness, but I’m no geologist, so don’t quote me.

Portland at dusk.

On the way back, since we didn’t quite know what was happening west of the mountains, in terms of weather, we wanted to hurry and get past the highest pass on the Cascades before the temperatures got too cold. We did, and as a result managed to have a fabulous dinner at a pub in Government Camp, near the highest pass. This was Oregon, which meant both awesome fish & chips and supremely tasty local microbrew, even if we were in the middle of nowhere on the Cascades.

Back in Portland, I felt a bit out of place going through my conference hotel, carrying a backpack with a helmet and climbing shoes while trendy political scientists were being erudite, but the next day, excellent presentations by and the company of some brilliant Michigan grad students got me back in the swing of things. Not to mention a lovely early-morning run through and around Portland with my local friend Marc.

Here’s a somewhat cheesy video of the climbing part of the trip.