Hi friends!

[sah]

Hey, I'm Spruce and I use they/them pronouns. When I'm not on the trails, I'm doing community organizing within my cultural community and I teach math at a local community college.

I'm from Portland, OR originally and grew up mountaineering, hiking, and backpacking in the PNW and had some wilderness leadership certifications at one point. I moved to NYC for college and lived there for more than a decade; I basically didn't do outdoors stuff while living there because it wasn't accessible. I just moved back in the last year and have been getting back into all of these things.

I hike and run anywhere from 15-40 miles a week in the Gorge, in Tillamook State Forest, on the Coast, and in Portland's various trail systems (Forest Park, Oaks Bottom, etc). I've especially enjoyed off trailing recently. I've been exploring the talus slopes at Angel's Rest and the user maintained trails at Palmer Mill Road.

I'm figuring out what to do next with outdoors type stuff. I'm at a point where learning (or refreshing on) some skills would be helpful (ex: ropes skills, navigation, cave safety, mountaineering skills, etc). I recognize that those are not things I should learn on my own. I would ideally like to find a group or organization that meets up regularly to do activities like this so I can be more part of a "community" while doing this instead of just taking a one-off class. Any recommendations for finding stuff like this? I'm especially interested in groups that have a decent number of women and LGBTQ+ people.

I'm also a complete nerd and enjoy learning about the history and ecology of the trails I'm on. I'd love to learn more about using archival research and GIS technology to understand how the topography of a region has changed over time and where I should be looking for cool stuff such as abandoned forest roads. I've seen a lot of interesting stuff in this forum specifically about this (especially about the Larch Mountain area).

Some highlights since moving back to the PNW:
- South Sister summit
- Did a one night backpacking trip at Paradise Park
- Did like 27 miles on the Wonderland Trail as a one night backpacking trip
- Did Elk Mountain and King Mountain as a day hike
- I've done Angel's Rest ~1x/week for the last 6-8ish months and have enjoyed watching the seasons change and getting to know that area.
- I've also been going to the Palmer Mill Road area ~1x/week for the last month or so and exploring that.

Stuff I want to do (short term goals):
- St Helens summit
- Timberline Trail
- More backpacking/camping on Mt Rainier
- Scope out off trail swimming/water spots in Tillamook State Forest
- Find all of the crashed cars on the Bridal Veil Plateau
- Find as many caves as possible at Angel's Rest

[retired jerry]

welcome

where are there caves at Angel's Rest? Must be "cracks" in Basalt blocks.

[sah]

welcome

where are there caves at Angel's Rest? Must be "cracks" in Basalt blocks.

I've heard you're not supposed to disclose the locations of caves because they're environmentally sensitive (especially since Angel's Rest is such a popular hike). I have found one cave so far, which I do not have the skills to explore safely, and I suspect there are others.

[retired jerry]

I don't want to disturb environmentally sensitive areas

North of Rocky Butte there are caves in the cracks of the basalt columns, near "the grotto" which I think is another such cave