For the Love of Mountains

The Bureau of Land Management, with the help of the Outdoor Alliance and Mazamas in Portland, organized a public workshop on February 5, 2013 to collect data about outdoor recreation throughout Western Oregon. Bringing together an overwhelming crowd of more than 200 people, the event gathered much-needed information to aid the BLM’s Resource Management Planning (RMP) by actually mapping the role, value, importance and demand for outdoor recreation.

The workshop was the final event in a series of four held throughout Oregon.

The data collected will be used to make decisions about management on 2.5 million acres of existing and future recreation areas in Western Oregon as well as the demand for the development of new opportunities for the next twenty years.

The OA and Mazamas were honored to be part of a federal government initiative to let the voices of the recreation community be heard. The BLM’s RMP workshops were innovative in reaching out to recreationalists before the writing of plans and should be applied throughout the U.S.

Mazama Angela Bohlke just volunteered in a project that placed cameras in the forest to search for the American Marten on the Olympic Penninsula. The project, organized by Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, was featured on a recent OPB Earthfix program.

You can watch the segment here.

Learn more about Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, including lots of other cool volunteer opportunities, by visiting this link.

Mt. Shasta

This winter, Seattle-based photography and climbing hero Steph Abegg has been collaborating with John Scurlock, the Northwest’s icon of aerial mountain photography.

Together, the two have made some very impressive alpine photography flights this month.  You can continue reading this post to see a small selection of Steph’s images, or you can visit Steph’s blog (links below) to find some truly extraordinary collections that include both images and video.  All photos courtesy Steph Abegg.

January 19 tour of the Cascade Volcanoes! Current conditions on Rainier, Adams, Hood, Jefferson, Three Sisters, Crater Lake, Shasta, Lassen, St. Helens, and more…

January 3: The North Cascades, featuring Jack, Ballard, Azurite, Golden Horn, Tower, Logan, Goode, Buckner, Booker, Hurry-up, Johannesburg, Snowqueen, Chaval, Higgins, Whitehorse, Three Fingers, Sloan, Pugh, White Chuck

New Year’s Day: West Rim of the North Cascades, with North Twin, South Twin, Three Fingers, Baring, Chimney Rock, Overcoat

Here are a few more of Steph’s photos:

Three-Fingered Jack and Jefferson from the south

Volcano Lineup

North Cascades in an alpenglow icing

Tower Mountain from the northeast

According to a recent Scientific American article bisphenol S (“BPS”), the compound widely used to replace bisphenol A in “BPA-Free” water bottles, appears to present the same health risks as BPA.

Bolt next to a cam-friendly crack, Cerro Torre. Photo: Rolando Garibotti

The UIAA (trans. International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation), an affiliation most famous for safety-rating climbing equipment, has issued a position paper against excessive bolting and favoring a re-assertion of “the case for adventure climbing.” The paper asserts that in many climbing areas worldwide, current bolting practices now violate the ethic first championed by the UIAA in 1998 in its To Bolt or Not To Be paper.  Throughout this contoversy, the UIAA has called for respecting original methods of protection on older lines, and refraining from bolting new lines wherever natural or removable protection could be used instead.

Photo: alpinedave.com

Alpinist Magazine announced Sunday that Mazama member John Frieh has received a 2013 Mugs Stump Award for his second attempt on the unclimbed Middle Peak of Alaska’s Saint Elias range.  This year, Frieh’s team will include Colin Haley and Daniel Harro.

The Bureau of Land Management controls two and a half million acres of public land in western Oregon.

Right now, the BLM is preparing to revise its management plans for the area, and they invite you to weigh in with information about what you like to do on public lands, and where you like to do it.

As the Outdoor Alliance puts it in a recent press release, “Instead of just commenting on a plan after it’s written, this time we get to inform the BLM’s thinking before they write the plan.”

The BLM is providing a variety of ways for you to make your voice heard in the process.  Continue reading to get the details and a variety of web links to get you started.

Interested in something a little more face-to-face? Plan to attend one of these upcoming workshops:

• January 29th, Medford, OR 
• January 30th, Roseburg, OR 
• January 31st, Eugene, OR 
• February 5th, Portland, OR [at Mazamas Mountaineering Center]

Photo courtesy Whatcom Museum Photo Archives

The year was 1911 and Bellingham, Washington, was a sleepy little town in the shadow of Mount Baker, on the northern shores of Puget Sound. Logging and fishing were the economic mainstays but, as the leaders of the Mount Baker Club, a local business organization, saw it, the town needed something more.  Thus begins “The Toughest Race You’ve Ever Heard Of,” a recent article in Trail Runner Magazine that tells the unlikely story of the Mount Baker Marathon: “America’s first mountain adventure race.”

The Mount Baker Marathon took place from 1911 to 1913, and constituted the city of Bellingham’s most audacious public relations stunt in its competition for tourist dollars against the just-created Mount Rainier National Park.  It is the subject of a recent documentary, The Mountain Runners that is currently taking the film world by storm.

The Mountain Runners will be showing on January 24 at the Northwest Film Center in downtown Portland.  You can purchase tickets at their website.