Oregon State Fair- Trask Mt- Middle Pyramid

State Fair
Friday I took my daughter and her boyfriend to the state fair. I've always enjoyed the animals and hobby pavilion and the photo exhibit. Unfortunately, I'm a triathlete now and people walking around smoking cigarettes makes me gag. Tons of people smoking made me have a hard time breathing, so I rushed through everything and didn't stay long. Plus I can see the animals better while riding a bike in the country. They did have a booth of Oregon authors so I talked to my favorite hiking book author William Sullivan and picked up a new signed NW Oregon edition hiking book.
Trask Mt
All the races I've been doing has caused me not to climb any county highpoints this year, so a long weekend sounded like the time. But I have a tri next week, so I didn't want to drive to Southern or Eastern Oregon where the highpoints left are except one- Yamhill county. So my friend Kevin and I set out to drive up to the top of Trask Mt the highpoint of Yamhill county which is over on the west side in wine country. Got out to Yamhill the town and then down a dirt road to the Trask Toll Road which is actually a dirt logging road. Less than a mile later we came to a new locked gate, Weyerhaeuser owns the land that Trask Mt is on. So we went down another dirt road to the Flying M ranch (picture) and went in the really nice lodge/restaurant right beside a dirt airstrip with huge stables with guided horse rides. Asked about the gate and the woman said they locked it for fire season, so no highpoint today. Looking at the map we saw a large reservoir I'd never heard of so we went in search of it and after a few miles of dirt we came to a two lane paved road and took that. Eventually after a lot of climbing we came to a reservoir (picture)
that looked nice except for the barbed wire fence all around and cameras periodically. It's the watershed for the towns in the valley. Took the paved road all the way back to town and remarked that it looked like a good bike training road and sure enough there was a rider. So sometime have to try riding Meadow Lake Road as training.
Middle Pyramid

Sunday I wanted to go to a long drive hike. So I chose the Three Pyramids area down by Mt. Jefferson, about a 140 mile drive. Beautiful drive until about Detroit Lake where it got hazy and smelled like smoke. Stopped at the ranger station and asked about the Pyramids and they said it was fine there, but there were four fires from Mt Jefferson to the Three Sisters area. Eastern Oregon has four or five huge fires also. There's one on Mt Hood also. Anyway got to the trailhead after 6 miles of dusty dirt road( my jeep was caked) and started out in a fantastic old growth forest along a stream with HUGE trees, I love Oregon! Got to a meadow (seen in picture from top) and saw the top and where I had still to climb to. By the time I reached the top I was almost as soaked as doing a spinning class. Couldn't see much other than hazy hills, but it was still nice. On the way down I saw a guy coming up with two dogs and one of the dogs had what I would call a small boulder in his mouth. Asked the guy if that was a rock and he said "Yeah, Grover likes to pick up rocks from streams and carry them". Stats- 4 miles 1800 feet gain and 275 miles driving.