June 2007

Greetings from Oregon,

The Summer Solstice arrives in the Pacific Northwest at 11:06 PDT (18:06 GMT), June 21. In Portland, that means sunrise is at 5:22 AM and sunset is at 9:04 PM, although there is typically enough light to navigate for an hour on either side.

I really love the longer hours of daylight during the summer here. It gives us so much more time to play outside.

We returned from our South America trip on May 9 and have been out playing full time since then. Phyllis' most excellent Trip Journal is posted on the OPA website. As time allows, I will add photos and comments. It was an amazing trip with an unbelievable amount of experiences and activities packed into three weeks.

Immediate up coming events are two St. Helens Climbs on June 22 and July 6. We are doing the Monitor Ridge Route now and glissading conditions are excellent!

We will do our first Mt. Adams South Spur climb on 27-29 June. Again this is absolutely the best time to do this climb, as there is still ample snow for climbing and glissading.

There is still space available for our extraordinary Nepal Adventure in September 2007 . There are clients signed-up, and this is the trip to take if you have ever wanted to go to Nepal.

Health Fairs
Drawing winners from the recent health fairs we participated in are:
Gary Kramer - ESI
Bill Derocher - Digimarc
Linda Polnicky - Webtrends

Gary, Bill, and Linda please send an e-mail or call at 503 297-5100 to make arrangements to receive your gift certificate.

Read on for descriptions of our upcoming trips. In the Tips Section I'll have observations about the South America trip and a discussion of entertainment options. We hope you can join us for your next adventure.

Past newsletters are available at the OPA Website

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TIPS
Some observations on the South America trip

After a lot of research I decided to do the trip through Overseas Adventure Travel. Given that we covered a lot of territory and saw a lot of things in the Amazon, Machu Picchu and the Galapagos, I am very impressed with the job they did. The logistics of transport, eating and experiencing the local sights, wildlife and people was done very well. Our local guides were knowledgeable, personable, and exceedingly patient.

Overall, the trip was an incredible value and totally met my expectations. They do trips all over the world and I would highly recommend them. I will certainly check them out for a future trip to Egypt and Jordan.

That being said, this is one of the few times that I have gone with a tour company and I found the pace to be quite intense. The pace combined with my feelings of responsibility toward our party members resulted in my sensation of the trip as a blur.

I would like to go back and travel more independently. Trekking the Inca Trail and spending two full days at Machu Picchu would be great and I would like to visit the Western and Northern Islands in the Galapagos that we didn't see.

I rented a satellite phone for this trip and it was a total waste of money. In the places where it might have been useful, I was never able to get a signal that enabled me to complete a call. It never worked in Peru.

It worked on the boat in the Galapagos, but they obviously had adequate communications for emergencies, and I really didn't much feel like calling anyone anyway. In the urban areas, phone cards for calls to the US were readily available and reasonably priced.

I plan to rent another one for the Nepal trip this September (Phyllis pretty much gave me up for dead the last trip because we were out of touch for so long), but I probably won't rent from Satellite Outfitters again. They never followed up to see why I didn't make any calls or to inquire as to how the phone worked. They were, however, thoughtful enough to send me an additional invoice because the phone arrived a couple of days late.

Go see this film
John Harlin III lives in Hood River, OR and is the editor of the American Alpine Journal. When John was nine years, his father died while climbing the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland. MacGillivray Freeman Films has made a movie,The Alps of John's climb of the same route where his father died. It is in the IMAX format and is both visually and emotionally stunning. John also wrote a biography, The Eiger Obsession, which talks about his father, and finishes with John's climb of the Eiger. The book is also excellent. I have met John at American Alpine Club meetings and attended the presention he made in Portland.

INTERESTED IN SETTING UP AN OUTING?
Please give us a call if you are interested in setting up an outing for your work group or family. We handle all the arrangements including transportation and food at a reasonable price. If you are coming to Portland for a conference or convention, we would be delighted to set-up outings for your attendees. Just let us know when.

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