McNeil Point Scramble Trail

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There are plenty of challenging trails and scrambles on the Western face of Mt. Hood.  That said, if you choose the McNeil Point Scramble you will not be disappointed.  The United States Forest Service has since unlisted the trail from its website, a testament to its difficultly.  However, signs still point in the trail’s direction, tempting those who dare to attempt the climb.

The main stretch of the McNeil Point Scramble Trail itself is under half a mile, but averages about 35% grade.  This isn’t the only thing that makes the scramble difficult, most the trail’s surface is loose dirt and rock.  All this said, for experienced hikers this is certainty a fun, engaging beautiful hike.

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Hidden Falls via Tarbell Trail

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Hidden Falls lies about 5½ miles along the Tarbell Trail, starting from the northern-most trailhead, which sits by an isolated parking lot.  If it’s a busy day there may be one or two other cars sitting along the Washington DNR’s signature-style pit toilet.  Other than that your interactions with others might be limited to the sight of a logging company’s trucks passing through in the summer.

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Bell’s Mountain Trail

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Bell’s Mountain Trail is one of my favorite hikes in the Yacolt Burn State Forest for taking people who have little to no hiking experience. The trail is open to foot, bike (non-motorized), and horse traffic, so you’ll see plenty of different types of people here.  I have never seen a horse on Bell’s Mountain trail, but keep an eye out.  Also watch out for the adventurous trail runner making the attempt upwards and the daredevil of a mountain biker coming down.  Typically the regulars of this trail, and the surrounding ones, are super nice and welcoming.

The trail itself isn’t too difficult, you get most of the elevation gain out of the way within the first mile after the junction, with an average grade of 3.1%.  Take it easy and slow, there is certainly no rush to get to the top.  The views through the border of the Yacolt Burn State Forest are amazing.

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“Earning” Fitness

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Recently, I did a morning run, one that I considered long for myself. Afterwards, like any other runner, I dove into those statistics and numbers. I have an Apple Watch, so I have to go through a bunch of different apps depending on what I want to see, and Apple Health provides a few of those. As I was scrolling through the “highlights,” they’re supposed to be quick information bits of information about your current health and fitness level – they’re kind of useless, section I noticed a card that stuck out to me. 

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Panic at the SPA!

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I began programming in 2015, now that’s not that long of a time, but coming on my 10 year anniversary I feel that it’s long enough that I can sit on my high pony and talk about the what the “good old days” where like. Really, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of PHP, it was the age of AngularJS. Considering that the best option for writing a SPA was AngularJS, and that no mere mortal would dare to recommend that a beginner learn that ghastly web framework, I existed in a programmer’s natural habitat: writing PHP in Notepad++ “hosting” L/WAMP on the LAN.

Soon, in a year or two, React would “get good” and then came the dark ages. I learned React late, it became appealing to the young and stary-eyed me who found out about GitHub Pages, free hosting (yay), and got tired of jQuery, .NET, and PHP in 2020. See when Elvis Presley sang “(You’re) The Devil in Disguise” he sang it about React, which (in my humble opinion) is the sole creator of the nine circles of Hell.

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A Quickstart Guide to Privacy

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Nowadays it’s nearly impossible to like there’s no hope to avoid all of the prying eyes in the world. While, sure, you could ditch your phone, buy a third-generation Honda Civic, and never touch the internet again, but where’s the fun in that? This guide is intended to be a quick, not-so-deep, guide on having a little more security and privacy online. Finally, this guide is going to be biased, it’ll talk about the services I use, and maybe even have a referral link or two.

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