ITTOG's Overlanding Trips

[ITTOG]

I found a cool little snow cave with vegetation growing under it.



As you can see in this picture the trail is pretty steep.


I didn’t mention it but I am obviously above the tree line now and have been for a while. Now I am getting my first glimpses at Mount Adams to the east.



If you look closely in this panorama you can see Mount Adams just off the left ridge and Mount Hood in the center but very far away. If you have the ability to zoom you will be able to see another mountain to the right of Mount Hood. I am told this is known as the three sisters Mountains, which is over 100 miles away as the crow flies.


If you can't see three sisters above, possibly you can in this pic.


I began this hike in shorts, a t-shirt, and tennis shoes as it was about 70°. Now that I am above the snow line it has started cooling off but I am still pretty warm from the strenuous activity. It is starting to be less of a trail and more of just an open area. There is also starting to be a lot more gravel which really sucks. With every step in the gravel you lose some of your force due to your planted foot sinking and slipping. Where are the boulders? They are much preferred to the gravel.

 

[ITTOG]

At this point I am about three hours into the hike and completely spent. The lack of sleep and waiting to eat until I was hungry has wiped me out. I should have had an energy bar at the two hour mark. Not to mention the trails pretty difficult and steep. The only way to get to the top is to traverse the snow ahead and as you can see it is very steep. I kind of questioned if I should continue because I am so tired and I have not seen a single person on the trail. If I were to slip in that snow it would be a very long and painful fall that could potentially end in death. But, I had a goal to reach the top and was not going to let a little risk stop me. No matter how foolish it may be continuing. At one point in the snow I had to stop and rest. The snow was so steep I could stand straight up with my arm out front of me I could touch the mountainside with no to minimal lean.


I am finally out of the snow and hiked over a small ridge. At this point I can see people below me on another trail and above me at the top, in total about 50 people. Clearly I took the trail less traveled in the summer. I only have about 400 feet of vertical elevation to climb. Apparently I was too tired to take a picture at this point so you can’t see how far away I am. While it was close it also seemed like miles since I was so tired. It seemed like two hours, but I finally made it to the top in about 50 minutes, recorded the time, took a picture, and laid down and fell asleep.




When I woke, about an hour later, I had an energy bar and almost immediately started feeling better. While I waited for the full effect of the energy bar I talked to many people at the top and liked how everyone acted as if we knew each other for years and encouraged those that were still climbing. After the conversation it was time to get more pics before heading down. The colors inside the caldera were amazing. Unfortunately pictures do not do it justice.



To the north of Mount Saint Helens is Mount Rainier. You can also see Spirit Lake which was made famous by the movie. Someone at the top told me all the debris in the east side of the lake was logs from the eruption. I question this because the logs would have clearly sunk by now but the person said the magma that was on the trees prevents the logs from soaking up water and therefore do not sink. I wondered if “fake news” but included it in case it is true. I will let you do the research on your own.


The long path in the snow is where people glissade down the mountain. I had read about this before my climb so I brought a trash bag to experience it myself. It was basically sledding down the mountain and was fun but the main attraction is it gets you off your feet for a little while and down the mountain faster.


What is that? Am I at a false summit? Argh!!!!!!

 

[jeepgc]

I will have to load more pics in future reports and try to make it more of a story. I am new to this and not a very "wordy" person.

I thought it was a good balance, just enough of a description and letting the pics tell the story and good pics btw.

Thanks for posting up, look forward to seeing more updates .

Am still slightly jealous of the variety of landscapes you guys can get to with just using your truck/car.

 

[jeepgc]

I stepped on a broken bottle and sliced the bottom of my foot. It didn’t hurt much but I knew I was cut so I decided to get out of the water to look at it. Unfortunately I discovered it was deep, about 1 ½ inches long, and bled like crazy. I tried to get it to quit bleeding but after about 30 minutes we decided it was time to go to the house to get it taken care of. I had to drive the boat with my foot hanging over the edge to keep the blood off of it. If it would’ve happened in the ocean, jaws may have followed us. Once home and thoroughly inspected I knew it needed stitches but was hesitant to go to the ER because of bad experiences in the past. In the end I decided to superglue and butterfly stitch it. My only concern was how this was going to set my training back.

I hate that and they are so hard to see in the water, haven't had it happen to me yet, but am sure it will happen to me at some point.

Good work re the fix.

BTW, I wouldn't get hung up over the overlanding definition - frankly, I don't care what you call it, you're getting out there, that's what counts and the images are loading fine for me.

 

[ITTOG]

I thought it was a good balance, just enough of a description and letting the pics tell the story and good pics btw.

Thanks for posting up, look forward to seeing more updates .

Am still slightly jealous of the variety of landscapes you guys can get to with just using your truck/car.

Thanks for the comments.

I hate that and they are so hard to see in the water, haven't had it happen to me yet, but am sure it will happen to me at some point.

Good work re the fix.

BTW, I wouldn't get hung up over the overlanding definition - frankly, I don't care what you call it, you're getting out there, that's what counts and the images are loading fine for me.

Yes it is a shame people can't take care of their own trash or at least put things in the trash.

I only added the definitions because some are very particular on their definition so I thought it would clear that up.


Thanks for the engagement and kind words.

 

[ITTOG]

Luckily the climb to the real summit wasn’t too bad. It only took about 20 minutes. I previously mentioned it was getting colder once I hit the snow. By the time I made it to the false summit and took a few pictures it was freezing so I put my cold-weather gear on before I took my nap. So a few pictures on my way to the real summit and on top.






This video is from the summit and the guys in this video buried their pic axes (real name) and tied a rope to them. They then walked out on the cornice and peered over the edge. I asked them if I could do it but they said no. They were afraid of the liability if the restraint failed.

The hike down was uneventful and the pictures were the same as the hike up but from a different angle so not much to report here. One major change though is the route I took. I took the easier route down because my route up had no hikers on it and going down the snow would be very dangerous. This added some distance to the hike but the increased safety was worth it.




I did some glissading at the top and down this stretch. It sure speeds up the trip and takes a huge load of tired legs and feet.


Dang, more boulders. At least not as much as on the way up.


to be continued...

 

[ITTOG]

Just another pic of Mount Adams. I hope to climb it, Mount Hood, and Mount Rainier in the future.


And a couple more of the hike down. The second pic is of the ravine I talked about on the way up.



This is the same waterfall I passed on the way up.


It was a great hike and I really enjoyed it. It was my first volcano and the pumice made it really difficult. Part of me never wants to hike a volcano again but that won’t hold out for long. As I said previously, I want to hike the surrounding volcano’s: Hood, Adams, and Rainer. At the top and on the way down I took my time and spent a total of 11 hours on the mountain.



All pictures were taken with my Pixel XL.




Next up is urban overlanding in Monaco.

 

[jeepgc]

Fantastic, great pics.

Monaco, very nice, sometime soon?

Sent from my I3312 using Tapatalk

 

[ITTOG]

Fantastic, great pics.

Monaco, very nice, sometime soon?

Sent from my I3312 using Tapatalk

Thank You

I plan to start adding Monaco today or tomorrow. Hopefully.

 

[ITTOG]

Monaco - Sep 18 to 24, 2019


This was a trip I would have never booked but since my wife was there for a conference I decided I would meet her there and it was almost free given I had plenty of points with United and hotels for us to stay.

It probably isn't your typical trip to be on this site but I was over land, and water for a little bit, and I think the pictures will make it worthwhile, not to mention a few pic's of overlanding vehicles. I probably won't add much narration either. It will just be dependent on if there was something interesting. Thus I will leave it to you to ask questions.

But to start, this is a trip that almost didn't happen. My airline tickets were booked for me to depart on Sep 18 (evening flight so I would arrive on the 19th) and my wife was already there due to her conference. So lets pick up the story the morning of Sep 17. It was your typical workday and I was very busy trying to rap everything up for my departure the following evening. I knew we were expecting bad weather the next day but I never pay much attention to weather in houston. It is just so uneventful when you consider I am from Oklahoma and our storms are way more severe, unless there is a hurricane. That obviously is different but even then, relatively boring compared to a tornado. Anyways, I wasn't paying attention to the weather but decided to have lunch with a couple coworkers. During lunch they were telling me how the weather was supposed to be really bad tomorrow and I may not be able to fly out. I just figured I they were teasing me and besides, they were career houstonians so they don't really know about weather. So lunch is over and I get back to work. About 1 PM I get a text from United indicating they were expecting delayed or canceled flights the next day due to the weather so I should pay close attention to the weather and check my flight status before going to the airport the next day. Now this was very surprising. I have never had an airline be proactive like that. Then about 30 minutes later I received a text and an email stating I should look at flying out of Dallas or Austin the next day. Okay, now you have my FULL attention. There is no way I want to miss this trip. It was about 2 PM when I received the info and I decided I should call United to check options. I spent the next hour on the phone with them and it was decided my best chance to make the trip would be to fly out tonight on a 6:30 flight. You might think that was not an issue because I had 3.5 hours before the flight. But you would be so wrong. Without traffic it takes one hour to get home but usually is closer to 1.5 hours. It takes 40 minutes to get to the airport. So over 2 hours of the available 3.5 hours would be driving. I hadn't even packed yet. A long story short, I arrived at the airport at 5:45. Amazingly United allowed me to check in and go on the flight even though I was not there an hour in advance. They said it helped that I was on the phone with them for almost my entire flight from the house to the airport. Primarily just telling them I am on my way and how long I had left. Thinking about it now, I am shocked the lady didn't cut me loose. Sorry for the long intro. Now onto the trip.

If you don't know much about Monaco it is one of the richest countries in the world and is a sovereign city-state country on the French riviera. It is built on the edge of mountains against the ocean. It may be 15 miles long and 1 mile wide while climbing from sea level to on average 400 feet. In fact it is so small they have increased their land mass by 20% since 2005 by land reclamation (dumping rocks, dirt, concrete, etc into the ocean). It really is an interesting place. I thought it was really cool that Grace Kelly is probably the most famous person there. Everywhere you went there was info on her life and her marriage to the prince. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco

Now that I have fully bored you with my personal plight and a little history let me grab your attention. I parked at the hotel next to this Ferrari and the Aston Martin was at a dealer outside my hotel.


Given I went a day early I had the first day to myself. So I walked about 25 miles checking out Monaco and France. I almost walked to Italy.


In this pic I wanted to identify a few landmarks. The building circled in light blue is the hotel we stayed at. The area between the two red dots are what I walked. It was a short walk.


I have never been a fan of Land Rovers but I figured a lot of you will like this. A little rough but cool.


A lot of beautiful sights. I hope to not overwhelm you with pictures.


To be continued...

 

[ITTOG]

The homes here were very interesting.


This is the first time I had seen the new Ranger and it was the Raptor version.


And just a few more.


To be continued...

 

[ITTOG]

One more from my urban hike.


One more overlanding vehicle.


Before we go any further I want to talk about one of the coolest features of Monaco, the Rock of Monaco. The Rock is a 203 ft tall monolith on the Mediterranean coast of the Principality of Monaco. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and the Port Hercules. On it is the Princes Palace, residences, shops, restaurants, and the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco.



Given it is Monaco, there are luxury cars everywhere. This was outside one of the hotels near the Monte Carlo Casino.


To be continued...

 

[ITTOG]

These are pic's from around or on the rock.


This is the princes palace on top of the rock.


From the rock to the main part of the city.


We did a helicoptor ride. it was need to see everything we had walked via the air. The flight went the length of the small principality and only lasted seven minutes.


Just a boat in harbor.


To be continued... (only 65 photos to go, including my favorite part of the trip)

 

[ITTOG]

Seeing the city at night from the rock is a pretty site. My wife and I would go up there every night.


One day it was raining on the coast so we decided to get lost driving inland. We quickly found the french alps.



Then, just by chance, we travelled through our favorite place of the entire trip. It was the town of Luceram France. We could have spent days here but only spent a couple hours. It was wonderful and made you feel like you were transported back in time several hundred years or more.

The information below is from Wikipedia.
Lucéram is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes in southeastern France. Its inhabitants are called the Lucéramois. Luceram village is home of Peïra-Cava, the first station of winter sports department created in 1909. The village has many ecclesiastical and medieval monuments and altarpieces of Ludovico Brea.The first picture is mine but the next four are not. I included them so you can see a wider picture of the village than I had.




To be continued...

 

[ITTOG]

This map will give you an idea of how the place is laid out. There was only one road in the town which is at the lower elevation. Everything else was a cobblestone pathway.



To be continued...