Pine Mountain, OR · Nov 30, 2025
Building and Training Under the Millican Sun
A frozen morning of house framing in Millican turned into a surprise bluebird training hike on Pine Mountain.
Sunday started with cold hands and good intentions. We drove out to Millican to keep working on the house we’re slowly raising out in the sage. The walls are framed, the sheathing is on, and the next big step is getting a roof over it all.
But when we pulled in, the wind was up, the clouds were low, and a mix of snow and freezing rain was skating across the bare subfloor. It was the kind of morning where every ladder rung looked like a bad idea. After a few minutes of pacing around inside the empty frame, we called it: the roof could wait.
Instead, we leaned into the other Sunday ritual that has been quietly anchoring the last few months—hiking from the house up Pine Mountain as training for Aconcagua. Staci stayed back to do what she could around the build if the weather broke. Doug and I pointed our boots toward Freedom Launch, the paragliding hill that doubles as our trailhead, and started walking into the gray.
Freedom Launch climbs fast. The first stretch is all crunching cinder and frozen sage, and then the trail dissolves and you’re just choosing a line that feels right. The desert looked quiet from below, but up close everything was edged in white—each blade of grass, every branch, all of it coated in rime.
We moved in and out of cloud bands, one minute hiking in flat gray, the next blinking into bright blue. It was tiring in a sneaky way: the footing was loose, the air cold, but every time I thought about turning around a new bit of light would show up and pull us higher.
Somewhere around the halfway mark I had that little internal conversation about turning back. My legs were heavy, the summit felt far away, and the weather still couldn’t make up its mind. But this loop has become part of the rhythm while I get ready for Aconcagua with the Ascent Adventures crew, so we kept going—one loose rock at a time.
Past the last cluster of big trees, the world suddenly opens. We climb out of the final bit of cloud and the Cascades appear, floating on top of an endless white sea. It feels like stepping up onto a balcony over the weather.
From the house to the summit it’s roughly a 2,200-foot climb, from around 4,200 feet to about 6,400. It’s not a huge day in mountaineering terms, but it’s exactly the kind of steady, honest effort that adds up when you’re getting ready for a big peak.
Reaching the cloudline where the last row of trees stands half in fog, half in blue sky.
The sun trying to burn through from behind, turning the forest into a glowing wall of mist.
Our first real look over the edge: Cascade peaks riding above a perfect cloud sea.
Looking along the summit ridge as clouds keep spilling over the far side.
A frosted ridgeline dropping into a pocket of cloud and trees, like another world just below us.
The highest little bump on Pine, floating on its own island of cloud.
Spotting a Brocken spectre—our shadow ringed in rainbow—while Doug stares into the whiteout.
The descent is all soft light and small triumphs: no rolled ankles, warm hands again, the simple satisfaction of moving back toward the tiny box of our future house on the valley floor. The clouds keep trying to reclaim the ridge, but the south side stays bright and blue for most of the way down.
By the time we drop back onto the dirt road, the valley has opened up. The same sun that warmed us on the summit finally finds the house site, and Staci makes the most of it—sawing out window openings from the sheathing so the house in the sage finally has eyes.
On the drive back toward Portland we refuel the right way—cheeseburgers at Dawg House in Prineville—trading notes on the climb and the house and that feeling of getting to stack memories in both places at once.
