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After the arrival of our host and three other writers the previous evening, Thursday was spent in a writing exercise led by Summit host Jim Owens. The exercise included creative visualization, using alternate point-of-view characters, completing an unfinished scene, and group collaboration. By the end of the Summit, a solid story idea had been fully developed into a working first draft, with a goal of publishing it in the pages of the magazine when it's completed. We rented a wonderful little cabin at the Cooper Spur Mountain Resort, located on one of the lower arms of Mt. Hood. The dormant volcano, a mere 60 miles from now-infamous Mount St. Helens, rises to 11,237 feet. The cabin itself was at 3,400 feet and only six miles from the summit! However, we wanted to get a closer look, so we spent the afternoon driving up the 14-mile dirt forest road to the Cloud Cap Inn. The inn -- a log cabin lodge -- operated as a seasonal resort hotel from 1889 to 1941, but was sold to the Forest Service and today is only occasionally used as a mountain rescue base. It sits at the timber line at 6000 feet: more than half the altitude of Mt. Hood itself, and a mere three miles from the mountain's peak. The ridge it sits on routinely gets 60 feet of snow in the winter, and steel cables were fastened to buried cement foundations to literally keep the structure from blowing off the ridge. In this photo, Liam Donahue stands atop a rocky crag with a steep dropoff behind him. Across the valley, which drains the Eliot Glacier, rises the upper half of magestic Mt. Hood, which was a constant presence outside our cabin's back yard, as well as wherever we traveled in the area. | |
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