Evening Travel Programs

7:00 pm, Wednesday evenings (and some Fridays), October through April
at the Mazama Mountaineering Center (Click here for a Map to the MMC)

Welcome to the Mazama 2009–2010 season of evening programs, from October through April. Our shows are free and open to Mazama members and the general public. We do appreciate a voluntary contribution at the discretion of each attendee. Thank you for supporting our successful series by your regular attendance.

The Mazamas Program committee hosts evening slide programs.  These programs are free and both members and non-members are welcome to attend.  Programs begin at 7:00 pm, and are usually held every Wednesday (and occasionally Fridays) from early October through late April.  During the program season, a full description of each show is printed in the Mazama Bulletin and will be posted on this web page.  While scheduled programs almost always keep to this schedule, there are occasional cancellations and last minute switches.  It can be a good idea to contact the Mazama Mountaineering Center at 503-227-2345 to confirm these shows beforehand.  Please scroll down this page for more detailed show descriptions.

Program Committee: John Leary & Dyanne Foster (Co-Chairs), Nancy Bentley, Gail O’Neill, Karen Park, Rick Pope, Klindt Vielbig.

Exploring Death Valley National Park
Wednesday, March 3
Join Bob Breivogel as he recounts several spring hiking and photography trips to California’s Death Valley. Death Valley National Park, with its tremendous resource for hiking, comprises more than 3.3 million acres of unique, unspoiled, spectacular beauty of desert scenery. It includes canyons and mountains, rare desert wildlife, complex geology, and sites of historical interest. It is the largest National Park (90% undisturbed wilderness) outside Alaska.  Death Valley contains the lowest, hottest, driest location in North America. Nearly 550 square miles of its area lie below sea level. We visit the lunar landscape of Zabriskie Point, the salt flats of Badwater, the dramatic colors of Marble Canyon, the Eureka Dunes, Scotty’s Castle, and ghost towns. We will see that in early spring, after enough rain, spectacular wildflowers magically appear in apparently lifeless terrain.

Congo and Uganda
Wednesday, March 10
Join Mazama Dr. Steve Boyer on an adventurous charitable excursion as he and Medical Teams International travel to the Democratic Republic of Congo and SW Uganda. View exciting slides and photographs taken as they provided care to some of the 250,000 people displaced by a variety of rebel groups in North Kivu Province and Goma, while passing into and through rebel controlled areas. In Uganda they provided medical care to some of the 50,000 refugees from the DRC. Steve will talk about the geology of the DRC, the history, from colonial time to the present, of international resource theft from that country, and the social/medical impact of the theft. Since 1998 more than five million people have died as a result of the conflicts, a classic example of how resources become a death sentence for people who live near them.

Caving in the Southeast
Wednesday, March 17
Pat Sullivan presents a program about caving on the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia (TAG), the preeminent caving area in the United States.  As he displays his beautiful images he will give a brief geology overview of the area and discuss how the caves were formed.  He will tell the story of the discovery and exploration of Xanadu Cave in Tennessee, discovered by Ray Lewis, Sid Jones and Pat Sullivan in 1978.  At 23.8 miles long, Xanadu Cave is the 78th longest mapped cave in the world.  It remains the 20th longest cave in the United States.  The program will also cover recreational caving including large wild caves, vertical caves (pits) and historic saltpeter caves that were mined during the civil war for the resources to make gun powder for the war effort on both sides.

60 Hikes within 60 miles of Portland
Wednesday, March 24
Local author (and proud Mazama) Paul Gerald will introduce us to the brand-new edition of his hiking guidebook, 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Portland. First published in 2001, 60 Hikes has become the best-selling hiking guide to the Portland area. And since the new 4th edition will be delivered from the printer just in time for this show, it’s a guarantee you won’t have it yet! Paul will be signing and selling the books, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Mazamas capital campaign. The newest edition includes updates and additions since the 2007 Third Edition, as well as new helpful lists and categories. Paul has been a professional writer since the mid-1980s, and this evening he’ll also tell us about his other books: Day and Overnight Hikes in the Oregon PCT, Best Tent Camping: Oregon, and his self-published Breakfast in Bridgetown: The Definitive Guide to Portland’s Favorite Meal

Deforestation, Drought and Humans: New Discoveries of Easter Island
Wednesday, March 31
Candace Gossen attempts to discover the natural history of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, the most remote landmass on this planet. What was the biodiversity of the island? When did people arrive and from where (references to Thor Heyerdahl’s “Kon-Tiki”)? Why was so much human effort expended to construct the 1000 massive Moai statues? What happened to the sixteen million palm trees? Did people cut the last tree to move the statues built on the island? Or was climate change responsible? Is the rest of the world headed toward the same deconstruction as this tiny island? View stunning photos of Easter Island as a small expedition climbs down into the volcanic crater, walk on mats of plants floating on the crater lake and use core sediments and fossil pollen to find answers to many of these questions. Come and hear all the amazing adventures, and soon to be published findings that Candace has discovered during her recreation of 15,000 years of ecology of Easter Island.

The Odd and Haunting Transformation of Spirit Lake: A Journey from before 1980 to Now
Wednesday, April 7
Christine Colasurdo grew up camping, hiking, and working in the Spirit Lake basin. Her family had a cabin near Mount St. Helens that was destroyed by the 1980 eruption. She was deeply affected by the eruption and wrote a book in 1997, about her journey back to Mount St. Helens,  called “Return to Spirit Lake.” She has written two books on the outdoors and her work has appeared in a wide variety of national publications as well as on radio. She has created two museum exhibits about Mount St. Helens and has worked for years as a conservationist to protect the area. Christine will show images of Spirit Lake before the eruption and explain exactly how the eruption changed the landscape—and how the blast zone continues to evolve thirty years after that historic May morning.

Cataclysms on the Columbia: The Great Missoula Floods that Shaped the Geology of the Portland Area
Wednesday, April 14
The Missoula Floods comprise one of the greatest natural history events in the Pacific Northwest.  From 15,000-18,000 years ago they carved and shaped the landscape that we live in. Scott Burns, ’Professor of Geology at Portland State University’ will talk about his updated version of the classic book, “Cataclysms on the Columbia”, which was originally written by John Eliot Allen and Marjorie Burns. Scott updated all of the science and expanded its presence while keeping Marjorie’s superb section on the development of the theory by J Harlen Bretz intact. You will enjoy this fast moving presentation of how science works and how these great floods happened.

New Hikes in Southern Oregon
Wednesday, April 21
Hiking guru William Sullivan takes on a slide show tour of the new trails he discovered while preparing his just-released third edition of “100 Hikes in Southern Oregon.” We’ll hike to little-known beaches on the Illinois River, explore the Darlingtonia fens of Eight Dollar Mountain, backpack to hidden lakes in the Trinity Alps of Northern California, and find out what new trails are being built in Crater Lake National Park. As always, expect anecdotes about geology, history, and plants along the way.