Allan Brettman

The trip around Mount Hood on the Timberline Trail got off to a sunny start, stopping at a Zigzag Canyon overlook. By ALLAN BRETTMAN The Oregonian | OregonLive Twenty years ago, I first backpacked the Timberline Trail at Mount Hood and have gone back a half-dozen times since. Each hike had its own bits of drama. On the first trip, I hiked the 40-mile route around the mountain in two days (not recommended) and arrived at Timberline Lodge in the dark greeted by an early September sno

It didn't take long for my "uh oh" moment to arrive. Aerobatics pilot Elias Corey had spent close to an hour Wednesday morning at Hillsboro Airport reviewing the ins, outs and capabilities of his two-seat Extra Flugzeugbau EA300. He did so because one of those seats would be his and the other would be mine on a flight near the airport to demonstrate the aircraft's and pilots' acrobatic capabilities. Yes, pilots' -- as in plural, possessive, hold onto something. When I arrived at the airport f

When a Portland police officer told him to stop 15 years ago, Jeremy Christian pulled out his gun. In response, the officer shot three times, hitting Christian once in his right cheek. Officers converged on Christian. Lying on the ground, he said he didn't intend to shoot them. He meant to shoot himself. Jeremy Joseph Christian has spent much of his adult life saying or doing something provocative, unsettling or, ultimately, horrifying, interviews and a review of court documents show. That

He had a massive bruise on the back of his right leg, source unknown. He had a cut on his left pinky finger, source known. The blast had thrown him through the glass front door about a dozen feet into the Pizzicato on Northwest 23rd Avenue, where rubble surrounded him on the floor. The door frame lay next to him. "So I was thinkin': I think I'm ok. I didn't feel like I'd blacked out. I didn't have a concussion or anything. So, I started to get up, and I could hear the guys calling out on the co

Traffic stopped and Chrystal Nelson pulled over on the forest side entrance to the St. Johns Bridge. She sensed something was wrong and got out of her vehicle. Nelson isn't sure why she started running that October day. She's not a runner. But she ran past the parked cars and the Toyota 4Runner, and she ran to the man lying in the road next to his handbuilt Merlin bike. Nelson knelt next to Mitch York. His blue eyes were fixed, a leg was shaking and blood pooled around his head. The licensed

I like to think I was bicycle commuting before it was cool. This was long ago, before titanium frames, carbon footprints and messenger bags -- at a time, youngsters, when the only fixie you'd find was on an oval racing track. It also occurred at a time when common sense and comfortable shoes hadn't fully taken over my life, as this commute wasn't some single digit-mile jaunt across town. No sir. This was a bicycle commute on the shoulder of an interstate highway. Which I'm pretty sure was leg

In 1945, America faced a pivotal year in World War II as the Allies accepted Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8. Three months later, on Aug. 6, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, followed three days later by an atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The U.S. and its allies accepted Japan's surrender on Sept. 2. Those events in August meant that thousands of U.S. Army troops at Camp Shelby, a military base next to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, would not be training for a ground