Van Tilburg says he’s completed about 60 of the 100 trips in the book. While some people might be intimidated by the extreme tenor of them, Van Tilburg says the book is for two types of people: “Somebody who doesn’t do a lot of adventuring, but has time, resources and money. And the other is an outdoor adventurer already doing trips who needs more ideas.”

Oregon makes an appearance in the book; Van Tilburg has included windsurfing and kiteboarding in the Columbia River Gorge, Cycle Oregon and what he calls the Mt. Hood triathlon: climbing to top, biking around it and running around it. “That’s not for everybody,” he concedes, “and you don’t have to do it all in one trip.”

In addition to holding a day job as wilderness and travel medicine physician, Van Tilburg has written “Mountain Rescue Doctor” and “Backcountry Ski and Snowboard Routes in Oregon” as well as articles for National Geographic Adventure, Backcountry Magazine, Portland Monthly and Outside Magazine’s blog.

Though his wanderlust has taken him around the world, Van Tilburg finds plenty to keep him in Oregon. “The thing about Oregon is that we have a little slice of everything,” he says. Whether it’s skiing, surfing, mountaineering or kayaking you are after, “we have such a varied landscape. We can do almost everything here.”

When he isn’t working or writing, you can find him at one of his favorite Oregon spots — the Oregon Coast, the McKenzie River Trail or at home in Hood River.

Can-do: Grab a six-pack of Oregon craft beer in cans. Pack it in, drink it up and carry it out. Lightweight cans are easy to carry, chill fast and don’t break. (Brewers say canned beer keeps better than bottles too.) Look for offerings from Caldera Brewing Company (pale ale, amber and IPA), Fort George Brewery (lager, wit, stout and more), GoodLife Brewing Company (IPA and pale ale) and Fearless Brewing Company (Scottish ale, red ale and IPA) among others.

Get sili: Fine drink deserves appropriate drink ware. That’s the thinking behind Silipints, the Bend company creating silicone pints, half-pints, shorties and shot glasses. Lightweight and unbreakable, they add a touch of class to your campsite bar.

Bottled up: Naked Winery in Hood River designed their Outdoor Vino specifically for the recreation-minded. Rambling Red and Wanderlust White come in BPA-free, light, plastic, recyclable and reusable bottles with screw caps, so you don’t even need a corkscrew. Just throw it in your pack and hit the trail.

Inside the box: When only Willamette Valley pinot noir will do, look to Vista Hills Vineyard’s boxed wine. The three-liter boxes of 2010 Foreman Pinot Noir hold the equivalent of four bottles, and are available through the Dayton winery. (Call or email to purchase.)

Cup overflowing: Copa de Vino in The Dalles offers cabernet, chardonnay, merlot, pinot gris, riesling, white zinfandel and moscato. The single-serving, recyclable and reusable cups are available at grocery stores around the state and the company’s Historic Sunshine Mill in The Dalles.

Editor’s note: Alcoholic beverages are allowed at most Oregon State Parks, U.S. Forest Service areas and BLM lands. For questions about specific locations, check the website of the overseeing entity.

Peterson’s Gallery and Chocolatier opened in November of 2011 and features a different local artist each month. Visitors can view artwork while enjoying a cup of drinking chocolate (made to order from milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate or a combination) and host of confections — chocolate bars, chocolate squares, truffles, brittles, caramels and more.

“I make chocolate every day. I know it is fresh. I know when people are eating it it’s exactly how I want it,” Peterson says. She enjoys experimenting with new flavors and decorating each piece. “The process of making them is really special.”

Art is a personal element of the business for the family, too. Peterson herself specializes in painting and printmaking, and her brother-in-law, Shawn, is a sculptor. “We really wanted a space for us to be able to show our own work and show the artists of the area,” she says.

Until you can get out to Baker City yourself, here’s a bit of chocolate inspiration to meditate on.

Alyssa Peterson’s Top Five Signature Chocolates
1. Coffee Caramel: A dark chocolate coffee-infused ganache and soft caramel dipped in dark chocolate
2. Vanilla Creame: Butter ganache dipped in milk chocolate or molded dark chocolate
3. Strawberry Pate de Fruit: Jellie made from fresh seasonal strawberries in molded white or dark chocolate
4. Earl Gray and Orange Zest Dark Chocolate: Earl Gray-infused ganache dipped in dark chocolate
5. Hazelnut Gianduja: Hazelnut butter with a milk or dark chocolate dipped in milk or dark chocolate

Also look for the Pendleton Whiskey Caramel, which Peterson created for a local customer. Visit the gallery website and Facebook page for upcoming shows and to see what new treats Peterson has created.

To capture this scene, I have to steady my horse Tecumseh, who behaves pretty good today. Try shooting photos from the saddle and you’ll know what I mean. I need my telephoto lens almost at 200 mm to capture the two riders. They are nicely back lit by the sun, and my Nikon D300s captures the dynamic range pretty well. I shoot several exposures to manually blend the backdrop with the riders later in Photoshop. The danger is to lose the volcano due to overexposure. The new models like the D600 now capture a broader dynamic range, but at that time I had to work with what I had.

The shot only took a few seconds. The image stays with me as a remembrance to a perfect day out west. Oregon still has these places in abundance, and I love shooting all corners of this beautiful state.

Editor’s note: “Capturing Oregon” brings you the stories of Oregon photographers as they traverse the state to capture its beauty. To see more of Christian’s photography, visit www.ccophoto.com.

For the month of June, you can have just that. Enjoy delicious and affordable summer menus with Portland Dining Month — brought to you by the nice folks at Downtown Portland.

Here’s how it works: Go to Downtown Portland’s Facebook page. There you can browse the 90 local restaurants offering three-course dinner menus — an appetizer, entrée and dessert — for just $29. Spin the “Wheel of Deliciousness” to get a recommendation for your next best meal.

You can also enter to win one of three $50 gift certificates, awarded weekly, or the grand prize — Dinner for a Year, a cache of gift certificates valued at $3,500.

Portland Dining Month is sponsored by OpenTable. For every reservation booked on OpenTable through the Portland Dining Month website, the Downtown Marketing Initiative will make a donation to the Oregon Food Bank.

For a complete list of participating restaurants and for your turn at the tasty wheel, visit
http://downtownportland.org/dining-month/

Ben Jacobsen, a tall, affable 37-year-old, founded the company in 2011 and moved to the Netarts location, a former oyster farm, in December 2012. Sitting in his office on a typically drizzly spring morning and wearing a blue ball cap, sneakers and cargo pants, Jacobsen explains the company’s beginning, which almost sounds accidental. The Northwest native had returned to Portland after business school in Scandinavia and noticed that the burgeoning food scene had a notable absence: good salt. “Oregon had become leader in food culture and economy. But the one thing that transcends the whole experience is salt, and that wasn’t here,” he says.

At the time, Jacobsen was between jobs and had been making finishing salt as a hobby, in much the same way brewers start at home. His girlfriend encouraged him to attend a product fair at New Seasons Market. When he offered them a taste of his salt on a freshly plucked tomato still warm from the garden, “they said, ‘We love it and we want a case for every store. How soon can you get it to us?’” Since then, Jacobsen has moved quickly from making salt at home to hauling water over the Coast Range to KitchenCru, Portland’s co-op commercial kitchen and culinary incubator, to now establishing this 4,000-square-foot facility in Netarts.

Good salt starts with good water. The Netarts location offers clean, well-filtered seawater that’s high in salinity and low in turbidity. The next determinant is “the process we take to coax great flavor out of the salt,” he says. In the Netarts kitchen, large pots boil away on a stovetop under a large stainless steel hood, throwing steam into the air. The boiling process reduces water volume and removes calcium and magnesium, which taste bitter. The water is then moved to evaporative pans, at which point large flakes sink to the bottom. They are harvested by hand and transferred to a drying room, saunalike on this chilly day. I ask Jacobsen for the exact temperature, but the specifics are proprietary. “Very warm and very dry,” he says with a grin. The result is a delicate flake with the appearance of shaved ice and a clean briny taste.

Jacobsen has received high praise from national food writers in publications like The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Huffington Post. He’s also won the hearts of chefs at some of Portland’s best restaurants, including St. Jack, Paley’s Place, Ned Ludd and Clarklewis. “It yields to the fingertips and tongue very easily. Chefs like it because it is very easy to control the application,” he says.

Jacobsen’s salt has led to some delightful Oregonian collaborations — like the Xocolatl chocolate bar he makes with Portland chocolatier Xocolatl de Davíd, ice creams at Salt & Straw and salt infused with wine from Grochau Cellars — an amber pinot blanc salt and a rosy pinot noir version. You can buy Jacobsen Salt at retailers like New Seasons Market, Zupan’s Markets and Made in Oregon. For those who prefer the cooking of fine chefs, stay tuned. Jacobsen has a dinner series in the works, which will feature top chefs from Portland, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle.

Jacobsen, fully submerged in the details of growing a small business, shows no signs of fatigue. “I love it. That’s what keeps me going. There’s something very human and very satisfying about making a product that people enjoy on a daily basis.”

Farman never thought she’d end up with a career in kiteboarding, nor did she dream she’d be feted in the national media as a hero for cancer survivors, but that’s how things turned out.

In that marketing job, Farman learned to kiteboard and even competed a bit. Eventually, she started her own kiteboarding school, Cascade Kiteboarding. Then in 2006, the unthinkable happened. Her brother Scott, also a great outdoors enthusiast, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia. He passed away at the age of 19. Her brother’s death motivated Farman to get involved in fundraising for cancer survivors, and she decided she wanted to focus her efforts on teenagers and young adults. “We wanted to come up with an outlet for this age group.” She now runs a nonprofit called Athletes 4 Cancer, which raises money for and puts on outdoor camps for teenagers and young adults who have cancer.

Farman is inspired to action by the unique needs of this population. Young people take their health for granted and don’t expect to spend their teens or 20s fighting cancer. Like Farman’s brother, they are charging along with school, work and life. So by the time they get a diagnosis, they are often in the late stages of illness. And traditional cancer support groups tend to be geared toward older adults, who make up larger numbers.

At Athletes 4 Cancer adventure camps — where survivors learn to surf, stand-up paddle or kayak — they have a chance to connect with each other. Farman also believes they benefit from the healing forces of the natural world. She says the physical, mental and emotional challenges that come from learning a new sport help the participants gain a special kind of confidence and resilience, which can only help them in their fight for health and in life in general. “They leave with a completely different outlook,” she says. “Being active and being in the outdoors is healing for everyone.”

In September 2012, Self magazine honored Farman with the “Women Doing Good Award” for her support of young cancer survivors.

Look for Tonia Farman at Athletes 4 Cancer events around Oregon, such as Kiteboarding 4 Cancer July 12-14, 2013, or out on the water in Hood River.

The thought of stopping at the nearby Painted Hills and walking through the same landscape that ancient cousins of elephants, camels, rhinoceroses and sabertooth tigers had was enticing. But with a full day ahead of us, we would have blown right past it but for the insistence of a very passionate local resident.

“We’d really love to, but we don’t have time,” we said.

“You must make time,” she said.

And the way she said it, we knew we didn’t have a choice. So we drove six miles out of our way, checking our watches and grumbling under our collective breath. Then we stepped out of the car and were absolutely blown away.

Where were we? On another planet, but right here in Oregon. The bare earth undulated in folds of scarlet, ochre and yellow by turns. In the golden light of late afternoon, the sunset hues intensified. Tiny birds flitted past and alighted in the fragrant sage, their twittering an otherworldly music in the deepening dusk.

The insistent local, now our friend, beamed as she saw us all absorbing the beauty of the place. She knew we’d go home and try to tell people about it, and end up explaining that you just have to go see for yourself. Here’s how:

Ancient History: The John Day Fossil Beds National Monument comprises three separate locations: The Sheep Rock Unit, The Painted Hills Unit and the Clarno Unit. Each site has short trails to dramatic views of colorful rock formations. The Sheep Rock Unit, home to the Paleontology Center, is between the towns of Dayville and Kimberly on Highway 19 two miles north of Highway 26. The Painted Hills Unit is nine miles northwest of the town of Mitchell, with the entrance six miles north of Highway 26 on Burnt Ranch Road. Find the Clarno Unit on Highway 218 about 20 miles west of the town of Fossil. All three sites will give you a view into the earth’s biography through the plant and animal fossils and rock layers.

Recent History: East of the fossil beds in the town of John Day, the Kam Wah Chung State Heritage Site is an imperative stop for a look at the more recent past. Walk through a veritable time capsule of the late 19th and early 20th century in this small building, which first opened in the late 1800s and served as a Chinese apothecary, general store and social hub for what was once the third largest China town in the country. The store was also the home to its proprietors, Ing “Doc” Hay and Lung On, who lived here for more than 50 years.

Eat: Try the Oxbow Restaurant & Saloon in Prairie City for lunch and nearby Roan Coffee Company for a caffeinated pick-me-up. The Snaffle Bit Dinner House in John Day serves up a tasty steak dinner. (Call for hours of operation.)

Sleep: The Historic Hotel Prairie in Prairie City first opened in 1910 and underwent a complete renovation in 2008. The charming two-story brick hotel puts you in the heart of town. In the town of Mitchell, the Painted Hills Vacation Rentals offer two charming guest cottages, each with a private garden and full kitchen.