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World traveler drawn to own backyard.

Article Excerpt
Byline: BEEN THERE By Jim Boyd The Register-Guard

Traveler: Attorney Jim Harrang, 80, of Eugene, has had a lifetime of outdoor adventures.

He served in World War II as one of the ski troops with the 10th Mountain Division in Italy. After he returned in 1945, he did a lot of mountaineering in the Oregon Cascades and, while going to law school, worked two summers as a seasonal ranger in the Grand Tetons and a third as a seasonal ranger at Yosemite National Park.

Harrang said he's climbed all the peaks in Oregon and Washington, including the first winter ascents of Three Fingered Jack, Mount Washington and Mount Jefferson. He's trekked in Nepal and Peru, climbed Mount Elbrus in Russia, hiked up Kilimanjaro in Africa and made various trips into the mountains of British Columbia.

He's also a whitewater rafting enthusiast who has rafted the rivers of Oregon and Idaho and gone twice through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. His last rafting excursion was a 10-day trip in 2003 on the Kongokut River on Alaska's North Slope.

Favorite destination: "I think the trek in Peru was an outstanding trip," Harrang said.

He explained that it was a group trek outfitted by Mountain Travel Sobek and not the private party trek that was his normal experience.

"We went into northern Peru and...

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