My Annual Favorite Street Sign

Scout Lake, 11-11-07

I'd heard that the weather in the mountains wouldn't be too bad (always a subjective notion), so off I went with a neighbor to see if the big storms last year had obliterated the road to the Scout Lake trailhead. The old logging road was potholed enough, but entirely driveable.

There is a very underused road partway up the main logging road, and that's where we began our hike. The weather was very grey, but the snow line was very clear and we were going to go above it. We loaded up on the usual extra clothing, food, H2O, gloves, and hats. And did we ever need them when we got to the lake at 3900' and the wind came down the side of the cirque and across the water! It must have easily been in the 20s with the windchill.

Talus covered much of this side of the lake. Lots of avalanche potential when heavy snow. And of course I'm standing on the icy, snowy rocks at the base of that talus in the bottom picture.The path parallels Hansen Creek and one would think that you could just walk along the banks, but no, there are some nice 10 - 20' dropoffs with waterfalls, tons of fallen trees and defoliated Devil's club (thorns wholely intact). Redtwig dogwood, brilliant green ferns, golden orange chantarelle mushrooms, and dark, dark green conifers made up most of the landscape until we got into the snow, and it all became the dark green equivalent of sepia and white. I imagine in a few weeks there will be at least a foot or two of snow, and white and the dark brown of any exposed trunks will dominate the visual field.

This little waterfall is just below the outlet of Scout Lake.

But the few inches of sticking snow that we walked through was plenty cold and Scout Lake was starting to freeze over with a slushy layer that rippled in places according to whatever was underneath it. A waterbug skimmed the surface and I can't imagine that it had much of a protective fat layer to hold it over the winter. The reflected trees and rocks on the glassy surface resembled a Fair Isle sweater pattern.

The hike up was 1 1/2 hours, only 1 hour down - pretty slippery mud along the way and several blowdowns to climb over. Oh, yes, and there was that 30' traverse over the creek balancing on 2 large trees...

This is only the last third of the crossing.

Coming down the road we had a clear view of the Granite Mt. lookout across I-90. A dusting of snow covered its bald top and I'm sure the wind coming down the I-90 valley kept it even colder than where we had been!

Lookout at the very top of Granite Mt.

Mt. Washington (Cascades) 10-27-07

Mt. Washington, elev 4800', north of the Chester Morse reservoir

Interior central Cascades

A very crazy week promised to end with a beautiful autumn weekend, so a fellow school nurse and I went out I-90 to Mt. Washington, west of the Snoqualmie Pass summit at exit 38. The drive started with considerable fog, especially in the urban valleys of Seattle and the Eastside, but farther east found a bright blue sky shining over the multicolored mountains. Mountain laurel, vine maple, birch, aspen, and oak were all just past their prime, but there was a dominant rust color that blended in so well with the evergreens.

Fog towards the west

It is a 5 mile hike to the summit, and somehow we missed the turnoff halfway up to the new trail (and nicely-done new trail, thank you to those responsible for that!) and took the old trail past a pond that had ice cracking between logs and branches that had with met the water due to wind or beaver. We came to a spot where the temperature dropped to the upper 30s - wooo, it got really nippy really fast - and the beginning of frost and ice on the trail. The trail itself is not as steep as some, but it was very rocky and wet leaves were both blessing and hindrance as they softened the path but made it awfully slick in places. After a couple of icy scrambles that left us considering how much care we would have to take to navigate the steep, curved frozen hills of dirt on the way down, we located the new, improved trail! It was a boulevard compared to what we'd been on, so we opted to continue to the top.

Beautiful Washington State granite

Ice

First snow and snowball of the season!

The autumn colors were not prevalent on this hike; most of the leaves had fallen or there simply weren't alot of eye-popping deciduous trees. The reason you go to Mt. Washington is for the views. Oh, my. One can see Mt. Rainier (a little cloud-covered, but right there on the near horizon), Mt. Baker over Mt. Teneriffe and Green Mtn., and Glacier Peak in the distance. For most of the morning there was fog over parts of Lake Washington and the nearby valleys, but it cleared up in the early afternoon. It was one gorgeous day for a hike!

Sami and the weather station, summit

Glacier Peak

Mt. Rainier (lower part of mountain)

Cartoons about the great outdoors

One of my favorite cartoons, Bliss, has touched on the subject of hiking recently, so I thought I'd post some of my favorite cartoons that deal with the great outdoors! If you love hiking like I do, I hope you find the irony of some of them amusing!

Mt. Rainier National Park - Skyline Loop, 9-8-07

Our hiking group couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day - blue skies, nice breeze, air warm enough to savor the outgoing remnants of summer. We could see the full southern views from our many perches along this 4 mile or so trail - Tatoosh Range, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood in Oregon, Mt. St. Helens, Nisqually River and Valley, and the very, very large Mt. Rainier. For more information, see the official website at http://www.nps.gov/mora

Skyline Loop starts at the Paradise Inn parking lot, but soon we left the construction and renovation sounds behind and walked along meadows, hearing Myrtle Falls (but not seeing it until later), and gaining new vantage point after vantage point. At one point we could look down the Nisqually Valley to see the bridge we crossed, but the enormous downed trees, stripped of bark by the elements of temperature, wind, and flood, and the similarly uprooted and tossed boulders didn't grab the attention at 5,600' that they did when we drove along the road on the way up. It's all in the perspective, my hiking mantra.

Mt. Rainier, 14, 410'

Close-up of section of Nisqually Glacier

Looking south along Nisqually ValleyMt. St. Helens
Mt. Adams

Rainier was front and center for most of this hike, and the western/southern sides that we were seeing had little snow on them. The Nisqually Glacier followed the contours of lava flows from long ago, and just east of there was a valley devoid of any green, so it was our professionally amateur scientific opinions that the area had, until quite recently, been covered by a glacier.

Just a few of the wildflowers were blooming or showing off their amazing seedpods - magenta and orange Indian paintbrush, windflower (a type of anemone) with its windblown beehive hairstyle strands of seeds, deep blue gentium, lavender asters. The trees were green, green, green, and the huckleberries once again were seriously depleted after our group grazed through.

Tasty little red berries that the happy botanist will have to give me the name for!

Geologic note from the happy academic geologist - the Cascade volcanoes were formed from very violent and explosive eruptions. This is because of the high levels of quartz, feldspar, and other minerals in the lava that would essentially clog the "veins" where magma collected, thus causing an incredible amount of pressure to build up until the eruption. Granitic magma. Rhyolite, pumice, and granite were all obvious by-products of long-ago eruptions. The last eruption of Rainier was around 150 years ago and by all prediction we are due for another major one. However, we felt no rumblings on this outing!

Critters - there were a few. We saw huge, ravens, a couple of marmots, many chipmunks, heard a hawk, and listened to the crackling sound of grasshoppers on the prowl.

Hoary marmot - this one gorged itself on someone's discarded trailmix, paying very little attention to these 2-legged creatures who were admiring its sumptous coat of black, grey, and red, and very sharp teeth.

This chipmunk had problems with boundaries. First he climbed on this hiker's arms, begged for food, and receiving none, scampered on up to his head. When it realized a handout was not in the making, it found its way to another hiker's backpack and unwittingly climbed into the side mesh pocket. This immediately caused a major chipmunk breakdown and it tried to paw its way out of the fabric cul de sac. It was eventually pulled out by the tail.

And here are more cool rocks and landscapes -

Mt. Rainier in background - I'm at about 6,800'

Approaching the part that resembled Mars

Rhyolite and pumice caught in ashfall, making a conglomerate of sorts

Happy academic geologist pointing out where a glacier probably smoothed one surface of this rock.

We felt like there should have been a glacier here; probably had been one here fairly recently because the soil in the area did not have much green in it. The going thought was that nitrogen had not had time to fix in that area, so, no plants to take in the nitrogen.

This hike was just a tiny fraction of the amazing sights around this mountain, so hopefully I'll have more opportunities to explore it more.

Mt. Dickerman - 8-25-07

The hike itself is a little steep with about a 4,000' elevation gain in 4 miles - the summit is a little over 5,700'.

Here are a few pictures of the hike to Mt. Dickerman in the North Central Cascades. It was a grey day, a little misty in places (which was refreshing), but limited view. The meadows had quite a few flowers and the entire trail had exponentially fewer huckleberries on it after we left... But there was a great deal of new flora that thrilled our professional botanist and various amateur botanists. I'll add more plant names later.

Pacific Yew

Taxus brevifolia

Closeup of yew and berry;

the cancer drug paclitaxel (Taxol)

is derived from this tree.

Happy botanist!

Columbia Lily

Western Columbine (orange flower)

föstudagur, 27 júlí

Sun Voyager

My last day in Iceland. It has been so much fun, such an adventure full of challenges and sights that had previously been on the outskirts - if even that close - of my imagination. The language filled in some important historic spaces in my own linguistic endeavors, the people were a wonderful expansion of the Seattle neighborhood that I live in that has a strong Scandinavian heritage, the geology was simply amazing for this armchair geologist, and the entire experience has been one of many tales, pictures, and memories. I'll close this part of the blog with some pictures I took that last day, but first - if you ever get the chance to step far outside the box of your existence, no matter how wide the boundaries of your current world, take it! You will never regret it.

Fishhooks that were several hundred years old

Þjóðminjasafn Íslands - National Museum of Iceland







Very large bell - 4'+ high - in Hallgrímskirkja
















Typical house with bright colors and flower boxes













Looking out from top of Hallgrímskirkja - NW











Looking NE...







SE...












SW








Modern wear and weaponry for children













Assorted dyed reindeer hides and sealskin









These are bagels?!!!




















BSÍ - central bus station









Last sunset in Reykjavík

Bless!