Weekend 17: Backpacking in Mt. Rainier National Forest

I spent weekend 16 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I spent an incredible 7 days in the beautiful fall weather of the Southwest, riding the bike around town (and on one occasion climbing to the Sandia Crest via the east side of the mountains 21 miles and 4500 ft. of elevation) and catching up with my aunts and the few people I still talk to from my former life. Oh, and the point of the trip; my oldest friend in the world, Stace, decided to get married (!), so of course I had to be there.

Alright, so weekend 17... Mt. Rainier. Jeremy and I had marked our calendars for the weekend after I returned from New Mexico. Originally, we had planned to hike anywhere there was good weather, most probably in the far east cascades. As luck would have it, the skies opened up again on Thursday and the forecast for the weekend called for the same. So we hit up Mt. Rainier National Park.

Entering the forest.

The first 5 miles of the hike were up a road that had been severely damaged by flooding. We walked about a mile up the road saying, "I don't know why they closed the road... I don't see any damage" before we nearly stumbled into this.

More damage. Everything was just totaled. At least they know where NOT to put roads now.

The first site of Rainier is always startling.

Jeremy on a badass bridge. At this time of year it really wasn't needed, as the river could be crossed quite easily by hopping rocks across it, but I imagine things can get pretty nasty up there in the spring time... hence the roads washing away.

Sunset at Dick's Creek Campground, approximately 9.5 miles into the woods. Since leaving the road 4.5 miles earlier, we hadn't seen a soul. The forest, at least the northwestern portion, was ours.

Early morning walking... we woke up around 6-7 am, packed up our bags with food, and started walking further into the woods to Mystic Lake. It was cold as all in the shadows, but we kept warm with a strong pace. Rainier just kept getting bigger and bigger.

A colder looking Mt. Rainier. Absolutely MASSIVE.

We reached Mystic Lake within 2 hours of waking up. We set up a breakfast camp just a few feet off of the lake waters and this stream that fed it. The cold temperatures at this time of year had killed all but the toughest of bugs, and even they had no energy to fly or bite us. It was warm, windless, and, well... perfect.

Our breakfast setup. I thieved my dad's hammock a while back, and I've been using it as a chair/bed on the trips this summer. Hella' comfortable. Breakfast was pitch black coffee and oatmeal, almonds, walnuts, bananna chips, and the freshest, crispiest, Braeburn apple I have ever cut into.

Washington Green. Seattle Summer Blue.

Napping before we hiked back to Dick's Creek Camp.

A VERY green waterfall we had passed on the way up.

The view from our campsite. The Carbon Glacier can be seen mid-picture on the left.

Standing in front of (but a few hundred feet away from) the Carbon Glacier.

Standing in front of (And about 10 feet away from) the Carbon Glacier. The sign said not to climb on the glacier or walk directly up to the glacier or crawl under the glacier (damn, they knew I was coming...). Why? Because the thing is always melting and rocks, stuck in it or on top of it for thousands of years are always falling like large and small bullets from all around the glacier front. The pops and cracks of falling stones hitting river-bed stones never ceases.

So, for the picture, I stood a few feed away from the ridiculous, I'm gonna get killed, danger zone, next to an enormous chuck of ice that had broken off the glacier... and then I ran up to the ice, reached my hand under it and pulled our a rock that probably hasn't seen the light of day for more than 15,000 years. Pretty sweet!

From there we hiked another 9 miles out of the woods to the car, making it back just before night fall.

Mount Rainier Panoramic.

With this trip, I had finished nearly every goal I had set for my Seattle adventures. All but one... to see Vancouver, British Columbia. Lucky for me, Alan Leung, a buddy of mine who had suffered with me through the ME program at Tech had planned to come out for 5 days including the following weekend...

Just in time for The FINAL Seattle Adventures.

Weekend 15: Museum of Glass, Tacoma Washington

Well, the plan early in the week was to go hiking around Rainier with Marat, one of my co-workers at Stirling, but as the week drew on the bad weather turned him off of the trip ("There's no use hiking there unless you get the views...", he said).

Damnit.

I had just bought a Whisperlight stove and I was really wanting to use it. I packed my bags to go on my own, but something made me change my mind. Going solo in to an area where the projected storms moving into the very area I planned to hike looked fierce... High altitude hiking meaning that there was a better chance of snow than rain... Whatever the reason(s), it/they jumped on the back of my rebellious side, pinned it to the ground and gagged it. All that was left and able to speak were my lesser known friends, Logic and Reason. They said to go see some culture instead of risking bodily harm. So I went to the Museum of Glass in Tacoma.

No cameras were allowed in the actual exhibit portion of the museum. Huge bummer, as there were some pieces in there that I would love for you all to see. One in particular: A HUGE spiderweb hung from the ceiling. The enormous drops of dew were crystal clear glass orbs. Pretty spectacular. The rest of it was a comparison of the different types of sculture that glass had been used for over the years.

In between going into the glass blowing area where people were, well, sculpting, I stopped off and made two pretty cool buttons (the kind you pin to yourself.... the annoying things that usually say "Vote for (Insert rich/hideously dishonest politicians name here)!" or "Eat Children NOT Animals!" Mine were cool though.

Ah yes, I then entered an area where I could use my camera. Sweet.

Heating up the piece in a big furnace.

Out comes the piece and out comes the blowtorch. Not quite sure what the torch does... I assume it is to keep the piece from cooling too much or too quickly.

After a while, they added soem color to it. And then removed it from the pole and put it in the back room. End of show.

Following the glass museum, I walked across a bridge extending from the museum to downtown Tacoma. Here, there was a ridiculously long display case filled with works of art from previous artists.

A stitch of the display case.

A closeup of some of the pieces.

Three of my favorite pieces on the wall.

Another amazing part of the bridge is a tunnel that you pass through. This tunnel has standard walls, but a spectacular ceiling. There are 24 clear glass panels, 3 spanning the width of the tunnel by 8 spanning the length, and above each panel there are thousands of beautiful bowls, and tubes and oddly shaped brightly colored glass sculptures.

I started taking pictures, but I figured that no single picture would do the roof justice. Instead, I took a single shot of every glass panel and assembled in the exact order as you would see them walking from the museum to the downtown area (when you look at the picture below from right to left).

Downtown Tacoma------------------------Glass Museum

After the bridge, I snapped a few pictures in the downtown area. It was an older downtown, and in many ways resembled Roanoke. When it began to rain I headed back to the car.

Before I turned and went home, the engineering geek in my started screaming:

"If you do not go to see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, I am going to give you a sever lashing."

So I went.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I assume they built the second one using a factor of safety approaching 25 or 30 (exaggerating here) and probably took into account both aerodynamics and resonance effects upon the second bridges construction. (For those who don't know about the Tacoma Narrows from physics class, check it out online)

And that was it for the weekend. No, wait, I did stop at Target and to get a beard shaver. Though I lack all ability to grow a beard, my body is alarmingly quick to sprout scraggly whiskers resembling singed pubic hair... Grandpa, if you're reading this, did I just go to far?... So it was nice to clean up the mug prior to my departure to New Mexico for Stacy's wedding the following Wednesday.

The Ehhhhnd.

Weekend 14: Backpacking in the Olympic Range

Another time warp, another two weekends gone between this and my previous post. Weekends 12 and 13 were spent in Roanoke seeing friends, family, concerts, drunk nights, the first days of VA fall, etc... I caught the concert for Virginia Tech on Thursday. I bought my sister her first LEGAL beer on the following Wednesday at 12 AM (i.e. Thursday, her 21st birthday). I drank too much at Kristin's party that Friday and paid for it harder than you can imagine on Saturday... Then there was Erin's birthday/goodbye party. And then I was off to the airport headed back to Seattle. Talk about whirlwind.

So, the Olympics backpacking trip; it was sweeeeeet. I had wanted to go to the peninsula all summer to hit the hills, but bad weather and the fact that I was constantly busy doing other things kept me away. Well, prior to my VA trip, one of the guys who had recently re-moved into the house said he was interested in going, so we set it up. The plan was to depart early on Saturday, catch the Edmons Ferry to Kingston, drive to Port Angeles and from there take the road leading up Hurricane Ridge deep into the mountains... and then hike even deeper.

Trees were only just showing signs of falls presence.

We found ourselves on top of Hurricane Ridge by 11 AM that morning. This is looking out from the ridge into the mountains where we would soon be hiking. The cloud cover is quite typical of the Olympics. In the later parts of the season, partly clouded skies do wander in from time to time, but rarely are the peaks exposed to a fully open section of blue sky.

We were on the trail by 12 and hiked into Badger valley, around a big ridge and up to Grand Lake.

I found this little thing on the trail, near frozen. I doubt very much that it lived much longer with the weather as cold as it was.

The view from our campsite at Grand Lake. It was not warm, and I had forgotten my polar fleece at the house... I am an (Idiot, Putz, Moron, all of the above). Take your pick. In essence, we got to camp, set up a tent, grabbed some food, and I crawled into the sleeping bag for the night. The temps were dropping quickly, and by nightfall it was hitting freezing and raincoats don't provide much insulation.

Nearly the same pic as above but in the morning when frost was covering everything. We jumped out of the tent, through on shoes, grabbed a few cliff bars and started rockin' up the mountain to Grand Pass trying to get out of the freezing shadow and into the sunlight. We warmed up quickly, and were soon shedding layers.

I like mirror images. What can I say.

I caught this just as the sun crept high enough over the peak to cast light on the flower but not melt its frost covering.

Out of the Shadow, into the shadow, out of the shadow, into the shadow. And so it went as we hiked further up the valley, ultimately to Grand Peak, the pinnacle of which is shown in the upper left of this picture.

The Olympics!! We were extremely lucky to catch such a clear view so late in the year. From the peaks up there, you just feel like... well, like the world you are from has disappeared. Grand was one of the most peaceful and secluded spots I saw this summer.

Mt. Rainier some 150 miles off in the distance. Did I mention that it was a VERY clear day?

Yes, that is me. Yes, I am wearing the "Emperor's New Clothes". FREEDOM.

(Mt. Olympus is the snow covered peak in the distance and to my left.)

Taken as we were hiking back down the valley to our camp to have breakfast.

One of my favorite pictures of the summer.

After getting back to the camp, Jeremy and I broke out the stove and boiled up some water for coffee, tea and oatmeal. We then spent the next 2 hours laying around in the sun reading, dosing, and just taking it all in.

We then broke camp and headed up a very steep switch-backed ridge up to the final ridgeline that we followed the final mile or so back to the car.

The ridgeline.

From the parking lot, a panoramic in the direction of where we had been.

I pulled off on the way down Hurricane Ridge and snapped this. That is Victoria, BC, where I met up with DK and spent my second weekend in the NW.

Jeremy had refused to eat for nearly 3 hours by the time we made it back to Port Angeles, for he did not want to spoil his raging desire for pancakes. Unfortuntely, P.A. doesn't have an IHOP, and both diners we checked weren't serving breakfast at 6PM on a Sunday. The guy at the first establishment was a real jerk about filling us in on that information, and if I recall correctly, the second woman called us sweetie and looked genuinely disappointed that she couldn't help us... We decided that the Jerk would not be getting our money and that the nice, sympathetic woman would.

It was one of the best decisions of the trip.

We each got the special: A HUGE plate PILED with delicious roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn and the softest rolls you could imagine. The meal was started off with a bowl of fresh clam chowder and finished with a bowl of Tapioca pudding. We very nearly needed to be rolled out of the restaurant. It wasn't Homeplace, but it was damn close.

The moon on the rise.

We left Port Angeles full of delicious food, well worked out from the hiking, and extremely pleased with the location, the weather... well, the whole trip in general. We immediately decided that another trip was necessary, and we marked a weekend, three weeks in the future, off for it. We didn't know it at the time, but we would find outselves backpacking in some of the most rare and beautiful weather the Pac. North West could ever provide in Mid-October... in heart of Mt. Rainier National Forest.

But more on that later...

Weekend 11: Mountain Biking in Bend Oregon

I spent weekends 9 and 10 in Cape May New Jersey with Dan and his family. The trip was a blast, but it was in NJ, not Seattle, so I'm not posting the pictures.

For Labor Day weekend, Jared and I headed out to Bend Oregon for 3 days of epic mountain biking. Bend is located in Central Oregon, and the climate is very similar to New Mexico. With bright blue skies with only a few clouds far off in the horizon, we rode our asses off around waterfalls, lakes, and large calderas. At night, we either hit the pubs in Bend (there are 8 there, more per capita than anywhere else in the US), or we kicked back at picnic grounds where we waited until dark to lay out a tent (for Jared) or a sleeping pad open to the stars (for Me).

Day 1: Pictures

I believe this is Mt. Bachelor. Central Oregon is very dry, and when it snows it is very powdery, similar Utah. Beautiful Skiing/Snowboarding from what I understand.

This is the waterfall we circled. Sweet.

Me next to the most ridiculously ripped human being on the planet.

Day 2:

I had been taking pictures of these trees when we pulled into this "camp ground" (i.e. Parking lot for a boat launch) the night before. Those pictures didn't turn out so well. This one however, I just love. It is that fresh morning light at sunrise with that beautiful blue sky that just gets me.

This little bastard kept getting into Jared's car, my backpack, my almonds, our everything on a quest to find free food. I asked him to stop, just for a second, to pose for this picture and he obliged.

The ride on Day 2 started off in a burned out section of forest. It was really just cool looking. Fire really screws up the land initially, but is beautful to see how the land recovers.

Maybe half way into the trip (we were doing a perimeter ride of the lake) I stopped to take this. It was one of the few phot0-stitches that worked that day. But it worked well.

Hanging out at that lake after the ride. The water was quite refreshing.

The third day of riding ended up being quite interesting. About a mile into the ride, Jared realized he had forgotten his helmet. He told me to continue on up the mountain and wait for him where the turnoff to the trail was. I did so, but I never actually saw the trail... so I rode to the top of the mountain. It was a hard climb on the fire road, but extremely well worth if for 360 panoramics I got at the top. Talk about breathtaking.

Anyway, after I screwed around up top for too long, I turned around and found the trail about a half mile down. I waited there for a few minutes and finally came to the conclusion that while I had been at the top, Jared had probably just headed on down the trail thinking that was the way I had gone. So I rode on.

I figured I would never catch him, so I took the invite to join a group of 3 other rides from the Bend area, all teachers and all on an adventure racing team. It was a blast riding with them, and by the end of the ride they had me convinced that it was my destiny to move to Bend. Man, the people you can meet on a trail are just incredible. And their ideas really can be brilliant.

We rode together for the rest of the day... pretty casual. On the last downhill, I believe all three of them ate-shit... two endoed (a not so fun front flip over the handlebars) and one had his wheel wash out. We met down at the parking lot, congratulated eachother on a great ride, got eachothers information, and said goodbye for the time being... until I move out there.

Day 3:

Looking out from the top. The views were just HUGE.

Looking down on the lava flow and the two lakes of the caldera. This ride consisted of following the ridgeline of the caldera from right to left in this picture. The pictures below are looking back towards this mountain. In essence they were taken about at the 1/3 and 2/3 points.

Looking back on the lake and the first peak we (the triumvirate and I) climbed. It was very strange how the trail went from pumice gravel to red volcanic rock gravel without any transition section. This was taken from a bald spot covered in the red gravel.

Again, looking back on the original peak we had climbed. This was on the fastest, straightest, most amazing descent I have ever done on the bike. It was blinding fast.

On the way home, the sky was just phenominal, perhaps my favorite sky of the summer. There was a fire somewhere in Oregon, and the smoke had swept across the sky to form a big black strip. The sun was just about to dip behind this strip, which worked well with the camera.

This is taken from the road. I had made Jared stop... he chatted on the phone and I snapped about 1800 pictures. I tried to get just the sky in a few, but they didn't stitch up for some reason. No worried.

Mt. Hood is FAR off to the right in this picture. I have no idea what the volcanoes to the left are.

The pictures above were taken as we were driving along into the sunset. They just look fake to me... as if I took a picture of a sky and overlaid a silhouette on top of it. Pretty cool, I think.