Tom Rankin
Well-known member
We spent June 22nd - July 3rd in the great Northwest. And GREAT it is! 
I'll mostly skip the non-hiking related stuff, but suffice it to say that we saw
A Ranger was nice enough to take our picture here. (note the paved trail!)
There are tons of wild flowers, here is a Lavender Trillium.
We drove up to Paradise camp, which had 11 FEET of snow! White Mountain Hikers will recognize this fellow!
We started hiking up towards Muir Camp, but stopped at Panorama Point, where we fed this cute little guy! And on the way back down, we saw a Marmot, right on the snow field! We had a great butt slide down from Pano Pt. to the plain below!
The next day we set out for Mt. Saint Helens. We could see it clearly from the Visitor's Center, but the best was yet to come! Driving up, you get a sense of what it must have been like, seeing the river bed 30 years later. We kept going and got this view:
And then from the Johnson Observatory:
We also walked around Coldwater Lake. This lake was formed by the eruption! It's spectacularly beautiful.
There are young saplings, and flowers everywhere, amidst the rotting trees that were blasted by the wrath of the volcano.
We also saw a double rainbow around the Sun!
The next day, we visited the area of Mt. Hood, Oregon's tallest Mountain. All three of these mountains are active volcanoes, and you can see steam and sulfurous gases rising from small vents. We did not climb Mt. Hood at all, but we Climbed 'Tom Dick and Harry' Mountain, which is only about 7 miles away. It has 3 (actually more) sub peaks, all about 5,000' high.We passed by Mirror Lake, but the mirror effect was lacking.
It kept clearing though and we got a pretty good shot, with a standing wave cloud formation:
While heading to Dick, Laurie was frightened by a 'snake' that turned out to be a small lizard.
We could also see Mt. Jefferson in the distance.
One more Hood shot.
I could post hundreds more shots! The weather cooperated quite well, the temps were very mild, and we had almost zero wind. While there was a lot of snow on all 3 peaks, it was generally hard enough to walk on top of. We brought no 'winter' gear, not even poles, and we never really missed any of it. But you definitely need sunglasses and sunblock!
This was a great trip, I highly recommend it!
For a parting shot, we got this pic of Rainier and one of his buddies, from the Jet, as we left Seattle. It was cloudy when we took off, but as we climbed, voila!
And oh yeah, most of those brewpubs were fantastic!
I'll mostly skip the non-hiking related stuff, but suffice it to say that we saw
- Whales
- Visited the Space Needle
- The Seattle Science Museum
- The Pacific Ocean
- an Amazing Rose Garden
- the Mensa Convention in Portland
- and 30 Brewpubs!
A Ranger was nice enough to take our picture here. (note the paved trail!)
There are tons of wild flowers, here is a Lavender Trillium.
We drove up to Paradise camp, which had 11 FEET of snow!
White Mountain Hikers will recognize this fellow! We started hiking up towards Muir Camp, but stopped at Panorama Point, where we fed this cute little guy! And on the way back down, we saw a Marmot, right on the snow field! We had a great butt slide down from Pano Pt. to the plain below!
The next day we set out for Mt. Saint Helens. We could see it clearly from the Visitor's Center, but the best was yet to come! Driving up, you get a sense of what it must have been like, seeing the river bed 30 years later. We kept going and got this view:
And then from the Johnson Observatory:
We also walked around Coldwater Lake. This lake was formed by the eruption! It's spectacularly beautiful.
There are young saplings, and flowers everywhere, amidst the rotting trees that were blasted by the wrath of the volcano.
We also saw a double rainbow around the Sun!
The next day, we visited the area of Mt. Hood, Oregon's tallest Mountain. All three of these mountains are active volcanoes, and you can see steam and sulfurous gases rising from small vents. We did not climb Mt. Hood at all, but we Climbed 'Tom Dick and Harry' Mountain, which is only about 7 miles away. It has 3 (actually more) sub peaks, all about 5,000' high.We passed by Mirror Lake, but the mirror effect was lacking.
It kept clearing though and we got a pretty good shot, with a standing wave cloud formation:
While heading to Dick, Laurie was frightened by a 'snake' that turned out to be a small lizard.
We could also see Mt. Jefferson in the distance.
One more Hood shot.
I could post hundreds more shots! The weather cooperated quite well, the temps were very mild, and we had almost zero wind. While there was a lot of snow on all 3 peaks, it was generally hard enough to walk on top of. We brought no 'winter' gear, not even poles, and we never really missed any of it. But you definitely need sunglasses and sunblock!
This was a great trip, I highly recommend it!
For a parting shot, we got this pic of Rainier and one of his buddies, from the Jet, as we left Seattle. It was cloudy when we took off, but as we climbed, voila!
And oh yeah, most of those brewpubs were fantastic!
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