Almost too good to bear

What a day! Six Senior Trailblazers started up to hike the Keep Cool trail and decided, once we saw it had been raining during the night and early morning, to change our destination to Hannegan Pass, since it's more open and has better footing. The change was serendipitous, to say the least. The clouds were low, as you can see here, and it was on the cool side. This hike can be very uncomfortable in full sun, but we started out with a nice cloud cover and no rain. We didn't know how high we would get before running into snow, but we decided to give ourselves a chance to at least reach the pass.

I was amazed by the profusion of summer flowers: lots of Indian paintbrush, tiger lilies, lupine, penstemon, thistles, and more. We hiked in relative comfort as we gained altitude, and the snow was amazingly absent until just before Hannegan Pass. Last year, we went up to the pass on August 11 and there was much more snow, as you can see here. However, there was still a bit of snow today.

Hannegan Pass

Once we gained the pass, we thought it might be fun to head up toward the peak, without having any idea that we might actually go that far, considering the time factor and the snow. We noticed, however, as we headed upwards, that the skies actually began to clear.

Peggy looks like she's standing on the edge of the world. Doesn't it feel like it's getting warmer? Yes, it was. The blue skies continued to come and go, and the view just got better and better.

Considering our low expectations for the day, thinking we would have low clouds, little view, and perhaps a bit of rain, as the day went on we got more and more excited and had some trouble making ourselves turn around and head back down. Get a load of this scene with glacier lilies. Remember they don't last long, just a few days or a week after the snow melts.

We finally did decide to head down, after we had covered almost five miles, meaning that we would have an almost ten-mile day. I asked Al to take a picture of this week's contingent of female Trailblazers, and he did. I offer you this to show that we were all having the time of our lives.

Me, Peggy, Linda, Karen, Amy

And then, on our way down, we heard from some other hikers that a BEAR had been sighted just below us, and to keep our eyes out for him. Someone knew it was an adult male, and sure enough, we saw him!

Yes, there he was, snacking away on whatever it is that bears eat. He saw us, I'm sure, but he was unconcerned as he continued making his way through the open field. I was thrilled to get this picture. After a short while we decided that maybe we should tiptoe away (he was about 75 yards away from us and looks closer through my telephoto). As we headed back down to our cars, the skies continued to clear, and we got a wonderful view of Ruth Mountain.

It was one of the best days I've had (I know I'm saying that a lot lately), but it's true. We didn't think today's hike would be one that we will remember forever. It was. We covered almost ten miles and 2,600 feet up and down. Sometimes when your expectations are lowered, and you go anyway, you end up with a day that is, well, almost too good to BEAR!
:-)

Fourth of July a little late

Me, Holly, Al, Peggy, Mary

Our first "extra" hike of the season was yesterday, Monday, when eight of us headed south to the Fourth of July trailhead. These hikes take us farther away from home and give us a chance to have dinner together before heading back. Only five of us finished it, however, which makes a story all by itself. Here are the five of us, in a picture taken by a fellow hiker: Al surrounded by this newest group of "gal pals."

We had a fairly new (to us) hiker who ended up having some difficulty with the trail, so Jonelle and Steve, who was driving, took him back to Bellingham, and Mary came back with us. Three can fit rather snugly in Al's back seat, so it wasn't too crowded, plus we are all fairly close friends. Holly is back in town for a short while, and Mary joins us on our hikes occasionally. We made it to the best view, which is situated a little below the pass. There are no summit-type views, but the mountains were really pretty.

I think this is Snowfield Peak

These mountains are fairly high. This hike starts at a low elevation and only gets to 3,600 feet at the pass, giving us a total up-and-down of somewhere around 2,600 feet. Since the first part of the trail is fairly flat, the last two miles up are STEEP. I think this hike should be reclassified from "moderate" to "hard." The weather was almost perfect, with a light breeze and temperature in the 70s. As we sweated uphill, that breeze was sublime and made it much more comfortable, although we were in shaded forest most of time.

Diablo Lake from the overlook

Before we headed to Marblemount for dinner, Al insisted that we take a short trip to the overlook above Diablo Lake, which is this strange blue-green color. One of the informative plaques told me this:

As glaciers in the surrounding high country slowly wear down the mountains, the grinding of rock against rock produces a fine silt that meltwater streams carry into the lake below. This "rock flour" suspended in the water reacts with light to give the lake its blue-green color.

I was tired and a little bit grumpy when Al suggested we take this side trip, but I'm really glad we did. It is an amazing view, and I wouldn't have known what I missed. Al did, though, and since he was driving he made the right decision. Then we headed down to Marblemount for dinner.

Toasting our successful hike (Al had coffee)

 Today I have a bit of residual tiredness from hiking more than ten miles and having spent a fair amount of the day in a car getting there and back. I didn't get home last night until almost 9:00pm, after having met the others at 7:15am. Long day! I woke in the middle of the night worried about my garden, realizing that I hadn't watered it. At 5:30 this morning I was out watering, when I spied a beautiful zucchini, my very own produce! Just now I took its picture before I harvested it. These are small zucchini, ready to eat by the time they reach just a few inches long. There will be more to come, and the delicata squash plant has blossoms! Wow, this is fun!

There are so many things going on in my life right now that I feel just a bit overwhelmed. How would I EVER have time for a job these days? My sister reminded me that I'm ready for a haircut, so now I'm off to get that taken care of. And the bird seed has run out... okay, here I go! Hope you are having a great day, thanks for visiting me.
:-)

Another fantastic Saturday

Kevin, me, Elaine, Linny, Christy

Well, it didn't look like I would be able to go skydiving yesterday after all, as the weather was cloudy and not projected to clear in Snohomish until 3:00 or 4:00pm or even later, so I went on my usual Saturday morning walk. We hustled along on a 6.2-mile walk at a brisk pace. I then called the Drop Zone to see if the forecast had changed at all, if there were any predictions for it to clear earlier.

It was Pilot Appreciation Day, and one where all the groups at the Drop Zone would do "Linny jumps," which are some of Linny's signature skydives. I decided to drive the more than 75 miles south to Snohomish and give my contribution to the bake sale designed to benefit the pilots. At least I could get some socializing in.

By the time I got there, at noon, there were quite a few blue spots among the clouds, and we all got excited about the possibility of getting in a jump or two. As I've said before, we cannot jump through clouds, but we can jump if there are clouds around us. We need to still see the ground and know we will miss them. So off we went, the five of us, and made a successful jump, even though the clouds closed back in and we had to spend hours on the ground in hopes of making another jump. The plane, filled with jumpers that went up after us, spent some time flying around looking for a hole, but the jumpers eventually came back down with the plane. You end up paying for having made a skydive, even though you don't actually go. I've done it in the past, but I'm glad I didn't have to yesterday.

Anyway, after awhile the clouds did clear out, and around 4:30 we made another skydive, a very successful one. As I was packing up afterwards, Tyson (the DZO, Drop Zone Owner) sidled up to me and asked if I was up for another one. (I usually leave no later than 5:00pm because of the long drive north.) Tyson said that Kevin would go for another one if I would, so I agreed. I think he said the same thing to Kevin. No matter, we all went up again for what turned out to be the best skydive of the day, and I quickly gathered up my unpacked parachute and gear and headed home.

5-way spider

I made three "Linny" skydives yesterday. To describe what we did on the last jump, it will take a bit of explanation, but I'll try. Those handles you see on our jumpsuits are called grippers, and they give us something to hold onto when we make a formation in freefall. We made six different formations on that jump before it was time to separate and open our parachutes. It is called a "rotating spider" skydive. The person who is in the center to begin with has a person holding onto each arm and one on each leg, making a "spider" formation. When complete, the next formation is a different person in the center and each person takes a different grip. We rotate so each person goes into the center and you have to remember where you are supposed to be on each formation. It's a bit of a brain teaser, but it worked perfectly, so we were all totally excited when we landed, full of smiles.

Linny told me about a jump that she and Christy made last week after I left, which I found really interesting. An older man who had been sitting around all day introduced himself to Linny and asked if he could jump with them. Not knowing anything about him, how experienced he is or whether or not he could actually do it, she grilled him a bit. He calls himself the Colonel. He probably weighs twice what Linny does, but they went up and made a simply wonderful three-way skydive.

It turns out that the Colonel lives in an RV camper and is traveling around the country making skydives. His wife of 32 years recently died of cancer, and he is going around from place to place. He was heading up to Lost Prairie after his short visit at Snohomish. He also jumped at each Drop Zone in Oregon and Washington, on his way to Montana. Linny said that he hands out a card to each person he jumps with, and I want to share it with you.

He calls himself the Colonel and doesn't give any other name. He's got somewhere around 1,200 skydives and Linny said he is incredibly aware and talented in freefall. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to meet him and jump with him, but who knows what tomorrow might bring? You meet some pretty interesting people hanging around Drop Zones.
:-)

Al and his gal pals

Me, Jonelle, Peggy, Amy (and Noriko still hiking up)

Today six Senior Trailblazers showed up for our hike (rated HARD) to Excelsior Pass. Other than Al, we were all of the female variety of hikers. We knew that the route to the summit of Excelsior Pass would be accessible, since Al, Jonelle and Fred had given it a try last Sunday and made it all the way to the pass, but without any view. Al wrote a blog post, complete with pictures, here.

We hit the trail around a quarter after nine, and Noriko decided after an hour or so to hike at a slower pace, since she was beginning to have the beginnings of a cramp in her calf. The rest of us continued on the uphill shady trail before we broke out of the occasional snow patches. The trail was mostly clear, but there were a few segments of snow remaining, although Jonelle and Al said much of it had melted since last Sunday. The sunshine was relentless, once we left the trees. And the glacier lilies:

I know this picture doesn't do justice to the amazing profusion of glacier lilies, which appear for a short while from under the snow fields and are gone again until next year. Once we got to Excelsior Pass, after four and a half miles and 3,500 feet of elevation gain, we had the most magnificent view of one of my favorite sights: Mt. Baker.

I love this mountain. This was taken from our lunch spot. We reached it around 12:30pm, and all of us were ready for a break. We knew that Noriko was still heading up to the pass and that if she didn't make it all the way to the top, we would pass her on our way back down. Our lunch spot had a wonderful breeze keeping us cool the entire time. It was very gratifying to have made it to the summit, after two earlier tries when we had been turned back by the snow.

Although you can't see it in this picture, we had a great view of the mountain while the breeze kept us nice and cool. The view in the other direction was of the Canadian mountains, which is nowhere nearly as spectacular as our Mt. Baker view. But it was so nice to finally have made it to the top. I asked both Peggy and Al to take a few pictures of me to prove that I was there, too. This one (by Al) was the best of them, so I just have to show it to you.

See? It's ME, Mt. Baker, and my pretty 2012 pink sparkly hat. It was one of the best days I've had in quite a while, and now that I've shared it with you, I can head to the shower to wash off the bug spray and sunscreen. Until our next adventure, I hope you are having fun, too!
:-)

News from my neck of the woods

From Cheryl's home page

I just finished a wonderful book. I first learned about it last week when one of my Senior Trailblazers, Peggy, told me she was reading the book and was enjoying it immensely. Although she offered me a chance to borrow it from her once she was finished, I was too impatient to wait and went online and ordered it from Amazon for my iPad. Although I first went to my local library, I learned that it already had 150 holds ahead of me! That meant it would be sometime next year before I had a chance to read it. For $13 I could have it right away. Amazon makes it awfully easy to order these things: in less than a minute it was downloaded onto my iPad.

However, it was a good move. The New York Times reviewer Dwight Garner had written a piece that made me even more impatient to read it, not to mention that I'm not exactly a patient person to begin with. Yesterday I finished it and will continue to think about it and read other things by the author.

Cheryl spent three months on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) in 1995, and the book is about her experiences. She was lost in many ways, since her beloved mother had died at the age of 45 from lung cancer a few years before and her marriage had fallen apart. She decided to hike the trail alone, although she had never even spent a night backpacking prior to this. Her writing style just kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering what would happen next. Although I'm not sure why it took her so many years to finally write this book, I'm so glad she did. If you decide to spring for it, I don't think you'll be sorry, although it's only available in hardback and it's a bit pricey, unless you go the electronic route.

Yesterday here in Bellingham we had a weather record of our own. I've been watching the awful scorching and dry weather that most of the rest of the country has been going through, and I'm grateful for the cooler weather here in the Pacific Northwest. However, yesterday in Bellingham we had the lowest high temperature for the date, by two degrees. It only made it to 61 degrees F (16 C) and was downright cold. We are already a month into the summer season and have had below-normal temperatures for most of it. That said, it's still a better summer than last year. Who knows if this is because of climate change or just normal variation? Hopefully at least some of what we are all going through is not permanent.

And finally, the other news from my neck of the woods is that my fisherman friend Gene has returned from Alaska. He goes up there for around two months every summer to fish on his boat. We not only don't see him at the coffee shop, but his lady friend Paula and his twenty-year-old parrot don't visit us either. Now everybody is back. I sure enjoyed taking this picture.

Paula with Poop-Stain

Gene says that the bird has the best summer of his life, since Gene used to take him to a bird sitter's home and he didn't get a lot of attention. Paula put a cage for him in her place, and he grew quite attached to her, as you can see. Since they don't live together (Paula and Gene), the bird now has two homes and gets plenty of tender loving care. He's also getting on in years and sleeps much more than he did even a year ago. Both of them speculate that he might have had a small stroke, since he has rather abruptly lost his squawk and is much more docile. I don't know, but I am enjoying seeing the three of them reunited at the coffee shop.

Well, as they say, that's the news from Bellingham, the City of Subdued Excitement, my neck of the woods.

:-)

Nice laid-back day

From Laserbread's Flickr site

I think I'll go spend some time in my treehouse. I found this picture online somewhere and tracked it down to discover it's the work of a guy named Brock Davis, who lists his occupation as creative director (he doesn't say of what) and I have to agree! He said he couldn't make a tree house for his son, so he created a broccoli house instead. I thought it would make an appropriate break from my own garden pictures.

Yesterday was filled with activity. When I first woke and saw that the skies were overcast, making it unlikely that I would be able to skydive, I decided to go on the 8:00am walk. I had already told my friends that they should hope NOT to see me there, because if I showed up it would be because I couldn't go jumping. After some commiseration, we walked a nice brisk four-plus miles, and I noticed that there were breaks in the clouds, showing some blue sky. Because Snohomish is 80 miles south of Bellingham, there was a possibility that the weather there was completely different.

So I came home and checked the web cam at the Drop Zone and saw that the clouds were indeed beginning to lift. Once I got there, it was 12:30pm and the clouds had opened up enough to begin jump operations. My friends arrived and we quickly got ourselves on a plane. By the time we were ready to exit, however, there was a huge cloud over the airport. We were still able to jump by heading over to the alternate landing area. The FAA doesn't allow skydivers to intentionally jump through clouds and the pilot could lose his license, giving us plenty of incentive to follow that rule.

By the time I packed up to go home, I had made three wonderful skydives and had an excellent day. Tired and happy, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the traffic north wasn't too bad in the early evening. (Usually I head home around 4:00pm.) I pulled into the driveway at 7:30pm. A long day, but a fruitful one. Today's forecast is not good, and now that I'm realizing it's likely that the only possible breaks in the clouds will be brief, I'm spending the day relaxing and enjoying myself. I didn't talk to my garden at all yesterday, so that's where I'm heading next. Although Friday was rainy, yesterday was sunny most of the day; I figure my plants must be missing me. Those aphids and slugs were probably glad for my absence, however.
:-)

Back to Church

Fog at the beginning of the day's hike

Back to Church Mountain that is, two weeks after our first visits. Our Senior Trailblazer problem right now is having only a few hikes in the High Country that are not completely snowed in. Earlier in the week, Al and some other Trailblazers went up to check out today's scheduled hike and decided that it would be good to let it wait a bit, so seven of us headed up to the Church Mountain meadow once again. It's my third trip in less than a month, but the amazing thing is the difference in the snow levels.

By the time we emerged from the trees and reached the beginning of the meadow, where everything was under snow two weeks ago, now the false hellebore is beginning to emerge everywhere, and the sun was shining in an almost-cloudless sky. All these little plants you see here will be many feet high before we head up again. We could almost see the difference in them during the few hours we spent up there before heading back down.

We were in no danger of reaching the summit, or getting anywhere near it, as the trail disappeared under snow. We decided to keep going upwards until noon when we stopped for lunch, finding a nice shady spot on bare ground. The snowmelt during the last period has encouraged me that we will soon be reaching the actual summit of Church Mountain. The views we had were pretty stupendous, and here's the view from my vantage point for lunch.

Al is busy checking his GPS readings while the rest of us enjoyed our lunch. The areas on the ridge are beginning to sprout lots of flowers on the green slopes as they clear from the snow. Looking the other direction from here, we saw Shuksan and Mt. Baker framed through the trees. I must have a dozen pictures of both of them, but I think this one captured our amazing view of Mt. Baker.

We were perched on a ridge overlooking the valley we had climbed to get to this viewpoint. The light breeze coming off the snow was wonderful, cooling us as we ate and gathered our strength. When I walked over to find a better place to capture Mt. Baker, the air coming up from the valley was at least 15-20 degrees warmer! It was like stepping into a sauna. Our actual temperature was probably somewhere around 60 degrees F, but since we have been accustomed to much cooler temperatures, we felt a bit, well, hot. Once we started back to find the trail and head back to our cars, it felt very warm.

I saw my first glacier lilies of the season today. They emerge when the snow finally retreats, and they don't last long. I've gotten pictures of fields of glacier lilies in past years and hope to do the same this season, but for now this single lovely glacier lily will have to do.

All in all, it was a lovely day, with good friends, lots of sunshine (I'm glad I put on sunscreen before I left home), and pretty much perfect weather: cool at the beginning, not too awfully hot at the end. I look forward to at least one more trip up this trail, when we finally get to the summit, a really beautiful place with 360-degree views. We did make almost eight miles of the nine to the summit and back, and covered 2,700 feet of elevation out of the total 4,000 to the top. That will wait for another day. For now, however, I'm ready for a shower to wash off the sunscreen and bug spray!
:-)