Change of plans, Mountain loop shorties.

Some dude in a semi broke highway 2, and they decided to wait until MY DAY OFF to fix it....friggin jerks. Anyway, so that shot down plans to go up to skyline ridge for this otherwise drizzly day. With the 50/50 choice between I-90 and Mtn Loop, I chose north, simply because I know more places.

As always, having no vistas to shoot means I'll point the camera at the people I'm with. For those readers who don't know these people, you might recognize them from my posts from Montana; they are fellow scientists.

I arbitrarily chose places that I knew we could get to, and wouldn't be too avalanchy (a major concern, with the fresh rain). Big 4 ice caves, Mallardy Ridge, and the North fork falls.

Started at Big 4, I thought maybe it would take at least like 20 minutes of walking before snowball fighting started, but it pretty much started as soon as I closed the car doors.


















Next was Mallardy Ridge, however, it's been like literally 8 years since I've been here last, so I had no idea where the trailhead to cutthroat lakes was..... So we walked to road end, found a decent lunch spot, and ate until the wind picked up and got really cold.


A winter scene.


There was no shortage of flinging or general snow related abuse.


And construction projects.










And of course, wanton destruction of giant snowballs.


Shelly had some kind of deep-seated shame about this shirt, but I thought it was hilarious.


Shortly after this photo was taken, I went through a small patch of potholes only to hear a horrid scraping and booming noise coming from the car, I slowed down and it stopped, but the brush cover from under the nose of my car had finally taken enough abuse and fallen off completely.....I recovered it, and may have to reattach it with zipties. Kinda funny.








Cool moss and lichen.


All in all a fine day with fine folks, making the best of a crappy hand of weather and highway closure.

Source Lake, low(ish) avalanche danger

Left my house at 4am, hit the trailhead at 6, caught sunrise at the top of the ridge, and back to the car and on the road by 9:30.

Anyway, the mission was to take a certain photo of the Alpental area, the status of that mission is still pending.... Alright, time for dinner.

Climbing out of the cloud bank.


Sunrise.








Margot, and alpenglow.








This is the photo I hope will work for my task. You will note how huge it is (it's a stitched panorama, taken at full resolution.)

Rainy Mountain Loop Sampler

Decided to go play in the slush today, and give a foriegn friend a tour of my favorite hiking area. Conditions weren't even that bad, road-wise, but it was just raining, all day. My main goal was to scout the trailheads on the Sloan Creek Road, two of which I found, but eventually the snow got too deep for my low car, so I didn't find the other one I wanted to. However, my other goal was to find and photograph the North Fork falls, on the Sauk River, which was also accomplished. Decided there was still plenty of daylight, so we hit big 4 ice caves on the way there, and boulder river on the way out.

I think this is the first (of few) times I've been here and there has actually been a decent sized cave.


Yes, this was the weather the entire day, but incessent rain and clouds is the price we pay for such reasonable, non-extreme weather.


Yes, I drove a Swede around in the snow in my Volvo.






Found the North Fork Falls, which I had heard about but never got around to seeing.


One more, a slightly longer exposure.


Then, hit up boulder river on the way back into town.




These are tough to photograph in an interesting way, there aren't many angles you can get, especially when the river below is basically flooding.


But I try regardless.

The Great Greenbelt Adventure

I had three hours to kill on foot in north Lynnwood while my timing belt was being replaced by Volvo. So I arbitrarily chose to walk west from 99 where, as far as I know, I actually haven't been. Ended up at Meadowdale high school.....interesting? Not really, but it surprised me anyway.

As I walked, I stumbled upon a greenbelt, of all things, and it ended up being MUCH bigger than I expected. I was disappointed in that I didn't come across a huge group of airsofters, which would have been a lot more fun than wandering around finding interesting trash and orange leaves, but one musn't dwell on fantasies.....

I found no less than 6 creepy crack-sites like this, all with cheap tents and sleeping bags crumpled in the dirt, soaked and ratty. This one was the most elaborate.




Oil tank?


No, that leaf did not end up there on it's own.






This place even had a stream (drainage/runoff), which had incised a significant chasm, with how wet the ground was, I actually didn't want to go down for fear of not being able to get back up...


The remains of an old apple orchard, I counted at least 8 trees, in rough rows, the ground was littered with old dead apples.


I got short bursts of sunlight breaking through the clouds, usually right on cue when I walked up to a colorful tree.


These were actually right outside the greenbelt, in the field of an elementary school.




A naked jet taking off from Boeing, perhaps to go get some decals? Note: no windows, must be a cargo model for fedex or whatnot.


Meadowdale high school....


I snickered, then walked away, then realized I actually had a camera with me, and walked back to take this.


I really like this, I think I might do it more often. Kinda trippy huh?