The best visit to the Olympics goes on high. Olympic National Park, much like North Cascades, is a climber’s park. Standing atop one of the many peaks gives you a true experience to the wild wonderland.
Rain is an all too common factor in Pacific Northwest winters. Grey days can go on for weeks at a time. The rain does not fall in huge dumps, but tends to lightly fall for much of the day. Short grey wet days. Cabin fever. No mountains to climb, so what to do? Then add on top of it the COVID pandemic. Perfect time to go birdwatch at Ridgefield!
Barrett Spur is one of my favorite places on Mount Hood. While some prefer Cooper Spur and others Cathedral Ridge, for me, it is the Spur.
The Spurt is a little bit difficult to reach both due to the altitude you gain and the route condition near the top. But your jaw drops with the incredible views of the glaciers pouring down off the north side of the old volcano.
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The Zulu and Afrikanse name are both used for this exceptional mountain range and both names are superb in their own rights. “uKhahlamba” is the Zulu name meaning ‘Barrier of Spears’. The escarpment resembles the name from the distance. “Drakensberg”, the Afrikanse name, means ‘Dragon’s Mountain’. A mythical beast one would not be altogether surprised at seeing when climbing/hiking amongst the often-misty rock walls and towers of the range.
Coming from the western US, the dramatic rock wall escarpment is not unlike the mountain walls found in the Great Basin country – the Sierra Nevada or South Warner Mountains of California; Ruby Mountains of Nevada; Steens Mountain of Oregon. These ranges, as here in South Africa, gradually gain height in the west, terminating in a grand wall of cliffs and towers along the eastern side. This trek would be a celebration.
Continue readingWritten after a hike to Mount Margaret on the Boundary Trail in 2019 from a series of hikes up into the Cascades. It was a very good summer in there were no complications from forest fires which seem to mar things in August and early September in recent years.
Save the best for last? Mount Margaret lies along the Boundary Trail, the 53
mile trail running from Johnstone Observatory in the Mt St Helens Volcanic National
Monument to Mt Adams. The trail was built in 1910 to service fire
lookouts on the border between the forest reserves of the Cowlitz – to the
north – and the Lewis – to the south.
The Nahe Canyon leading to Bad Münster am Stein-Ebernburg is on the right.
Bad Kreuznach – Bad “K” or just “BK” to most former Americans living here – was and is a wonderful town to be introduced into culture beyond America. Who says you can’t go back? I lived and worked here for three years back in the 1980’s, a time of strong US dollars and a last fling of Cold War uncertainty.
Today’s blog is a simple chance to amble down through the mists of my time and a chance to update photographic memories of a part of Germany flying under the radar of the Viking longboat cruisers.
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“Build it and he will come”. So, intones the voice of Shoeless Jackson to the Iowa corn farmer played by Kevin Costner in the 1989 film Field of Dreams. The quote often remembered wrongly as “Build it and they will come”. The film was a version of W.P. Kinsella’s novel Shoeless Jackson. In this case, we will choose the more popular interpretation which better describes this Hindu sanctuary high in the Tualatin Mountains just north of Portland. A retreat pointing towards a universal message of different paths leading to the same goal.
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Birthdays have a nasty habit of piling up. As a child, they are special, looked forward to. As an older adult, they are part of life. I don’t celebrate my birthday in a big way, as a rule. My wife might push for a dinner out or the like. The start of a new decade is different, however. You have made it through another ten years, a milepost!. Something special should be done to usher in the new epoch – a true celebration of life, if you will.
continue readingRecent advances with the advent of 360 cameras, smartphones and drones with superb photographic and video capabilities are making it much easier to tell your story or create your epic film in more unique ways.
I have been using a 360 camera for a little more than a year now. The results are pretty cool even considering the optical disparities involved with a fisheye lens – or double fisheye lens in the case of a 360 picture.
Note: for the 360 photos, to take full advantage, click and drag your mouse to see the whole picture. This one shows two old squash players atop the magnificent Rotenfels high above the Nahe River in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany near Bad Kreuznach.
Continue readingTwo hikes today – High Rock and Plummer Peak – maximizing the long drive from Portland to Rainier National Park. The day warm and cloudless. Smoke from southern Oregon, however, had drifted up smudging the long distance views.
The first hike was to a former fire lookout south of the park known as High Rock. It is a well-known hike among Puget Sounders and short – 1.6 miles one-way. The lookout is one of only five remaining in the vast Gifford Pinchot National Forest. It is steep gaining 1365 feet with much of the height gained in the second two thirds of the way up.
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