I had been up to the base of Cathedral Ridge once before, but that was many years ago. With my new little toy – a 360-degree camera – it was time to go up for another view of Hood.
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We met an aspiring couple on top of Cathedral Ridge training for longer distance events. They mentioned for their money the views from Cooper Spur were the best on Mt Hood they had seen. I have been past the Cooper Spur shelter several times as well as playing in the crevasses of Eliot Glacier but have never gone up on the top of the Spur so, with a friend in tow, off we went. Thankful it was his car taking the beating on the washboarded road up and not mine.
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Written 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.
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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Lionism is truly a worldwide phenomenon. My wife and I joined a 36-member Lions In Sight team – composed of 13 doctors and 23 others from all over the US and Canada – that worked at various vision clinics Albania seeing over 7,000 patients during the first week of November 2018.
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.
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Silver Star, Mt St Helens, Rainier Adams and Hood with the ridge running from Silver Star to Old Baldy.
Silver Star is very visible from east Portland in the southern Washington Cascades. People rave about the views over the flower gardens along Ed’s Trail coming in on the north side. The approach road there is the crux of the hike. Your car makes it, or it does not. There are decent displays coming up on the Grouse Vista Trail – an old jeep road, like Ed’s. You don’t have that awful washed out road to deal with either.
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Wahtum Lake on the left, then Mt Hood; Indian Mountain is in the center; on the right is some of the fire burned areas of the upper Eagle Creek Canyon with Tanner Peak.
Tomlike and Chinidere are two peaks on the agenda for today’s hike -. Tomlike was the son of Wasco Chief Chinidere in times long before now. Chinidere lies at the end of a small, steep spur trail going off the Pacific Crest Trail – PCT – while Tomlike is at the end of a long bootpath through some brush, atop some cliffs and up over scree boulders. This is probably the fifth time I have been up here wandering on these mountains and the day was superb.
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Because I have wanted to hike in this area of the Boundary Trail for years now. The whole 53 miles of the Boundary Trail cover a lot of interesting country. Now, I like to cherry pick trails with a light daypack, so I picked what looked to be the most interesting section between Badger Peak and Craggy Peak, the gems of the Boundary. A long drive up the Lewis River highway from I-5 at Woodland and around the east side of Mt St Helens started things off (doesn’t Forest Highway 25 seem to be getting worse every year?). I was on the trail a little after 9am.
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Clouds on this day, I am afraid. But does Paradise wait on the other side?
My hope was to hike from Timberline Lodge through to Paradise Park and go above, off trail to explore the old airplane crash on top of Mississippi Head. From the Head, I would ascend higher to get above the head of Zigzag Canyon. Next, over to the ski lifts above Timberline to descend back to the car. This hike would be the last of several I did this summer around different sections of the mountain – McNeil Point, Cooper Spur and Cathedral Ridge.
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