Carbon Glacier 08/06/06

The carbon glacier is the lowest glacier in the continental U.S. It's located in the northeast corner of Mount Rainier National Park. It runs all the way down to about 1800 feet above sea level.

I did a hike by the Carbon Glacier in early August. I went with a group of people I met through the Under the Hill Rovers group, which is the not-so-old subgroup of the Mountaineers, Seattle's local hiking and outdoors group.

We hiked on a particularly warm day. The wooded sections of the hike were quite nice, with the exception of the bugs.

Along the way we ran into a couple locals





The views were ok


Yes folks, that is a glacier looking at. There's a reason it's called the carbon glacier. That's a lot of volcanic debris. If you didn't know any better you might not even think there's any snow and ice in there.
The river flowing out is snowmelt. You'll have to trust me on that one.

You can see the leading edge of the glacier is pretty abrupt. Rocks and boulders on the top layer will crumble off and crash down below into the river. It's a pretty wild display of nature at work.

The carbon river: a slow trickle compared to its springtime flow

It's nice to see this sign AFTER you (and 4 other people) cross the bridge.

Heading home... and playing by the rules (well sorta - got the one person at a time thing down this time; We'll work on the bouncing part another day).

Hydroplane Racing on Lake Washington 8/04/06

One of Seattle's bigger summer festivals (there seems to be at least one every weekend), is SeaFair. Amongst the happenings of this particular weekend are the Blue Angels Air Show and the Hydroplane races. I got a chance to see both. The Blue Angels were quite spectacular, but there's no way I was going to get any good shots with a small point and shoot camera. The wingtip-to-wingtip maneuvers are better appreciated on film, but the climbs and dives are something you have to see in person to appreciate. I did get some pics of the boats and one of the races.

A slightly better alternative to the launch ramp
I guess it's not a "pleasure boat" if you have to fix it almost every time you take it out.

They even look fast on shore
I wouldn't want to be the guy in the middle of the pack.
Despite claims, the Oberto boat does not run on beef jerky.

3 Fingers Mountain: 08/19/06

This past weekend I went on one of the best hikes I've ever been on. I went with two of my roommates, Ann and Dave.

We did the Three Fingers in the Central Cascades off the Mountain Loop Highway. It took a while to drive the 17 miles of bumpy dirt roads. ...but we made the 6.2 mile hike to Tin Pan Gap Pass in short order. Ann was thoroughly satisfied with what we had done.

She was enjoying the views of the surrounding mountains like Baker.

...but Dave and I were hungry for more
Ann decided she didn't want to spend any more time traversing the snow since we didn't have crampons and ice axes.



Not wanting to leave Ann behind, Dave and I decided against going up to the lookout. As a consolation, we did a fun, little scramble up a false summit to get this cool near-bird's eye view of an adjacent false summit
Then we saw two guys pondering the glacier traverse to get up to the lookout.
Dave was pondering joining them.
I was pondering bringing my skis next time.
The two guys decided against going, but Dave and I were too close to giving it a go. With Ann's blessing, we changed our minds and decided to give it a go. Onward and upward we continued. Crossing snow when we had to...
...and avoiding it when we could. We followed the contours of the mountain toward the summit.

Finally we reached the top

The outlook house was cool


The views were great

Not even goats are safe from survey people these days

We wanted to stay longer, but it was getting late.
So, Dave and I made our way back to meet up with Ann down at Tin Pan Gap.
We met up and made our way back to the car. I was amazed that the wildflowers were still in bloom.
Along the way, we met up with this guy.
We reached Goat Flats, and I realized how late it was getting.
I could've stayed there all evening.
Our views became more obstructed as we descended, but the colors became increasingly more interesting.

The day faded before we did. We pulled our headlamps out and continued to the car. We arrived, physically tired, but mentally charged, from a great day iin the mountains.