Sunday, August 19, 2007

Up in the Kettle Mountains

Saturday morning Walter and I finally took off for the night and drove up to the Kettle Range in north Washington. We got to the Canyon Creek Campground around 10 in the morning and got things settled. It was supposed to start thundering and lightening during the afternoon so Wally and decided not to climb up on any exposed ridges or mountains. I have been wanting to check out Trout Lake and the trail that goes into Hoodoo canyon so that is what we did.

The lake is pretty small but the canyon is really cool with lots of cool rocks and cliffs. The trail goes up above the lake and creek for quite a ways and has some incredible views, then heads back down to Emerald Lake. We turned around at the junction with the lake because it was getting a bit late. I think we walked about five miles total. There were some people camped at the lake which has about five camping spots. There are also lots along the road on the way to the lake. After the hike we drove down near the Columbia River and then to Lake Ellen to just check out the campground and lake there. There was only one spot taken at the campground. After tooling around for a bit we headed back to Canyon Creek (which is really on Sherman Creek) and had some dinner. Oh, and as a bit of warning, the campground does not have water. Luckily I had my filter and was able to get water from the creek. Otherwise the campground is pretty nice. And the fee is only $6 per night

I was really in touch with my restless self while there. I have a very hard time just "being." So I sat in a chair and read an entire Smithsonian issue. There was an article in it about Coast to Coast walking through England. I was really quite impressed with the openness of the country when I was there. You can actually travel a great many places by walking on paths through the country that are kept open for pedestrians. I used to walk back from the pub along a trail on the South Downs. Often times I was walking among the sheep.

Anyway, we had a relaxing evening and the rain started in around 3 in the morning. It kept up all day, but we went on a hike along the Sherman Peak trail anyway. There is a loop trail around the base of the mountain and we had never taken the right hand path before. We walked in the clouds for about three hours. I have no idea how far we went but we turned around on the north side of the mountain. The view of the mountains through the clouds was pretty darn cool.


Pictures: Totally cute Walter in his little rain coat; looking down at Trout Lake; the campsite complete with ghetto tarps; Walter very unhappy in the back of the car (why does the stuff never go in as well as it came out?); the mountain mist at the base of Sherman Peak.


Sunday, August 12, 2007

A Mid Summer Night's Light Show

This weekend is the Perseids meteor shower. Tonight, Sunday, is supposed to be the peak of the shower. I can't possibly stay up late and watch it and feel like a human at work tomorrow so I decided to get the sneak preview last night. Even that was awesome!!!!!

My grand scheme was to go out to Fishtrap Lake, well away from city lights, and float around in my kayak and watch the show. I got out there about 8:00 and immediately got into the water and paddled towards the end of the lake, which is about three miles in length. I paddled only about 2/3 of the way down to the narrows and sat in the boat waiting for it to get completely dark.

I have paddled many times (even on this lake) when there was a full moon and that is some of my best paddling, but I can only remember one other time paddling when there was no moon at all and that was on a small lake near Spokane also during the Perseids. Morgan and I were out floating in our old Coleman canoe watching the meteor shower, but as I recall it was not totally dark, especially along the shore. There were a lot of cabins with some light. Well, in all honesty, I did not enjoy my time on the water after it got dark. Not because I was afraid of the dark or the obnoxious bat that kept fluttering around me, but because it was too dark to have any sense perspective of whether I was right side up or upside down. At one point, even though I was paddling, it did not feel like I was moving at all. I can now totally understand why pilots get confused with their senses and then crash. So ultimately I had to turn my headlamp on, put it on the side of my head, and paddle near the shore so I could have some kind of perspective. Just having the dim light from my headlamp on the periphery of my vision was enough to keep my other senses working.

So I paddled back towards the little resort until I could see the lights, and then hid in the next cove in the dark. All I had to do if I started getting that weird sense thing was paddle out a few feet and see a horizon line. So sat and waited for about an hour and did not see a thing. By that point, I had been sitting in my kayak for about three hours which was too long so I paddled back towards the boat ramp. Just as I beached the boat, the second most amazing meteor I have ever seen came streaking across the sky. It was brilliant. The most amazing was in the boat with Morgan and there was one we could actually hear. Anyway, I got the kayak on top of the car with my eyes trained up and saw several more. I then drove down the road and pulled off and hung out there for about an hour looking up. I do not even know how many I saw. It was amazing and I am so glad that I did it. The Milky Way was a mass of stars and the night was perfect. At one point, coyotes were howling. That was cool.

This afternoon Walter and I went back up to Mt. Spokane for a stroll in the woods. We stuck to the cross country ski trails because they are less crowded. We did not see another person. We had a nice lunch break on Eagle Crest and a bit of a nap in the grass. Then we headed back via Shadow Mountain and made our way back home. It has been a pretty darn good weekend.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Mt. Spokane for Real!!!!


Ok, I moved to Spokane in 1985. I have no idea how many times I have been up to Mt. Spokane State Park to hike, ski, snowshoe, camp, and just goof around and I have NEVER, EVER, ACTUALLY HIKED TO THE SUMMIT. Until yesterday, of course. Walter and I had such a super-duper wonderful day I can barely contain myself.

As I posted earlier, I have a four day weekend. I think I mentioned something silly about working around the house. Where exactly did the term "pipe dream" come from? Anyway, we slept in late and were at the hairpin turn parking lot and on the trail by 10:30am. Wally and I headed up trail 100 to 110 to the big trail junction on the saddle between Beauty Mountain and Mt. Kit Carson. Oh, and a trail map can be found here... http://www.mountspokane.org/images/mtspokane_trailma.gif... if you want to follow along. At the junction is a pit toilet and I always refer to this area in my head as the toilet junction. There were also TONS of huckleberries and I had quite a few. From the junction we then took 135 all the way to the summit. This is an interesting bit of trail with some really steep parts that just about did me in. About half way between the toilet junction and the summit there is a spur trail called 135a that goes to the CCC Cabin. In this area is the first sighting (or at least my first sighting) of the "Black Tower." It is a cell tower just poking up in the woods. It was just a weird thing to see and it kept coming back to me (read on).

Past the Black Tower the trail really gets down to business. Because of the slope and the fact that mountain bikers have torn the trail up, it is incredibly dusty. I had long pants on and when I got home and stripped down my legs were filthy. Walter and I ended up in the shower together because we were both so gross (oh come on, it is not that big of a deal). Anyway, I had to employ my steep hill climbing strategy. As a native of the flat lands of Illinois, I had to learn to climb hills when I started backpacking in Colorado. When it is really steep, like the kind of steep that hurts like hell, I just count paces. Like, I count each time my left foot goes down, usually around 50 times, then I stop to take a 30 or 40 second rest. The last time I had to do this was when I was climbing over boulders on Sherman Peak.

Eventually though, we reached the summit and the Vista House. There were quite a few people up there (they drove up) and Walter got a lot of attention. For some reason people find the name Walter novel for a dog. I dunno, make sense to me. And have I ever mentioned that I named him after my great uncle Walter? So Walter and I had lunch up at the Vista House. It was so windy, and I had been sweating so much on the way up that I had to put on long sleeves to keep from freezing. The view was fantastic. Aside from the emotionally abusive parent who was mean to his kids that I wanted to shove off a cliff, our lunch was great. We had hiked about four miles in two hours and gained around 1,500 feet in elevation.

After we left the Vista House, we got back on trail 135 and at the Black Tower Junction we got onto 135a. This area of the park has damn confusing trail signage and there are several trails and roads that all come together. I got a wee bit screwed up, though at no time was I in any danger of getting lost. We connected with the CCC Cabin and then hit a junction with trail 130. I turned the wrong way on 130 thinking I had to go down to the Loop Road (closed to vehicles) and then head in the direction I wanted. We walked down the Loop Road for about a quarter of a mile before I was certain that it was not the way I wanted to go. We could have kept going and ended back up at the Toilet Junction and saved about three miles and a couple of hours, but I wanted to go back a new way and make an actual loop. So we turned around and went back the other way on 130. Then, I got totally frustrated because 130 took us back towards the Black Tower. It just seemed like a spur trail from 135a to 130 would have saved some distance and some confusion.

Trail 130 has some tiny ups and downs but is pretty level, or as level as you can get on the side of a mountain. The trail hooks up with the Bald Knob Campground and picnic area, then heads down to the big parking lot at the junction of Mt. Spokane Park Drive and Summit Road. And again, the trails can be screwy because there is 130 and 130a and 130b and lots of trails that seem well used that just peter out after a bit. From the big parking lot we got on trail 100 which heads uphill again to go around a ravine, then heads back downhill to the hairpin turn parking lot.

In all, Walter and I did around 10 miles with our little detour. It was an incredible day. The more I go up to Mt. Spokane the more I appreciate the park. And we have only begun to scratch the surface of the trails there. The mountain bikers are, in my opinion, a bit of a problem. At least some of them. On our way up 110, some guys came down and if Walter and I had not heard them and moved out of the way they would have run us over. And I heard one of them say that he wanted to stop for a smoke. Yeah, in the woods in August during a high wind. Sure, go ahead numb nuts. But then on the really steep part of 135, some other bikers totally stopped when they saw us and they were really nice. So I guess it just pays to watch out and listen for the sound of loose chains hitting clusters. And then get the hell out of the way.

Though I was a wee bit bent that Nancy went to Mexico and was not around to house sit so Walter and I could go up to the Kettle Range, it turned out to be a good thing. Last weekend I replaced the front brake calipers on the Festiva. This was after a new drive axel, which was after new bearings, which was after a new muffler. Well, on the way up to Mt. Spokane my transmission started slipping. This morning there was a huge puddle of transmission fluid in my driveway. And yep, sure enough, there was a $227 problem. Considering it was a transmission, it could have been worse. And I could have ended up in the mountains on logging roads with no extra transmission fluid. That would have sucked. Especially since I went through a whole quart just today. To appease the goddess Autemis, I bought a new sticker for the back window of the Festiva. Who knows what else Walter and I will get up to this weekend. Whatever we do I am sure I will be posting it right here on Travels with Walter.

Pictures: Wally and me on top of Mt. Spokane; a trail sign that sort of makes sense...if you also have a map!!!; the Black Tower Junction; looking back down at the way we came (the mountain is Mt. Kit Carson and we came up on the saddle just in front of it), looking out at the view, the parking lot on top of the mountain and one of the ski lifts, looking back up at the top (with the Black Tower in the background); the CCC cabin.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Urban Wildlife

For the past couple of weeks Walter and I have been going to close places after I get off work (i.e. unpaid internship) and going for little walks. These are really local places such as Dishman Hills and Riverside State Park. But, I have seen some cool stuff (though have no pictures to show for it). We saw at least five deer one evening at Dishman Hills, one of them a big huge four point buck). Another night we were walking along the trail and there was this woman walking along brushing her teeth. She was not wearing shoes. She told me it was a nice place to brush. I kept walking...quickly.

Along the Spokane River I watched an Osprey leave a nest, fly down to the water, catch a fish, and then keep flying around in circles for about five minutes before returning to the nest with the catch. The only thing I can think of is that the Osprey was waiting for the fish to die so it would not flop out of the nest. I dunno. Tonight Walter and I were stalked by a domestic feline at Dishman. It was a very nice looking cat. That is the first time I have ever seen one there. Another first thing for me there was seeing Indian Paintbrush growing along the trail.

I am not sure what our plans are for the next month or so. I spent last Saturday putting new brake calipers on my Festiva and bleeding the brakes (I had absolutely no idea how to do it but Les Schwab wanted over $200 to fix it and I was not going for that). Man, I am just so amazed by how easy this car repair shit is that they charge you hundreds of dollars for. Ok, yeah, I had to get advice from my neighbor the mechanic because my new caliper came with extra parts, but I would have figured it out on my own anyway. And yeah, I had to have some car guys diagnose the problem but they did it for free. So the economical car is fixed but I am low on funds and the house sitter is in Mexico for a week. I actually have a four day weekend. The supervisor for my internship is on vacation and he told me I could take a couple of days off because he thinks I rock. I have been working pretty darn hard. I even had to call doctors today and put my foot down to a mucky muck about something that could potentially cause me to lose my license if I had one. But anyway, I am having the internal struggle of working on my house (I need to build a new shed and have lots of scrap lumber and tons of other half finished projects because I have ADD) or going out for a hike...or two...or three. I will not know until I head out the door. So come back later and find out what in the hell I have been up to.
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