Gothic Basin 9-17-11

You can run to the mountains anytime.  Their great wooded arms are always open.  Their misty winds and rushing rivers will cascade through your heart and soul, washing away every hurt, every trivial human emotion until you are left with only awe.

Cedar and I almost gave up near the end of this hike.  Gothic Basin is about 9 miles roundtrip and most of it is hiking, but a good portion is clambering up and over boulders.  The first mile follows an old road along a fork of the Sauk River before beginning to climb up switchbacks through pretty forest.  You could see why they closed it to traffic.  One of the old bridges is now sitting in the middle of the river.

There was a really pretty icicle palace-looking fungi growing on a log.  At home I looked it up and found it is a hericium abietis. 

Farther up along the ridge, we had to cross through several gullies.  They would be extremely dangerous in the snow, but most had melted off by now.  The first one was the most dangerous, with a huge chunk of snow blocking the far side path on our way up.  We had to cut down the rocks along the stream and cross below it, then climb up the other side along the old chunk of snow to the path again.  All the gullies were beautiful, with waterfalls of varying sizes, rivulets that had cut deep crevices through rocks, and views across the valley of cascading waterfalls on the other ridges.

Wildflowers were still blooming, including Jeffrey’s shooting stars. 

Cedar and I stopped for lunch at this pretty pool.  It was a difficult climb and until I had a chance to rest I was thinking that would be our stopping point.  There couldn’t be much longer, so after the break on we went.  Adventure Dog was incredible, leaping up slabs of slippery rock and roots. 

There were pretty rocks up there too.  This one had a sheen of rain on it and looked like polished marble.

Finally, we crested the ridge… way up at the tippy top of the world it felt like.  A small field of snow seemed to block the way and we went around to avoid falling through any holes and the other side took my breath away.  The high bare rock was broken with only patches of purple and white heather and snow.  An icy still lake lay curled in the arms of all that rock, reflecting the sky and snow back.  And the most remarkable thing beside the stark beauty was the absolute silence.  While I was there, the wind held its breath, no rain fell, no bird sang, no breath of anything but Cedar and I could be heard.  Absolute, silent, heart-wrenching beauty.

Liberty Lake, Spokane 9-10-11

Yesterday I was in Spokane at my sister’s prior to us all going to Coeur e Alene, Idaho, for our cousin Clint’s wedding.  It has been sunny and hot on the East side of the state too.  We had plenty of time, so we headed out in the morning for a hike with the dogs.  We went to the Liberty Lake trail I’ve been hearing about from her, so that was fun.

It was the perfect temperature and the woods were lovely and green.  Most of the hike follows along a creek, with beaver dams in the lower area, and various bridges crossing here and there further up.  Odin hid under this bridge like a troll.

Our hike nearly took a turn for the worse when Odin rolled on a dead animal… a porcupine!  Luckily the spines were also pretty decomposed and his fur is so thick very few of them had actually reached the skin and all were pretty easily pulled out.  I didn’t get pictures of that.  : ( 

Cedar pretty much stayed out of trouble.  He and Odin played keep away with a stick at the turn-around point of our hike in a cedar grove.  They ran and ran, jumping over logs and greeting other dogs that came through.  It was fun for all.

Rosy spotted a beehive up in this tree.  It was quite large, but no bees appeared to be home. 

There were some interesting plants too.  These heart-shaped leaves were pretty.  Also we saw this really neat stalk about 3 ½-4 ft tall that had seeds of some type on that looked like little pumpkins.  If you know what this is, please let me know!  : )

We were almost back to the car when we passed a little beaver pond with these fun frogs hanging out on logs floating in the water.   

It was a fun hike and we had plenty of time to get ready for the wedding.  Thanks, Sis!

Mt St Helens, Ape Caves 9-4-11

Last Sunday, I got up super early, apologized to Adventure Dog for leaving him behind on this one, and met Mark to head down to Mt St Helens for the day.  It has been incredibly gorgeous warm weather here in the Northwest and it was great to get out and enjoy it! 

So what did we do 1^st?  Clambered down into a hole in the ground where at a chilly 42 degrees we had to wear long sleeves and warm hats with headlamps on them (definitely headlamps, as you don’t want a lantern or flashlight.  You want your hands free for clambering).  It was fantastic!

The Ape Caves are really just a couple sections of lava tubes, where molten rock pushed through the ground, leaving behind big tunnels that made me think of the giant worms in the movie Dune.  Inside the tunnel it was pitch dark, but our lights illuminated a surprising amount of color.  Predominantly, a sheen of mineral and water on the walls and ceiling so sparkly, that it was almost surprising that it didn’t still glow with our lights off.

There were also pinks and oranges down there, in the jumbles of rock that we had to clamber over.  Nearly everything had sharp edges, since there was very little in the way of erosive forces down there. 

The lava had carved out trough kind of formations on the sides.  Sometimes smallish like this, and sometimes they were like sloped shelves over our heads that it seemed we could almost walk on if we could get up on them and they weren’t slippery.

Water dripped continuously from every bit of the ceiling. 

In a few places the ceiling looked like this, with pointy rock that looked like it started to melt and then re-hardened.

In one place there was a hole in the top of the tunnel, where sunlight beamed through and moss and ferns were a startling green after all that darkness. 

In another place there was a small wall about 8 ft tall that we had traverse.  We went through the tunnel the way we did so we could walk back on the surface and also so we would be climbing this wall, not trying to jump down it.  It was a small wall, but a fun challenge for me.  I don't have a photo of me scaling, and that is probably for the best.  : )

It took a long time to traverse the shadowy lava tube world, but I really loved every minute of it and hope to go back.  We finally came to the end and found these stairs leading up to a shockingly hot and sunny world.

After a picnic lunch we did another short hike at Lava Canyon.  The rock formations here, with columnar basalt and the rushing of the Muddy River was lovely.  The only drawback here was on a hot day the river sounded particularly tempting, but it was too dangerous an area to take a dip.

This suspension bridge was interesting.  I’ve been on a few and apparently they each sway a bit differently.  This one was not my favorite, kind of dipping down with each step I took. 

Another fantastic day in the Northwest.  I'll be back, Mt St Helens!