Month: May 2020

  • 20200530 Cispus Valley Trail #270, Takhlakh Lake, GPNF

    20200530 Cispus Valley Trail #270, Takhlakh Lake, GPNF

    With a crash and a boom, I crossed the Tom Music Bridge over the Cispus River. No, it wasn’t my truck, it was the sky. Often, when I make plans ahead of time to take a long weekend, the weather gets the last laugh. Today, for example, with a very active day of thunderstorms forecast.…

  • 20200526 Klickitat Trail #7, GPNF

    20200526 Klickitat Trail #7, GPNF

    The Klickitat Trail is an old one, known to be in use 2000 years ago. This trail follows the ridge of the mountains which separate the Cowlitz River Valley from the North Fork Cispus River Valley, which rises 5,000’ above the valley floors. The ridge runs E-W, the south face relatively uninterrupted above the NF…

  • 20200518 Eruptiversary – USFS 26 Rd to Cascade Peaks, MSHNVM

    20200518 Eruptiversary – USFS 26 Rd to Cascade Peaks, MSHNVM

    How has so much time passed? Was it really 40 years ago that I was a young child, watching in fear as the sky disappeared behind boilings clouds of ash as darkness fell one Sunday mid-morning in May? We visited Mt. St. Helens for the first time, post-eruption, in what I believe was 1984. The devastated landscape…