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Sep. 1st, 2007 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsFriday, I awoke feeling better after turning around and facing the opposite direction, so my back was no longer straining against the slope. My feet have this annoying habit of twitching against one another when I sleep: Omaha has often joked that my feet are "mating." Well, this morning as I noticed them wiggling, they were bumping up against something solid. I sat up and found that they'd been trying to mate with Omaha's head.
Oy! Breakfast was pancakes: a little flat because I used too much of the liquid half of the mix. I'd pre-mixed the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder and put it into a plastic jar, and shook it vigorously with the milk and lightly scrambled eggs. It all worked well, and everyone ate to their stomach's content. Omaha made hot chocolate, but I settled for a second cup of coffee.
I had the weirdest dream last night. The first part started on a convention floor covered with people selling really cheap Chinese-made kitsch. There were blinking lights and dollar-store toys and so forth and so on, and then I was escorted up the hallway to shown even worse junk. As I walked down the hallway I got dumped down into the backstage of a theater, where I encountered classrooms of marines, Fonzes, and drag queens. Then I woke up.
We drove up Forest Road 12, at one point consulting the GPS to make sure we were at the intersection we thought we were. We got to the end of the road and discovered that the trail we were on was the one climbers took to cross the peaks and make it all the way to Mt. Baker. We were going the other way, to the butte that overlooks the southern valley named, unremarkably, Park Butte Lookout. It was Friday, so we passed many people coming off their week-long walk up and down the mountain; they wore the classic plastic boots of mountaineers and humungous backpacks.
We reached Schrieber's Meadow, which was lovely for the time of year, and there were lots of mountain blueberries everywhere, which the girls found thrilling. The trail beyond the Schrieber section got a little rockier and steeper, and then we reached the Rocky River (very clever name; I'm sure there are hundreds). The bridge was washed out, and we had been warned by other hikers about the problem.
It was bigger than we thought, and the river was running. It took a lot of rock hopping, but we made it without incident. There was a long series of switchbacks, all straining upward ever upward, and then we reached the fork in the road where Railroad Grade Trail and Park Butte Trail split off from one another.
Railroad Grade Trail Peak We handed out the last of our water here, then debated going on. While Omaha and the girls rested I climbed up the Railroad Grade trail to where it crested and the family would be out of sight. There was a sign up here with three arrows. One said "Mt Baker (Water)" and the other read "toilet." I hate to wonder how they clean those things. As I was coming back the kids were running up. We met halfway, then I dropped down and rejoined Omaha.
Omaha said it was "just a little farther," so we decided to press on. We walked over a small crest and across another vast heather bowl with a pack of snow still visible at the far end, out of reach. But there was water trickling across the meadow and we refilled our water bottles, using the water filter. Then we climbed up the far side of that same bowl, passing right next to a snowpack that the girls had fun touching. We reached a campsight high above where people had created great cairns. That's where I snapped the panorama. We pressed on, rounded the peak, and reached the Park Butte. We didn't make it to the lookout; it was too steep, so we headed back down.
On the way down, the girls spent way too much time picking mountain blueberries. They were easily accessible from the trail; Omaha and I tried hard to keep them off of the plants, and they were pretty good about it.
It was the hardest hike we'd done yet. Four miles up, all the way uphill, and four back, with the girls, and they were very impressive the whole way.
Oy!
I had the weirdest dream last night. The first part started on a convention floor covered with people selling really cheap Chinese-made kitsch. There were blinking lights and dollar-store toys and so forth and so on, and then I was escorted up the hallway to shown even worse junk. As I walked down the hallway I got dumped down into the backstage of a theater, where I encountered classrooms of marines, Fonzes, and drag queens. Then I woke up.
We drove up Forest Road 12, at one point consulting the GPS to make sure we were at the intersection we thought we were. We got to the end of the road and discovered that the trail we were on was the one climbers took to cross the peaks and make it all the way to Mt. Baker. We were going the other way, to the butte that overlooks the southern valley named, unremarkably, Park Butte Lookout. It was Friday, so we passed many people coming off their week-long walk up and down the mountain; they wore the classic plastic boots of mountaineers and humungous backpacks.
We reached Schrieber's Meadow, which was lovely for the time of year, and there were lots of mountain blueberries everywhere, which the girls found thrilling. The trail beyond the Schrieber section got a little rockier and steeper, and then we reached the Rocky River (very clever name; I'm sure there are hundreds). The bridge was washed out, and we had been warned by other hikers about the problem.
It was bigger than we thought, and the river was running. It took a lot of rock hopping, but we made it without incident. There was a long series of switchbacks, all straining upward ever upward, and then we reached the fork in the road where Railroad Grade Trail and Park Butte Trail split off from one another.
Railroad Grade Trail Peak
Omaha said it was "just a little farther," so we decided to press on. We walked over a small crest and across another vast heather bowl with a pack of snow still visible at the far end, out of reach. But there was water trickling across the meadow and we refilled our water bottles, using the water filter. Then we climbed up the far side of that same bowl, passing right next to a snowpack that the girls had fun touching. We reached a campsight high above where people had created great cairns. That's where I snapped the panorama. We pressed on, rounded the peak, and reached the Park Butte. We didn't make it to the lookout; it was too steep, so we headed back down.
On the way down, the girls spent way too much time picking mountain blueberries. They were easily accessible from the trail; Omaha and I tried hard to keep them off of the plants, and they were pretty good about it.
It was the hardest hike we'd done yet. Four miles up, all the way uphill, and four back, with the girls, and they were very impressive the whole way.
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Date: 2007-09-02 04:11 am (UTC)