The Whitney Quest - Day 3, Part 1: Mt Whitney

August 26, 2009

12:30am. The alarm went off way too early. Ugh. Between the restless few hours of "sleep", allergies, and the moderately high altitude hike yesterday in Cottonwood, I could have stayed in bed for a few more hours. BUT...this was The Day. The time had finally come, after all these years, to do Mt Whitney. Sleeping in really wasn't much of an option.

I clawed my way out of bed and into the shower. Once I was back out, most of the rest of the team was up and moving. Jeff was energized and packing high-power energy shot drinks (above right). Flyingmoose (left) slept on as long as possible before he, too, got up. We packed all of our stuff (we weren't staying here another night, as we were Furnace Creek-bound after doing Whitney), loaded up the SUV, and away into the darkness we went.

One thing about where we were going. This place was an "active bear area". I.e., there likely would be bears wandering around in the woods next to, around, or near us. We planned to not leave any food items in the car, but carry everything with us (that which we were not going to carry we left in the common kitchen refrigerator of the hostel until our return).

A short while later we arrived at the parking lot at the end of Whitney Portal Road. While there were a fair number of vehicles all around, we managed to luck out and get a spot within 50' of the trailhead and bathrooms. One last privy visit we shouldered our packs and started up the trail. Blurry photo left (camera had issues focusing) of Jeff, Marty, Harold, and Dwight.

Before I continue, this is a breakdown (in miles and altitude) of the hike we were about to undertake:

The Trail to the Mt. Whitney Summit

0.0 miles: Trailhead (8,360 feet)

0.85 miles: Enter John Muir Wilderness (permit required beyond)

2.7 miles: Cross Lone Pine Creek. Shortly after crossing, trail forks to Lone Pine Lake on left, right continues towards summit. (9,980 feet)

3.8 miles: Outpost Camp with Thor Peak dominating the view. (10,360 feet)

4.3 miles: Mirror Lake (10,640 feet)

4.9 miles: 50 yards past Whitebark Stump, a dwarf whitebark pine is the last tree on trail

5.3 miles: Trailside Meadow (11,395 feet)

6.3 miles: Trail Camp, a good place to rest before the grueling 96 switchbacks to Trail Crest. (12,039 feet)

8.5 miles: Cross Trail Crest and enter Sequoia National Park. (13,777 feet)

9.0 miles: John Muir Trail joins from the west. Altitude sickness common. (13,480 feet )

9.3 miles: Cutoff to Mount Muir.

10.5 miles: Keeler Needle, just a short climb to the summit from here. (14,003 feet)

11.0 miles: Mt. Whitney summit. No water. Camping permitted. (14,495 feet)

(courtesy of Desert USA)

The altitude numbers in parenthesis indicate the altitude you are at at that particular point. So, we are starting our adventure at 8,360' above sea level. Better than 6,100' of gain awaited our legs and feet...

Very shortly into the trail (like, tens of feet), we came to a display area that included a scale that people could weigh their packs. We were loaded with daypacks, not intending on spending the night. Jeff's and my packs weighed in as the heaviest at 22 lbs each (mine was that heavy because I was carrying 2 liters of water, a liter of Gatorade, and my heavy-duty first aid kit). Everyone else was in the 12-18 lbs range.

The time was 2:30am. From there we set out into the chilly night. By the time dawn was to break, several of us would wish we had gloves, the air temperature was just cold enough.

For the next few miles, punctuated by periodic stops for snacks and water, darkness stayed with our every step. Up and up, onward and onward we trudged, following the trail markers and wondering what the terrain around us looked like. Over our left shoulder Venus shone brilliantly in the sky.

Finally somewhere around 11,000' or so the eastern sky began to lighten. Dawn was coming. We pressed onward.

A darkness turned to greyness, we could see we were now well out of the forest and in rocky terrain. The eastern sky went from a faint glow to an erupting yellow as the sun grew closer to the horizon. The stars overhead faded quickly, but Venus hung on for a long while. Photo right is looking East, Venus is the bright dot upper right, and the headlamps of Jeff, Snurt and RidgeSeeker are lower right.

Finally it was light enough for us to douse our headlamps and continue hiking by the growing light of day (photo left). Venus succumbed to the lightening sky and disappeared from view. The next thing we knew we were coming upon tents in the rocks - we were at the outer fringes of Trail Camp!

As the sun broke the crest of the horizon to illuminate the palisades that bounded Mt Whitney to the south (golden photo right), we stopped to resupply our water reserves, for once we got up into the 96 (or 97, or 99, or 103) Switchbacks (which were maybe quarter of a mile from Trail Camp) water sources would vanish. What we had would have to carry us for 7-8 miles round trip before we got back down and to a water source again.

After a nice, long break (in which we learned that the air temperature was below freezing - no wonder most of us were chilled, not having clothing for temps that chilly!), we got back to our feet and marched onward through a thinly populated tent-city, as the residents of said city roused themselves. At this point I was still doing okay pace-wise.

A short time later we hit The Switchbacks. Be it 96, 97, 99, or 100+. I'd seen different numbers quoted in different sites and books. The photo right is a view towards The Switchbacks, which are invisible, but climb the left-leaning ramp to the left center of the photo. Trail Crest is behind the notch where the upper right portion of the ramp meets the palisades, making those rock columns 1000'+ tall.

Now, I don't know how many there really are. I had my GPS on thinking I'd count them on the map later, but satellite signal bounce played havoc with that and my GPS-generated path map did not resemble reality. I was also thinking to manually count switchbacks as we went up, but after I hit the 20th one I started losing track. Partly because I was also gazing out at the views and vistas that surrounded us.

The other thing that distracted my attention early on in The Switchbacks was a helicopter that had flown into the area and circled around Trail Camp for a while before landing, taking off, flying away, coming back minutes later, circling around again, and landing elsewhere. I learned from two women who I was leap-frogging up the Switchbacks for a while that the afternoon before a young lady had fallen and twisted or broke her ankle while coming down from the Trail Crest. She made it to Trail Camp, but was unable to continue hiking out (another 6+ miles of rugged terrain). Several other groups of people who were camping at Trail Camp combined efforts to set her up for the night while the rest of her party went down for help. The helicopter was sent up late this morning to retrieve her. It was interesting to watch it fly around, but it did kinda break up the 'wilderness experience' a bit. But then again, before I learned what really had happened I thought something worse had occurred, necessitating the helicopter visit, so didn't worry about the whole 'wilderness experience' thing. In the last two photos left you can make out tents to the lower right, just right of the lake, in the rocks. To give you an idea of scale.

The photo left is looking up the direction of The Switchbacks from still well down on them. The Switchbacks thread their way steeply through the rock walls above. The photo right is of ClueSeeker at the only set of railing (if that's what you want to call it) on The Switchbacks. And even some of those cables had been severed in places from large rockfall.

The photo left is a view of the Alabama Hills far, far below us and miles away (see previous log entry for when we were there). The photo right is a wider angle view of the same direction, but you can see the small lake by Trail Camp where we last filled up with water (said lake has no name that I am aware), and the somewhat larger Consultation Lake to the right. These both drain down along the Whitney Portal Trail.

Photo left is of the rock walls that rose formidably up from the scree field, towering 100-1000' or more tall. There are technical routes that go up these pillars and needles, but we didn't have any gear to be technical climbing. This was a foot-slogger trip. The two hikers in the foreground are the two ladies who were leap-frogging us as we climbed The Switchbacks.

The rest of the team surged onward while my pace slowed. As advertised, the Switchbacks were grueling. They basically climbed up for 1700' in just over a mile. And going from 12,000' to well over 13,000', the air gets thin pretty darn fast. Somewhere up there I passed the "8 Miles" marker rock (I would totally miss it on the hike back out). 'Only' 3 miles to go...

As I went up, some people passed me, going faster. I passed a couple people, going slower. And during the entire ascent maybe half a dozen people trickled down who had not completed the climb up to Whitney, but got to the Trail Crest (13,777') and turned around. Shortly after these individuals I started running into people coming down who had been to the summit for sunrise. Said it was absolutely spectacular up there. Hmmm. Next time...

Off to the far right I could see Mt Whitney. What I didn't realize I could also see, indicated by the yellow arrow in the photo lower right, is the Summit Hut of Mt Whitney. I saw it later on the way down when I looked back up.

Somewhere on the way up the Switchbacks I ended up passing ClueSeeker and Snurt. But FlyingMoose and RidgeSeeker were well ahead of us. We all had radios, so I wasn't too worried about us getting out of touch (but we would later learn that Snurt's radio was not functioning properly).

Sidebar: in the beginning of the trip when we were all first meeting and introducing each other, telling each other outrrrrrageous tales of flight and fancy, I had relayed a story that a friend of a friend of mine and her husband, whenever either of them spot an attractive member of the opposite sex that they think their spouse would appreciate, call out "Squirrel!". They got this from the talking dog in the movie "Up!" (I've not seen the movie, but I saw the clip in the trailers; the dog is talking to one of the main characters, saying, "Hi there. My name is Dug. My master made me this collar so that I may talk - Squirrel! {pause} Hi there."). They don't point or anything, just say "squirrel", and let their spouse locate the noticed individual. Apparently she usually finds them for him, but every now and again he finds one for her. Anyway...

The Switchbacks finally ended with a long, straight-ish gentle rise in the trail that brought me over to the Trail Crest (sign photo left). I collapsed for a much needed rest, snack and drink. I've come 8.5 miles so far. Only 2.5 miles left to go...

Suddenly my radio crackled.

"Red Five, this is Red Squirrel Leader, over. Red Five, this is Red Squirrel Leader, over."

It took me a moment to 1) recognize that it was ClueSeeker's voice, and 2) to understand he was probably talking to me. Puzzled, I responded.

"...Red Five here."

"Red Five, you have four squirrels inbound your location. I repeat, four squirrels inbound your location. Over."

"Uh, roger."

30 seconds later four athletic 20-something girls came sauntering up the trail from behind me, chatting away, not even winded. They stopped at Trail Crest and asked if I would take some photos for them. While doing so, I asked where they were from to not be so out of breath and how long it took them to hike up.

"From Tahoe! We live at altitude. We left the car just a few hours ago. This is her first time doing any mountains."

The indicated member of their group wasn't out of breath either. It was now 9:20am (we had just left Trail Camp at 6:50am - {gasp!}{wheeze!}). Oh, to be acclimatized to altitude!

Giggling, the girls trotted onward shortly after ClueSeeker and Snurt got to the Trail Crest sign and thumped down to rest.

"Well?" ClueSeeker asked.

Sitting against a rock with my head back, eyes closed, I replied, "Yeah. I'm too damned tired to appreciate anything right now."

A couple of F-18s roared high overhead. They would periodically accompany us most of the day. Photo left and right show one of the F-18s I managed to snap a photo of just before it flew behind a rock wall.

Finally I decided to get up and start moving again. I figured I'd be slower than ClueSeeker and Snurt at this point, that they'd catch up to me. Still 2.5 miles left to go. Don't think about it, don't think about it...

The first real views around the corner were of this massive curtain-rippled wall rising high over two alpine lakes known as the Hitchcock Lakes. The 13,000'+ mountain towering over the lakes is known as Mt Hitchcock.

At some point I caught up to FlyingMoose and RidgeSeeker. Then they were ahead. Then they were behind. Then ClueSeeker and Snurt passed me. Then they were behind. It's kinda all a blur, the 2 miles from Trail Crest. I was walking on, pausing to breath, and looking to the magnificent sights to the west. Of which there was plenty to drink in. Photo left shows the trail as it rides near the edge of a long drop. Mt Whitney itself is just up from center. If you see an small, flat, elongated dark object at the summit of Mt Whitney, that would be the summit hut. The photo right is of FlyingMoose taking a momentary break to look down at the Hitchcock Lakes.

Photo left is looking just north of Mt Hitchcock at Timber Lake (just above the treeline; more visible in the photo right) just above 11,000'. The mountains beyond are part of the heart of the Sierra Nevada.

The trail for the most part back here stayed relatively flat, with an occasional switchback or two up, or an occasional rising traverse. But mostly flat for a good long ways. Which was nice, but...on the flip side, it meant the closer I got to Mt Whitney, the steeper the final trail would become...

All the while looking and hiking, the landscape around me looked barren. But then I would look down and every now and again I'd come across a patch of alpine wildflowers. Some yellow, some white, some purple.

Finally we had under a half mile to go. ClueSeeker had found the first patch of snow we would cross and decided to take the opportunity to wing a snowball at Snurt and I. His first one nailed me in the head. "I forgot to tell you, I play catch with my boy all the time!" he said, as a second one came flying my way. That one I dodged then scurried past him while he was taking aim at Snurt.

ClueSeeker, Snurt and I marched loosely together and eventually caught up to FlyingMoose and RidgeSeeker. We took a small break, then I decided to keep going, figuring that they would overtake me shortly. Particularly FlyingMoose and RidgeSeeker, who were marching hard and fast.

Photo left is looking up the direction of the summit, still some 400-500' vertical feet to go. Fortunately we did not have to walk over all these rocks. There was a nice, obvious trail to continue following to the top.

But, as things turned out, we were a lot closer to the summit than I thought. The boys must have taken a longer break than I thought they were going to, as I arrived a good 20 or 25 minutes before they arrived.

Not that I had the summit to myself! Not by a long shot. There were some 30-odd people clustered up here.

The two ladies who I had been leap-frogging on The Switchbacks showed up. I hadn't seen them since I left the Trail Crest. We chatted a bit. They graciously took a photo of me on the summit (ophoto left, me with my MESSENGER mission patch), and I returned the favor for them.

Now where was the rest of my team??

(cont'd)

The Whitney Quest - Day 2: Cottonwood Canyon & The Alabama Hills

August 25, 2009

Being on East Coast time, even being up as late as we were the night before, I rose early for the locals (but "on time" for me at home). After getting a quick shower, the others stirred and rose. We were now awake and ready for the day to begin. However...it was still rather early locally and quite dark out. So what did we do? Walked across town and down to the Inter-Agency building in the dark, hitting a handful of geocaches by starlight (or streetlight when available) along the way!

None of the caches we did were remarkable, or anything to write home about. Mostly they were "cache-n-dash" type hides. If you knew the trick to the hide, they were easy to find. If you were uninitiated, they'd be more challenging. For us, even for those on the team who deny "doing the numbers", these were really "numbers" caches (i.e., caches that one does just to increase the find count #). Pretty much everyone "does the numbers" at some point in their caching career, whether they prefer unique puzzle or challenging adventure caches or not.

While we were out and about, I noticed not far from the hostel a McDonald's (note: Lone Pine is small; you can walk from end to end in about 20 minutes, so nothing is far from anything). Unlike most McD's this one 'blended in' with its surroundings, being a wooden (or wooden-sided) building with a cowboy scene on the side (photo left). Given that this is McDonald's, I'll let you draw your own interpretation of the cowboy scene...

After hitting a few caches and getting almost three miles of walking in, dawn began to brighten the morning sky. Dimly we could see the mountains to the west beginning to emerge from the dark. And we were getting hungry. Found ourselves a breakfast joint that was open, and with not a solitary customer other than us around, had the place to ourselves throughout breakfast. The two people we saw overseeing the establishment spoke little or no English, so getting butter for the toast and pancakes was...an interesting study of what the waitress thought I was asking for (peanut butter, more jelly, etc - anything but actual butter!).

After this hearty breakfast we returned to our hostel room and got our hiking stuff for the day in order. Our goal today: an acclimatization hike up Cottonwood Canyon to Trail Pass (~11,000') and back down. An 11 mile round trip, half of what we would be doing tomorrow.

We piled back into the SUV, and sauntered in the opposite direction we walked earlier in the morning. The more immediate goal: finish doing the caches in town. I had lobbied that we do a virtual cache dedicated to the 27 people who died from an 8.3 earthquake that hit Lone Pine on March 26, 1988. I wanted to do this cache as a good friend of mine who had recently passed away had been working on an earthquake forecasting algorithm (and in the face of conventional geologic science, reported he was having a 90+% accuracy rate at forecasting earthquakes before he died; despite having this trend for several years running, geologists still said he was "just getting lucky").

After sweeping the rest of the caches in town, and at a nearby park just south of town, we refueled and started heading up to Cottonwood Canyon, stopping briefly to check out another virtual cache in the Alabama Hills area.

The virtual cache brought you to a plaque that described some of the history of the Alabama Hills. We would learn since the 1920s, hundreds of movies and tv shows, such as Gunga Din, How The West Was Won, Kyber Rifles, Bengal Lancers and High Sierra, along with The Lone Ranger and Bonanza, have been filmed right here, with the majestic Sierra Nevada for the background.

But the day was not getting any younger, and we still had our "acclimatization hike" to do up in Cottonwood Canyon. We got back on the road and headed south-southwest, to the obvious switchbacks that climbed up out of the valley, pausing a couple times to let the SUV's overheating engine time to cool down (it wasn't all that hot out, but we were climbing steeply quickly!). From the Alabama Hills to Cottonwood Canyon it would be a 22 mile drive, but take nearly an hour. Photo above left shows the road to the foothills and the switchbacks up out of the valley. Photo right is near the last of the switchbacks, looking back towards the Alabama Hills. The dark green clump of trees far right center is Lone Pine. In the far distance is up valley towards Tahoe. The haze from the fires in California this time of year.

We had gone up quite a ways before we got to the portal that allowed us our first glimpse of Cottonwood Canyon (photo right). We still had a few miles to drive, and our hike would take us to the saddle right of center along the horizon, then circle around the mountain to the left and back down to the high valley and where we would park.

Soon enough we arrived at the parking area and trailhead. The place had plenty of cars, but it wasn't overly full, being midweek and all. We got out, geared ourselves up, did the photo thing, and got our butts on the trail.

The trailhead is at about 9,960' (give or take), and the Cottonwood Pass (our goal of this little acclimatization hike) is at 11,160' (or 11,180', depending on whom you reference; whichever, it is over 11,100'!), 5-6 miles away. Once there we would then traverse around the north side of Trail Peak (11,623') for a mile and a half on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) to the Trail Pass (10,500'), then back down to Horseshoe Meadow and then to the parking lot again. A total trip of 11-12 miles, and would get us up to just over 11,000' to prep our bodies for The Climb tomorrow.

The trail started out flat, flat, sandy and flat, as we traversed along the north end of Horseshoe Meadow. Periodically we could see Trail Pass (and Trail Peak; photo upper right) and Cottonwood Pass (photo left) as we proceeded along. Trail Pass was obviously much more wooded than Cottonwood Pass. But then again, Cottonwood Pass was over 600' higher in elevation. :-)

We soon entered the lodgepole and foxtail pine forest, catching one final glimpse of Cottonwood Pass (photo right; our trail would take us next to the green meadow-like area in the center of this photo; see below for reverse view). The trail stayed very kind and pretty level, even as we were gently rising in altitude. But as soon as we left the Horseshoe Meadow, we began to climb up switchbacks (photo left) up the rocky slope. As we got about halfway up, we were afforded one final glimpse back of the Horseshoe Meadow (photo right). Then...it was all rock and pine trees.

When we started out, I was in the back of the pack. Partly because I was stopping entirely too often to take photos, and partly because the other guys were hiking faster than I. At some point, however, I think when we hit the switchbacks, I ended up passing them by quite a few minutes. Must have been from hiking up and down all the stairs in the new building at work where my office is...

I don't remember how many switchbacks we climbed up. There were quite a few. But they were gentle, the trail never steep, and the distance between the switchbacks was usually fairly lengthy.

Finally it was clear that the pass was ahead of me (photo left). Just one long final stretch of trail and I'd be there!

Once I arrived at the crest of the trail, I kicked back to relax on one of the weirdly-shaped and weathered boulders up there (photo right). For about a minute. Then my "what's over here" curiousity instincts kicked in, having never been up here before. I got up and actually start looking around, waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.

The view back down to Horseshoe Meadow was quite nice (photo left). It was a little humbling to understand that our ride was 5-6 miles "thataway", on the far side of the Meadow, somewhere below the tall mountain upper center. And we still had to traverse around to the right (from this view) behind Trail Peak, then end up somewhere in the middle of Horseshoe Meadow.

Behind me was the Big Whitney Meadow (photo right). Our journey today would only take us a very very short way into it, then turn left and follow the PCT. I'll have to come back another day to check out the Big Whitney Meadow.

Before too long the rest of the guys caught up and we had a nice, relaxing lunch. But we didn't have ALL day, so gathered up our stuff and started out on the second half of our hike. Photo left is the view back up to Cottonwood Pass from the junction of the Cottonwood Pass trail and the PCT.

As we headed down the trail, I heard a call (Nature) from just up the hill. The other guys didn't hear anything and kept on trucking. By the time I got back to the trail, they were l-o-n-g gone. Well, even mapless, I figured I couldn't get too lost here. I knew where the Horseshoe Meadow was, and where we were parked. I could navigate there by any means necessary if I ever lost the trail.

As I hiked onward, I came across a number of interesting things: a grove of dead pines (below left), more than a few huge leaning trees (below center), and always these extremely twisted trees (below right). I've seen trees like this for many years in the mountains. I still have yet to understand how they get so twisted up.

Eventually I got to Poison Meadow (photo left; no, I don't know why it's called Poison Meadow), and soon after that I caught up to Jeff and Dwight. We hiked onward together, but I was growing pretty fatigued and they soon out-distanced me. I just plodded ahead, one foot in front of the other. The view in front of me (photo right) unchanging, the Horseshoe Meadow off to my left through breaks in the trees.

After a while I caught up to the group. They were taking a break at the Trail Pass/PCT/Mulkey Trail junction. I plopped down but after a couple minutes they rose to start heading onward, fully rested. Ugggh. This didn't bode well for me for tomorrow. I climbed to my feet and plodded onward, still slower than the rest (I also think they were catching exit fever, enabling them to go faster).

Eventually we got down the 600' descent to the broad and sandy Horseshoe Meadow (photo left). And halfway across the meadow we came upon a group of horse riders heading in for a one or two night overnighter trip. (photo right). That's one way of traveling so as to not carry all your gear on your back!

From here it was still about a mile, maybe a shade less, to get back to the parking lot. We still had one water hazard to cross (photo left) in the blazing sun before we could get back to the wooded shade and the Cottonwood Trail (after which it was less than half a mile to the SUV; but given how I was feeling, that was one lonnng half mile!).

Tired, exhausted, I made it back to the SUV. The other four guys had already shed their packs and changed their shoes/socks and were ready to roll. It took me a few minutes to catch up, but then we departed.

On the way out we noticed that the local rock removal crews hadn't finished their work yet. It was just before 2p.

From my vantage point in the SUV on the drive back down the switchbacked Horseshoe Meadow Road, at this hour in the afternoon, the valley below had a distinctive red coloring in places (photo left). We also saw down in the plains periodic dust devils, some of them quite tall (but barely showed up on the photos; there are actually two just right of center in this photo).

As we were closing in on Whitney Portal Road, and since it was "only" mid-afternoon (i.e., we had time to kill), we decided to stop and tag two more caches in the Alabama Hills. We piled out to start looking for the first cache, but my attention was drawn to the rocks. My hands started itching, and I was wishing I had my harness and shoes (and a rope). Photo right of Jeff and Dwight passing by one of the rock formations here, in search of the cache.

As I tore my attentions from the rocks to help with the cache search, one of the guys said, "Hey, what's that up on the rock?" I immediately trotted over to where he was. Sure 'nuff, it was a bolt! And a rap station up top. These rocks WERE an established climbing area! I wanted to climb up...but restrained myself. This will have to wait for another time...

We quickly found the two caches, and a plaque describing this particular area as being where the movie Gunga Din was filmed (photos left and right below).

After collecting the two caches, we jaunted back to town, and off to the ranger station to check in. Where we were given a rude surprise that almost ended the trip right then and there!

Seems we had to check in with the rangers by 11AM the day before the hike, not just check in with them at any time the day before the hike! If there had been a line of people waiting for no-shows during the check-in time, our permit would have been given to another party, and we would have been SOL, and out of our registration fees. We got lucky. Lesson learned. When doing Whitney, DON'T plan anything else the morning before!

With our permit in hand, we headed back to town to grab some grub (photo left, view of Pizza Factory from the hostel room; photo right is of the Mt Whitney hostel from the Pizza Factory), do some more last-minute shopping (which, for me, included picking up a climbing guide to the Alabama Hills; yep, I'll be back!), then repack for the hike up Whitney. We would be getting up around midnight-thirty. Going to bed early sounded like a good option.

The Whitney Quest - Day 1, Part 2: Rhyolite to Lone Pine

As we left Rhyolite to head for the old cemetery (mind you, by "old", this is "western old", not "european old"), we decided to stop by the Goldwell Open Air Museum. (photo left of the sculpt entitled "Tribute To Shorty Harris", and on prominent display near the road, draws the attentions of passersby) There were some...interesting sculptures scattered around the 15 acre grounds, and we were intrigued. Little did I know at the time, but Clue Seeker also knew that one of the half dozen Rhyolite caches was located right here. Heh.

The Open Air Museum was started in 1984 by Belgian sculptor Albert Szukalski (1945-2000). He is best known for his life-sized "ghostly" shrouded figures, some of which were on display here, and others which are on display in and around his home town of Antwerp. To make these sculpts, he would wrap live models in fabric soaked in wet plaster, posed them to what he wanted, then refined the drapery. When the plaster set, the model stepped out, leaving a rigid shroud of a figure behind. The final sculpts are then covered in fiberglass to weatherproof them. When we first drove up to Rhyolite we saw a line of ghostly figures off the road, but had no idea what they really were.

We all got out and started exploring the grounds. I was drawn over to a rather colorful couch . I wasn't sure why, since some of the other stuff was more interesting. I guess I figured I'd check out this color-wild couch first (entitled "Sit Here"), and figure out if it was at all comfortable to sit on, then make a sweeping circle around to catch all the other stuff on my way back to the SUV.

As I approached, Jeff also came by, GPS in hand (photo right). I asked, "Is there a cache near here?" He laughed and said, "Right here!". Lo and behold, there was one hidden behind the couch. Heh.

After checking out some of the detail on the couch (photo left: among other things, hidden on the right side of the couch was a Star Trek Starfleet emblem), and doing the group photo thing (illustrating just how not comfortable the couch was), I moved on to the other constructs.

The one that drew my (and everyone else's) attention was the 25' tall "Lady Desert: The Venus of Nevada". You can tell she's tall, but you get no real appreciation for her height until, well, you get right up near her.

She was constructed in 1992 by Hugo Heyrman. He used cinderblocks to represent the pixels he used in his virtual 2-D computer work (yes, computers - and the internet! - existed back in 1992! :-P the abacus and sliderule had just been retired the year before).

I walked over to check out the Lady. I thought the rest of the team was going to follow, but when I got near her, I noticed they were hanging back, too scared of her. Well, fine. I had my powers (see Part 1). I figured I could take her if need.

Walking around her (and yeah, 25' high, out in the open desert, she's tall!), I saw that the back side sported a buttock of cinderblocks. Heh.

After the Lady I wandered over to a row of ghostly figures. This was Szulkalski's rendition of "The Last Supper". I didn't understand at the time how these sculpts had been made (until I found a pamphlet describing the Open Air Museum on our way out). One of my team made a comment about how it looked like someone could stand inside the ghost suits, so....I did!

Bit of a tight fit, though. Musta used a short model.

There were a few other sculpts to check out ("Icara", a spiral wheel thing with no name I saw, a wagon sculpt, etc), but time was pressing and the day getting on mid-afternoon. However, I did slip over to look at one more sculpt: "Ghost Rider". No, I did not try to crawl in.

We piled back in the mobile and headed back down the road, peeling off onto a dirt road a short distance away. Jeff navigating by GPS, Snurt driving. A short time later we saw out in the scrub desert the cemetery, standing out there all by its lonesome.

We pulled up to the front gate. It was obvious that while this is a relatively old cemetery, it does see live people, either of friends/family of the residents within, or visitors such as ourselves. The entrance plaque reads:

BULLFROG - RHYOLITE CEMETERY
1904 - 1912

This enduring bronze is placed here to the blessed memory to those who sleep herein, and to the remembrance of all others who came this way and opened up this great Nevada desert mining world.

By those who cared...

April 1969

The goal of the geocache was to visit (respectfully) three of the gravesites, get some date information from the headstones, plug the info into a formula on the cache page, and recalculate the new coordinates of the cache.

While we were looking around for the requested information, I noticed that some residents were relatively recent admissions to the cemetery (such as Eulah Gregory, who died in 1991). Others had to be from the time the cemetery was first....built? Constructed? Created? Established? Wood slats, weathered blank, marked the head and sometimes feet for those who lay resting. Stuff you see in movies, never real life. And here it was, in real life. Kinda spooky, actually.

The team collectively found all the necessary information, Jeff recalculated the coordinates for the cache (400' away from the cemetery). We bade our farewells to the residents here and set out to find the cache.

Granted, it was another ammo can in the middle of the scrub desert, but the main point of the cache was to bring us to visit the cemetery, which is not on the beaten path most people travel. So that made it cool.

Once we were done with this cache, we were back on the road again. Next stop: Death Valley!

As we drove over the pass, we could see spread out below us in the distance splotches of whiteness. Quite noticeable from the hazy brown and tan tones of the surrounding terrain and mountains.

The great salt pans of Death Valley.

The outside air temperature reading started rising steadily as we drove into the Valley. It was mid-late afternoon, practically the hottest time of day. Last I noticed the temperature reading it was a balmy 114°F (45°C)

Now, Death Valley can be quite hot. But it also can be quite chilly (today, however, was not one of those days). Temperatures in the Valley can range from highs around 130°F (54°C) in the summer to lows below 32°F (0°C) in the winter. The National Climatic Data Center reports that temperatures at Furnace Creek reach at least 90°F (32°C) on an average of 189.3 days annually and at least 100°F (38°C) on an average of 138.0 days annually. The highest average temperature is in July at 117°F (47°C), with temperatures of 122°F (50°C) or higher being very common. Note: we are here in the Valley in late August

The highest temperature ever recorded in the United States, according to National Weather Service records, was 134°F (56.7°C) at Furnace Creek (then known as Greenland Ranch) during a sandstorm on July 10, 1913. Freezing temperatures, on the other hand, occur an average of 11.7 days each year. The lowest temperature on record at Furnace Creek Inn is 15°F (-9°C), but nighttime temperatures in summer may only fall to 85°F to 95°F (30°C to 35°C).

This is important information to know when you are visiting the Valley. You want to make sure you always have plenty of water along with you when traveling this region, even if it's "just a short walk" from the car.

Our goal and destination at this point was a geocache called Death Valley, at the Harmony Borax Works. This particular cache was not a physical container, but a special type of virtual known as an earthcache (see the earlier log entry for a description of it, in case you missed it earlier). The requirements were to answer these questions seven, which included, but were not limited to, how far below sea level we were (176'), how many miles of inhospitable terrain did the 20-mule teams have to traverse (165), and at what temperatures will borax not crystalize (120°+ F). One could internet search some of the information, but not all of it. You had to actually visit and read the information plaques to get the bulk of the info.

The Harmony Borax Works plant was built and began to process borax ore in late 1883/early 1884. At full operation there were 40 men working, producing three tons of borax daily. However, during the summer months, when it was so hot that the processing water could not cool enough to permit the suspended borax to crystallize (temps of 120°F or greater), the work force moved out of Death Valley to the Amargosa Borax Plant near present-day Tecopa, CA.

Getting the final product to market from the heart of Death Valley was a challenging task. The Harmony operation became famous through the use of "20-mule teams", a romantic image that became the symbol of borax and persists to this day. These 20-mule teams traveled 165 miles from Harmony to Mojave, CA.

20-mule teams consisted of eighteen mules and two horses, attached to two enormous wagons (photo right) carrying 9 metric tons of borax each. The back wheels stood at 7' diameter, with tires made of 1 inch thick iron. The wagons were 16' in length. The third component of the wagons was a water tank wagon, because there was very little drinking water for the mules and horses (and men) on the journey. The tank wagon carried 1200 US gallons of water.

With the mules attached, the entire train was over 180' long. It should be noted in the 6 years of operation, no wagon broke down. Ever.

Today the Harmony Borax Works plant consists of a four-level ruin situated against a hillside (photo left). Around there are remains of buildings, machinery, tanks, piping, etc. In addition to the plant, a nearby townsite (photo rightt) can be seen in the not to far distance.

After touring the remnants of Harmony, we proceeded down the road a bit more to another feature in Death Valley known as the Devil's Golf Course. This was also the site of another Earthcache by the same name, and would be my #2000 cache 'find' (if I couldn't have Mt Whitney as my #2000, the Devil's Golf Course would prove to be a cool one for that landmark).
We arrived to a forbidding landscape. The photos above and below cannot do justice to this area. The terrain looks uneven and 'rocky', but it is more than just uneven. The mounds are also very rigid. At best if you fall, you'll just scrape the hell out of yourself. At worst, you could easily twist an ankle here, even with high-top boots on. Or a mound could collapse beneath you with a hollow cavity, perhaps breaking a leg. Bad News in the Valley!

These mound formations are crystallized salt, leftover deposits from a couple of ancient lakes, and now formed by winds and rain. The Devil's Golf Course sits above the floodplain of Death Valley, so the periodic floods that do occur (such as they are) do not impose a 'leveling' effect on this area, leaving it rugged and difficult to traverse (by contrast, Badwater, the lowest point in Death Valley - and the United States - is a couple tens of feet lower than the Golf Course and is in the Amargosa River floodplain, which subjects it to periodic 'leveling'; we will visit Badwater in more detail later).

Meanwhile, the pinnacles of salt continue to grow here, and are eroded by dust-driven winds and the occasional rains. These weathering processes, coupled with the growing salt crystal pinnacles, give rise to the terrain here. (photos above and to the right).

Looking closely at some of the mounds, one can see unusual formations. We saw a photo of a broken eggshell-like formation, but there were none near where we parked. However, there was this really smoothed out hollow in one of the pinnacles (photo left).

While we were here, one of the team suddenly stated they heard a cracking sound somewhere "out there". We all looked. Was it monsters?? I looked back at the info sign where we parked. It said if you listen carefully, on hot days the salt pinnacles expand and contract, causing a metallic snapping sound. At that point another car drove up and three Japanese tourists got excitedly got out and started talking a mile a minute about the area, pointing fingers all around and taking photos. I moved off into the Golf Course a ways, to get away from the cacophony that had arrived. With ninja-like reflexes I paused, and listened. The only sound I heard was the faint excited babble back at the parking area, the sound of a car driving away, and then just the wind. I stood, losing myself in the landscape...

A few minutes later I heard a sharp k-rack! off to my right. It sounded far away, somewhere out in the salt pan. Another minute later I heard a 'thunk', this time more in front of me, still "out there somewhere". Very cool.

I returned to the car and my team. We piled back into our SUV and turned to leave this wonderous yet forbidding land.

It was getting late in the day as we drove out of Death Valley and over a pass or two to Lone Pine. And given most of us were still on East Coast time, it was several hours later still. Hungry, yes, we were. But, we had to stop and do one more geocache along the way. It was quick, not overly remarkable. And I was reflecting on the geologic history of the Golf Course and gazing up at the few clouds and sun.

We got to Lone Pine a little after dark, after a mildly colorful sunset with the mountains before us. We quickly found the Mt Whitney Hostel, where we would be spending the next couple of nights. We also found a mexican restaurant a few blocks up the street and had dinner there (it was one of the few places still open).


After dinner we retired to the hostel, unloaded our gear, and collapsed. Tomorrow would be a longish day, as Jeff had planned for us an acclimatization hike into Cottonwood Canyon.

The Whitney Quest - Day 1, Part 1: Las Vegas to Rhyolite

August 24, 2009

Brrrrt. Brrrrt. Brrrrt.

My vibrating cell phone alarm thingy woke me with a start. It was 4:30am. I had enough time to get a shower and gather my bags before Jeff and Dwight would arrive to pick me up for our run to the airport. I showered, dressed, got my bags, and stepped outside. Jeff called; they were 5-10 minutes away. The night air was fairly warm, humid. Much as it had been the past few weeks since I got back from Rainier.

10-15 minutes later Jeff and Dwight pulled up. Jeff lept out, helped me toss my bags in the back of his cachemobile, and off to the airport we zoomed!

Being that Jeff is a SouthWest pilot, one of his perks is being able to, when not on duty, still park in the employee parking area and take the employee shuttle bus in - and drag any friends along whom he might have with him. Sweet! Free parking, shuttle ride to the terminal - everything except actually carried on the plane.

We arrived BWI with no difficulties. Made our way through baggage check-in (Snurt had some issues with the machine not accepting his bags, but that was the only hiccup we suffered). Through security we whisked, and to our gate went strode. Stopped briefly to grab a breakfast, eat, then onto the airplane we went!

Being that I checked in with SouthWest a bit late (midday yesterday) and Snurt first thing yesterday morning, I was further back in the pack of passengers for loading. I ended up not sitting with them. But I still somehow got a window seat!

We took off, and in the next few hours I relaxed, napped, read, and stared out the window, the latter particularly during the last couple of hours flight, watching the changing terrain 36K feet below us go from plains to southwest mountain and river canyons.

We arrived Vegas a little early (20 minutes early!), and landed so damned gently that I and others around me swear we did not feel anything until the nose came down and the engines were set to breaking thrust. I think I've had only one other landing ever that gentle. All others have been the standard thumps and bumps, with a couple of near break-the-wheel-strut impacts. Compliments to the captain on that landing!

We gathered our gear and located Harold/ridgeseeker waiting not too far away. Having the use of cell phones (a technology I still don't fully embrace) made hooking up easier. We then headed over to the car rental zone, where Marty/flyingmoose was waiting for us. Snurt had secured a rental of an Expedition SUV, which would accomodate all five of us (snugly) and our gear (snugly again).

Finally we were on the road (photo left: back in Vegas - but not for long!). Destination: Lone Pine, CA.

But we would be making a few stops along the way...

One of Jeff's geocaching goals was to find two caches in each county of Nevada, in order to meet a specific geocache challenge cache: the Nevada Delorme Challenge, where a cacher has to find at least one cache that would be on each page of the Nevada Delorme map book. Once found, they are then given the coordinates for the Nevada Delorme Challenge Cache. A number of states have similar challenge caches. Now iirc Jeff only had a few counties left to do, and most (if not all) of those we would drive through on our way to Death Valley and beyond.

Our first stop was Indian Springs, Nevada. Indian Springs is a small desert town along NV 95 north of Las Vegas. It is home for both the Thunderbirds flight team and the new Predator remote controlled spy plane. And two geocaches, of which we would be doing one.

We worked our way to the south edge of town and found a place to park. Jeff and a couple others of the team had the coordinates for this geocache already loaded in their GPS units, so hauled them out and faced the direction the arrows were pointing.

Atop a fairly substantial hill.

Sooo, up we went!

Now, mind you, this isn't a wooded forest like we have back East, or in the NorthWest. This is the SouthWest. Scrub, desert, dry heat, and unforgiving rock to scrape oneself against. It's all there.

The hill turned out to be rather steeper and taller than what it looked like from below. What was about a 0.3 miles and change horizontal hike was probably closer to 0.5 miles one way. Now, half a mile doesn't sound like a lot. But add it a little bit of altitude, dry heat, rough terrain, etc, it was not a trivial outing.

We eventually got to ground zero (image lower left is view of town from near cache hiding spot). Jeff made the innocuous find (photo right), an ammo container under one of many piles of rocks. We signed the log book, checked for "travelers" (travel bugs or geocoins, objects and coins that do not sit in a cache for trade, but are meant to travel from geocache to geocache, sometimes with no other goal than to move around, sometimes with specific goals such as to have photos taken of it in specific places, or to visit certain places in the state/country/world, etc), then hiked back down. I was fairly parched by the time we got back, and downed 1/3 of my liter of water. Never been in the desert this late in the year before, and didn't have a full appreciation for the impact. I suddenly did now!

It was also at this point, back at the SUV, I realized this wasn't a casual caching adventure. This was a serious geocaching adventure, with the prize caches being the ones atop Whitney and the one at the lowest point of Death Valley. Wasn't what I was expecting. But then again, I didn't internet poke ahead of time just how active my fellow teammates were. For example, Snurt had over 3000 finds at this point, and Jeff over 7000. Flyingmoose had about 1800, but he's been at this for four years (and skips a lot of the very easy caches, preferring mostly the challenging ones). In comparison, I had just shy of 2000 at this point in the trip, but I've been caching for nearly 6-1/4 years (and I do the easy caches as well as the extra difficult when possible). And while Ridgeseeker had only over 200, this was because where he lives up in Alaska, there ain't all that many geocaches around.

But I digress. But I should warn you now: the rest of this entry is mostly about geocaching and some of the neat things/places we saw/went to. The actual Whitney climb isn't for another couple of entries. ;-)

Before I go on, I should also note that geocaches all have unique names (though this is not to say no two caches may have the same name, much like two people might have the same name ;-) ). This makes it easier to identify caches.

Our next cache was simply called N.T.S. Couldn't figure out what that meant until we got to the roadside sign (photo right). Ah! Made much more sense then. And according to the map, right there to the north of us was the Nellis AFB Bombing Range. A rather...scrubby, desolate landscape, really. The airforce base is visible, nestled next to the mountains in the far, far distance (photo left). The cache find itself wasn't very challenging. It's main purpose was to get people to stop and read the sign, get a little educated on the area. It did me. I "knew" the airforce used areas of Nevada for bombing tests and whatnot, but I didn't know where.

Now I have a clue. I'll have to track down Area 51 next, see if they'll give me back my damned spaceship...

ANYway, we marched on. Stopped for gas and drinks in Amargosa Valley. There we saw an ad for the largest firecrackers in existence (photo right). M-800s?!? That's a nearly freaking stick o'dynamite! Yeesh.

Oh, and speaking of Area 51... (photo left).

Alas, we weren't actually going to Area 51. That'll be for another trip...

A bit outside of Amargosa Valley we stopped to do a cache called Don'tgoifyoudon'twannaglow. We all thought this might lead us to an interesting location, but alas, it was one of the lesser challenging and not very interesting cache spots: just a flat, flat scrub and sand desert with absolutely nothing remarkable. The cache was an ammo can, tucked next to one of a billion scrub bushes. We were all rather disappointed after doing the cache. We left without looking back.

It would only be later that I would learn about the after effects of being there, and the unusual powers that I had acquired. Peter Petrelli's got nothin' on me! But that's another story, for another time.

And yeah, it involves monsters.

We continued on up the road. We stopped for a bit to do a cache at Gold Center, a few miles south of Beatty. The cache was simply called Gold Center. And it took the seeker(s) to the old ruins of the town of...you guessed it, Gold Center. As we pulled off the main road and onto the dirt path, we could see the ruins of the Gold Center mining operation halfway up the hill (photo left).

From the cache page:
Gold Center, platted in Dec. 1904, was one of the longer lived towns in the Bullfrog District, the Post Office being sanctioned Jan. 21, 1905 and closed Nov. 23, 1910. It's claim to fame was the first brewery in the area, built underground to maintain a cool temperature, with the service above ground. Gold Center also had its own newspaper in 1907. Gold Center was a very busy town for most of its life. It was a stage stop on the way to both Rhyolite and Carrara. All three railroads (The Tonopah & Tidewater Railway-T&T, the Bullfrog Goldfield Railway-BG, the Las Vegas and Tonopah Railway-LVT) ran through Gold Center during this time. The only traces of the town left, (photos right and below left) are part of the cement base of one of the stamp mills and the tank foundations of the cyanide plant on the side of the hill, to show that people lived and dreamed there.

We did the cache, which was above the ruins, then explored the ruins for 10-15 minutes before the heat of the day drove us back to the SUV and on the road once again.

Our next stop was in Rhyolite. There are a half a dozen caches in/around Rhyolite, but we were only going to do one or two. The one we were all interested in doing was a two-stage cache at the old cemetery (a multi-stage geocache means we had to get information at one area in order to get the coordinates for the next or final part of the cache, located somewhere nearby; multi-stage caches can be two-, three, or heck, even ten-stage or more challenges). We would save this for the drive out. First, we wanted to check out the ruins and remains of the Rhyolite ghost town.

There were a number of ruined structures around. The photo right is of the Cook Bank. The image to left is drawing on info board of what the bank used to look like "back in the day". Most of these old buildings were in serious disrepair. However, the train depot was in pretty good condition (from the outside view, at least). This is probably because it was the only structure fully fenced off from the general public.

There was no cache here in town. Most of them were scattered around the outskirts of town. But we didn't go looking for any of them. We still had a lot of ground to cover to Lone Pine, and there were other goals various members of the team wanted to accomplish yet today.

(con't in part 2)

The Whitney Quest - Prologue

Sept 6, 2008

While I was in exploring the Dolomites of Italy, an email from a geocacher named ClueSeeker found its way into my inbox. I would get it a week later, after I returned from the European adventures.

The email read:

Hi Indy,

I would like you to consider joining a small group of us to score caches at the highest and lowest point in the continental U.S. ... in one day. Yes, Mt Whitney and Death Valley N.P.

Please send me a gmail address so I can send you the Google Documents invite. You were the one to inspire me to climb Katahdin this August. What a blast! As usually is the case, I'm thinking of more challenges.

ClueSeeker

Now, among allllll my other hobbies, I geocache. But most of my geocaching is usually relegated for those times when I can't get out climbing, or diving, or kayaking, or something else. Or when I just need a good hike or visit to someplace "off the beaten path" (more than a few geocaches I've gone for have brought me to little-visited gems in this world, where few others have tread).

Another one of my hobbies is high pointing: getting to the highest point in each of the 50 states. Before this year, I had done 44 of them (45 if you include DC). The ones remaining include Kings Mountain (Utah), Boundary Peak (Nevada), Gannett Peak (Wyoming), Denali (Alaska), Mt Rainier (Washington), and Mt Whitney (California).

The first hurdle for doing Mt Whitney, which happens to be the highest of the high points in the United States outside of Alaska, is to select what day or days (depending on whether one was doing this "in a day" or backpacking) one would attempt the peak and submit it to a lottery drawing, hoping against hope that the day(s) choosen were selected, AND that the weather was favorable. This by January of the year in question. You won't learn until that April if you got what you applied for. Because of this, I had put off doing Whitney for a few more years yet. Just hadn't had time to wrap my mind around the logistics of it, given everything else going on in Life.

But now I was being asked to go climb it!

Doing the geocaches at Mt Whitney and Death Valley were secondary considerations to my acceptance - here was an opportunity to get to the highest peak in the Lower 48. (at 14,497', Whitney is a mere 87' taller than Mt Rainier; stand on a rock and my head is above 14,500').

With my acceptance, Jeff (geo-handle of Clue Seeker) put together a team of 6. We discussed where to fly in to (Jeff is a SouthWest pilot and an ex-military pilot, and can sometimes get free stand-by passes for people to use), rental car options, where to stay when, what our itinerary would be overall (nutshell: fly in, meet up, drive out, do The Hike, visit Death Valley, drive back, fly home). And we even came up with a team name: Team High Exposure (for going to the highest point followed by one of the most exposed [to weather/heat] points in the States).

Jeff took care of submitting the lottery form. We were aiming for late August - specifically to do the 22 mile roundtrip hike in one day on Aug 26th, 2009. In the meantime I was setting most of my focus on the upcoming Rainier trip in July.

As the Whitney trip drew nigh, there were some adjustments in the team composition (we lost a person, we gained a person, we lost a person - not sure if we gained and lost yet another person or not), ending up with 5 of us for this adventure. We adjusted hotel/motel accommodations and car rentals accordingly. We dropped the second car from the rental, deciding to squeeze everyone into one vehicle (and since this was a non-technical climbing trip, nor a camping trip, we would not have tons of extra gear to slog around).

Our team now consisted of Jeff (Clue Seeker), Dwight (Snurt), Marty (Flying Moose), Harold (Ridgeseeker), and, well, me. As I'll probably use their geo-names and real names interchangeably, it is onto you to keep up. ;)

Our plan was to fly into Las Vegas, stay the night (because some members were arriving in the morning, some in the afternoon) at the same Motel 6 I stayed at back in February when I was out there for the Red Rocks trip, then drive out to Lone Pine, CA, get the hostel room, supply up with necessary foodstuffs, sleep, up at o'dark-thirty, drive up to the trailhead, do the hike up and back, drive to Furnace Creek in Death Valley to get our rooms there for the night, do the lowest point in Death Valley first thing in the morning (thus accomplishing the goal of hitting the highest and lowest points in the Lower 48 within a 24 hour period), then casually drive back to Las Vegas, have a celebratory dinner, crash out at the Motel 6 again, and then fly back home.

Sounded like a good plan.

Just before the trip started the plan changed. Now we would all fly into and meet in Las Vegas on Monday morning (FlyingMoose would already be out there, arriving a couple days before), get the rental, drive out to Lone Pine (caching along the way), get the hostel room for two nights, do an acclimatization hike (such as it would be) the next day (caching along the way), get up at o'dark-thirty to do Whitney on Wednesday, head out to Furnace Creek afterwards (too tired to cache along the way), hit Badwater, Death Valley (the lowest point in the US) the next morning (caching along the way), drive back to Las Vegas (caching along the way), have a celebratory dinner (caching along the way - do you sense a theme in this trip?), crash out at the Motel 6, then go our separate ways that Friday.

The # of days were the same. Just adjustments (and added activities I hadn't considered; I didn't really realize how into geocaching my teammates were!) put into the mix.

Before I go on, I probably should quickly (hah!) explain, for the non-geocaching-initiated in the audience, exactly what geocaching is (skip to the black text a few paragraphs below if you already know and don't want to be extra-bored ;) ). In its bare bones breakdown, it is a high-tech treasure/scavenger hunt hide-n-seek....game (yeah, that's what it is, a game). Baaasically, someone hides a container somewhere in the world (in the woods, in the desert, in an urban environment, etc), takes a GPS coordinate reading, then uploads this to geocaching.com (one has to have an account to do this - and to get coordinates in order to go out and find them). Other cachers then plug the coordinates into their GPS units and go out and try to find said cache.

You would naively think that getting the coordinate information would make finding said cache very easy. However, in reality, you'd be surprised. Caches can come in all shapes and sizes, and be camoflauged very, very well. The GPS will get you to the area (and the accuracy may not be 100%). It's then your job to find the cache.

Now physical caches can range in size anywhere from something that would hold a bazooka (usually referred to as "large") to ammo cans or lock-n-lock containers (usually referred to as "regular") to small tupperware containers the size of a baseball (usually referred to as "small") to magnetic hide-a-key or film containers (usually referred to as "micro") to something no larger than the area of your pinky fingernail (usually referred to as "nanos"). Within these containers is usually a logbook or logsheet (or strip of paper in nanos) for you to sign. And if the container is large enough, it will often contain inexpensive (i.e., McDonald or Dollar Store items) 'swag' for trade (sometimes caches have quite nice swag, but those are usually in more difficult to locate caches, rarely in the easy ones).

Caches can also be "virtual" - meaning that there is no actual, physical container at the location, but there is an object or view of some interest. In order to 'log' the cache for a find credit, you often have to answer a question about the object and/or have a photo taken - with your GPS (so as to prevent "vacation photos" from pre-caching trips) - at or with the object or view. Unfortunately, a few years ago geocaching.com decided that virtuals no longer consituted "real" caches and have banned the creation of any new ones - but the ones that existed prior to the ban were grandfathered in and many are still active and available for people to find. This is Good, because a number of places, such as pretty much all National Parks, or certain State Parks (e.g., North Carolina State Parks), places along the Appalachian Trail (notably in Pennsylvania), physical caches are not permitted. The best thing to have there, then, is a virtual. Especially if the location is some place cool or worthy of visiting.

Recently there has been a resurgence in another kind of virtual cache called Earthcaches. These are generally geologic-specific virtuals that attempt to educate the cacher on the geology or geologic history of a given area. Photo to the right is of me (with my GPS) at an Earthcache in Red Rocks, Nevada, called "Ancient Dunes". (from the cache page: ...notice the alternating red and tan layers. These were formed while the dunes were still active. The inclined layers were formed when the winds blew the sand, and the sand stacked up on the windward side of the dune. Continued forward climbing movement of dune after dune resulted in the stacking of layer upon layer of cross bedded sands. After the sand turned to stone, the cross bed patterns remained.) To log this cache you had to measure a 1' section of the crossbedding and tell how many layers of crossbedding you had in that section, and upload a photo of you at the area.

Caches are also rated with a Difficulty Rating and a Terrain Rating, each scale from 1-5. (where "1" is about as easy as it gets, and "5" is extremely challenging, might require specialized equipment such as climbing or diving gear) The easiest caches (often called "cache-n-dash") are rated no more than 1-2 in difficulty or terrain. Some of the best, though, are the harder caches. Photo to the left is of me, climbing up a 70' tall abandoned train trestle pillar, in the middle of the Potomac River, going after a Difficulty-5, Terrain-5 cache located at the top named "Psycho Urban Cache #13 - Impossible, Give Up Now!". As of this writing, I am the only person to have actually physically free climbed the tower; all others who followed have gotten to the top by the use of aid climbing up ropes. No mean feat in and of itself, mind you. Caches of average difficulty and/or terrain are usually considered "2/2".

All that said, some caches (physical, virtual, Earth) are very cool. Others are...not so much. Comes with the territory. Not everything can be perfect or awesome. Much more information can be found at geocaching.com.

The principle goals on this trip were to log the caches (there are two, one physical and one virtual) on top of Mt Whitney followed by logging the Earthcache at Badwater, Death Valley. Anything before, in between, or after was just gravy to the trip.

Sidebar: as you find and log caches, your "find count" goes up (assuming you bother to log them online). This generally gives people an idea of how experienced you might or might not be in this caching stuff. Prior to this trip I had found 1992 caches since May 2003. I was hoping Mt Whitney would be #2000.

The weekend of Aug 22nd arrived. I spent the two days sorting and organizing gear and clothes for the trip. Yeah, "just" a 5-day adventure, but in some rather temperature and climatically extreme environments. No technical gear needed, but other stuff definitely.

Sunday evening I turned in as early as I could (still wasn't until midnight), setting my alarm for 4:30am. Jeff and Dwight would be coming for me in a few hours...

The Rainier Quest - Days 9 & 10: The Final Adventures

June 25, 2009

Well, it was the final day of the trip. And I had a full day ahead of me before I caught the red-eye back to Baltimore.

Karyn took me down to the little town of Edmonds for breakfast and a jaunt through the local farmer's market. Which was quite a busy place! Did a little final souvenir shopping, then back to her and Bob's place. I packed the car with my gear, said my farewells, then headed out. Today's adventure was to hike up some of the Iron Horse State Park, a rails-to-trails park, hit a few geocaches along the way, then meet up with my friend Karen later in the afternoon, have dinner, then off to the airport to catch my 10:55pm flight, which would land me back in B'more around 7am.

But before I had taken off I had checked the geocaching website to see what caches were about. I noticed that not terribly far (horizontal distance-wise) there were a few caches from where Francesca and I had climbed yesterday. One of them had been placed out several days prior, and no one had even attempted it yet. Well, heck, that drew my attention. Given the number of geocachers around (especially back East), it is extremely rare to get a "first to find" (FTF) on a geocache. This particular cache had been sitting partway up this mountain for four days. It was a beautiful day out today, and it was a weekend - surely someone was probably already doing it! But on some slim chance no one had yet...I altered my plans. I would go for this cache first, then if time allowed try for the hike on the Iron Horse Trail.

The caches up on the mountainside above The Far Side climbing area are all pretty much dedicated to Harry Gault. In fact, the peak and the trail leading to the summit, as well as an overlook (Dirty Harry's Balcony), bear his name.

Historical sidebar note: Harry was a local independent logger who, in the late 1970s, who was in the business of buying cutting rights to next-to-worthless timber on private land that didn’t interest larger operators. He gained a reputation for relentless logging near North Bend, Washington, employing logging methods (that were subsequently outlawed) to chainsaw these forests into oblivion. He was known for his uncanny ability to build roads and log trees in places thought by other loggers to be too inaccessible to attempt. This reputation eventually led people to give him the nickname of "Dirty Harry". For years he was a thorn in the side of the Forest Service and local timber companies, who tried in vain to convince him to practice his craft in less conspicuous areas.

Photo right is one of Dirty Harry's victims, but with a new sapling growing out of the old trunk.

Anyway, many years after Dirty Harry stopped his tree-clearing practices, the occasional rusty artifact from his logging past can still be found along and near his old logging road (photo left of one such artifact). Harry had even left behind an old truck and some other logging artifacts at an undisclosed location he called the "Museum", also known as "Dirty Harry's Museum". Most hikers looking for this "Museum" never find it, as every year it becomes more hidden by brush and trees. I would soon learn why people don't always find it.

The cache I was growing interested in was called "Dirty Harry's Stash", which was where his "museum" was located.

I pulled off of I-90 at Exit 38, and went to the same parking area. I forgot to mention, the area where The Far Side climbing is located is the Washington State Fire Training Center. The road up the mountain (partway up the mountain) is open from sometime in the morning until 4pm in the afternoon. At least that's what the sign says. Yesterday when Francesca and I came out, it was past 4:30p and the gate was still open. But we didn't know it would be, didn't want to take any chances, so had parked in the parking area outside the gate. Where most people parked.

However, because it was still early-ish today (11am), the gate was open. I decided to chance it. I knew that the cache (having done some coordinate calculations) was 0.8 miles (as the crow flies) from where we were climbing yesterday. How long that would be on the trails....anyone's guess. The cache page said it was a 4 mile round trip hike from parking lot to cache and back. I opted to drive half a mile up the road and park at the trailhead. Save myself a little time. I was already figuring that I would not be doing any hiking on the Iron Horse Trail. Which was okay. This hike was going to kick my butt. The temps were rising (and were forecasted to be in the 90s), and the heat of the day was just coming.

From the trailhead I followed the old road that Dirty Harry had carved into the mountainside. Followed it for quite a while. Watching the GPS, the distance to the cache dropped very slowly, as the road switchbacked up the mountain. Lot of walking back and forth! And the day was just getting warmer and warmer.

Found a side trail that split off from the main road. I suspected that would lead me to an overlook called Dirty Harry's Balcony. I opted to not try for it right now, keeping focus on heading up to the Museum.

The views along the road were few and far between. In fact, only saw the valley twice through gaps in the tree line. But they were enough to let me know I had come up quite a ways in altitude! In the photo right, you can see a bridge on the Iron Horse Trail to the lower right across the valley. This is directly between where two of the Deception Crags climbing areas are located.

Finally I got to a point on the trail where the GPS said I was "only" 300' away. But it pointed straight into extra-dense foliage which was masking a steep hill, where a stream was coming from. 300' horizontally - how far vertically? I decided to not get sucked in by cutting off the trail, and continued to follow the road, anticipating that it would swing me around again and back closer to the Museum.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Oh, the road switched back alright. But not far enough, and then the road promptly vanished beneath the debris of an old land slide to became a foot trail that continued up the mountainside. And the Museum...didn't get any closer than 0.12 miles. Urg! I had to go back.

Once I returned to the stream the GPS had me 300' away again. Sighing, and not looking forward to the bushwhack, I went downhill 50' to a likely opening in the foliage, plowed into the jungle, over rotted deadfall, and up the dirt and rock embankment - only to find another road.

....wait, what?

Looking at the GPS map screen, I saw the track where I had been. And this new road, very overgrown with slide alders (a thin but tough type of tree that doesn't grow so much straight up as it does in a wide 'blossom' of trunks) and other growth, and very very rocky, went away from the trail I had been following. Forging ahead, I began to follow the newly discovered road.

It was difficult going, but occasionally I'd hit a small 20-30' stretch where no slide alders or other growth existed and was able to relax for a moment.

Then the road became extremely rocky (actually, turned from rocks to boulders), and grew worse as I went higher. Finally, with 100' to go, what was left of the road blended with the jungle and mountainside. I inhaled, bent my head down, and pushed my way through. Then I looked up...

Ahead of me there was some non-jungle object, obviously manmade, and almost subsumed by the trees and other foliage. As I pushed closer (getting whacked in the head at one point by an ornery slide alder branch), I realized - I was here! This was Dirty Harry's Museum!

Rusted throughout, with baseboards rotting and tires disintegrating, Harry's logging truck has seen better days. And perhaps Bonnie and Clyde made it here at one point, too, as evidenced by the photo to the right.

I quickly made the cache find - and discovered a fresh and clean log book - no one has been up here yet! The cache has been here for four days, and no one's come up to find it - I got the "first to find". Sweeeeet!

Side note: it is now nearly a month later as I write this, and no one else has succeeded it getting up to the cache; for all I know no one has even bothered trying - maybe it's too hard for the local cachers out there to deal with. Wusses... ;-)

But I was hot, tired, and already had used half my water getting up here. I had a quick lunch, then started down. Back through the slide alders, and over to where the creek was running. Instead of dropping down the embankment, through the rotted deadfall and the foliage, I decided just to follow the creek.

Proved to be a much better plan. There was a faint trail that paralleled the creek - but it was completely obscured by the foliage from the main trail. Heh.

On the hike out I decided to take the side trail I saw earlier and check out Dirty Harry's Balcony. Glad I did, as the overlook was pretty nice. The cliffs at my feet appeared to have been unclimbed, and held great promise for the future. Maybe next time I'm back there'll be some established routes to play on...

It was growing late. In fact, it was rapidly closing in on 4pm. I had to hustle.

I got back to the car, it was already after 4pm. Would I get locked in?? I sincerely hoped not. I quickly drove (as quickly as reasonable, given the twisty-turny road) the half mile back down the mountain, over the Snoqualamie (pssing other parked cars by the bridge), and to the gate - which was open! Wahoo! Free to go!

I jumped onto I-90 and dashed off to Western Seattle.

Now, before I continue, a few observations have to be made.

First, Washingtonians (or maybe it's Seattleans?) love their left lane! I saw more than a few cars enter the highway, beeline it straight over to the left lane, and sit. Then in nearly 3/4 of the cases, whenever someone traveling faster came up behind the left-laners, the slower driver would pull over one lane right, let the faster one go by, then drop back over into the left lane again, even if there was no other traffic around. It was odd to watch. The few who didn't move over were either out-of-staters or appeared to be teenagers or young 20-somethings. Then you'd get a huge line of cars in the left lane who wanted to go faster, but were unwilling to pass on the right. Eventually someone would.

Another thing I noticed was litter. Or the lack thereof. Apparently if you litter, Bad Things will happen to you in this state!

Eventually I made it over to Karyn's. Her husband, Pete (whose new hobby is apparently making zombie movies; license plate photo left), had just left town for Hawaii, so I missed seeing him. Karen graciously let me take a shower to wash off the trail grime from earlier, then took me on a walk down to the waterfront of Lincoln Park, half mile or so from their place. There, through the haze, heat, and intervening clouds, I would catch my last glimpse of Rainier on this trip. In the photo right, you can b-a-r-e-l-y see Rainier's snowy flanks, just left of center along the horizon.

After the walk we drove over to Hamilton Point Park of Alki Point to check out West Seattle's answer to Venice Beach, California, (photo left) and grab some dinner. From strolling along the beach, got a long view of Seattle proper (photo left). We also came to the marker for the birthplace of Seattle, where the Denny Party first landed and settled on November 13, 1851, and then had a pretty hard time of it. Karen told me a story that after the Denny party landed the women cried. She then said that when she and Pete first moved to Seattle, it was also November, and she understood perfectly why the Denny party women had cried. Karyn is originally from the extra-warm, humid and sunny Eastern Shore. Now transplanted to Seattle. And November is her antithesis: a miserable, dreary, chilly month.

BTW, the original name of the Denny party settlement was "New York Alki", where "Alki" is a Chinook word meaning "eventually".

Dinner was good. Don't remember the place we ate, but it had good seafood. Then we started hiking back to the car, enjoying the back-lit Olympics as the sun was setting (photo left).

We didn't realize just how far away we had parked until the rain started. Karen's car is a small two-seat convertible, and during the few nice, warm months of the year, the top is down and stays down. Wellll...we drove over with the top down, and left it down when we started walking. Now it was raining.

By the time I ran back to the car to put the top up, the rain had already stopped. The inside of the car was...a wee bit damp. Karen fortunately keeps a towel available to try and dry off the interior as best as possible, but it can only do so much with the soaked-in water. We had wet butts on the drive back to her house.

After that I said my good-byes and headed to the rental car place. Dropped off the rental, shuttled over to the airport - and completely spaced that I still had my pocket knife in my pocket when I went through security. Wasn't even thinking about it. Was just tired, wanted on the plane to go home.

The security guard took great pleasure in yelling very loudly at me about the penalties and dangers of bringing a pocket knife through the security gate. He then gave me the option to go back and either check it as baggage or mail it to myself. The pocket knife, however, was old, some parts in disrepair, and the blades were nicked from years of use. I'd been meaning to replace it anyhow. Tired, and not wanting to deal with him or the other hassle options he presented, I told him to just keep it, it wasn't worth it. I just wanted to get on the plane and go home. I grabbed my stuff and left him standing there.

At the gate I found a comfy corner to sequester myself in and waited to board. Half hour later, when boarding time came, we got an announcement that our plane hadn't come in yet, and wasn't expected in for another 45 minutes. Urg. Well. Whatever. I had downloaded some old Outer Limits episodes to my iPod before leaving on this adventure, for just this eventuality.

The plane finally came, the passengers there filed out, and we filed on. An hour turnaround and we were in the air, on the way home. Seattle and Tacoma were readily visible. I had a window seat on the right side of the plane, and given that it was after midnight, I knew climbers would be going up Rainier. I wasn't sure how close or far we were going to get to the mountain, but I strained my eyes to see if I could catch a glimmer of lights as climbers were making their way up the flanks of the mountain. I saw nothing. After 15 minutes of watching darkness, I finally passed out.

June 26, 2009

Some hours later I awoke to a brightening sky as the plane began to prepare for landing at BWI. I looked out and saw Liberty Reservoir just outside the window (photo left; the bridge across the lake is MD26, Liberty Road). Second thing I noticed after identifying the lake was just how hazy it was out there - the humidity must be dreadful!

We circled around the north end of Baltimore, over Pikesville and Towson, down along the Bay, and then came at BWI from the East. I got one clear(ish) view of the airport before we turned to land (photo right). I put the camera away for the rest of the trip (i.e., if you came here for the pictures, you're done now ;-) ).

We landed without fanfare and taxied to the gate. Out of the plane and down to baggage claim to get our luggage. I had called Lisa to let her know I was back so she could come get me at her leisure, and waited for my bags to appear.

We all stood there a while. I noticed that the baggage carousel we were at had three AirTran flights listed, one of them ours. Bags began to appear, but none of them ours.

Suddenly there was an announcement over the PA.

"Would ALL passengers from AirTran Flight #231 please report to the baggage claim office. Would ALL passengers from AirTran Flight #231 please report to the baggage claim office. Thank you. {click}"

...wait...ALL passengers?? Ohhh, I did not like the sound of this...

Slowly understanding sank into the tired people standing around. I was already moving, so ended up near the front of the pack that would slowly grow. At the baggage claim office we would learn that our checked luggage never made it on the plane. None of it. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. In fact, the baggage still on our plane was supposed to have been transferred to a plane bound for Milwaukee - where our bags apparently ended up!

Oh, and the earliest they'd be able to get our bags back to BWI would not be for another 10-12 hours, due to their flight schedules. 3-4 hours after that to deliver.

Needless to say, there were quite a few very unhappy people - esp those who had connecting flights to catch in the next few hours (one unfortunate guy was being deployed to Germany, had a 6 hour layover here at BWI before continuing on; I hope he eventually got his luggage).

We all filled out info forms, then slowly dissipated, many grumbling. Me, I was lucky. I was now home. My bags could come eventually (little did I know they wouldn't come for another 18 hours). I went out to meet Lisa and headed home.

Adventure done.

But the quest is not over. See also the comment under Day 5 Part 1. Close enough isn't. {sigh} :-(

The Rainier Quest - Day 8: Climbing at Exit 38

June 24, 2009

I was up early once again. Karyn trotted out to work while Jody and Francesca roused themselves. Francesca packed her stuff, as her redeye flight back East was to leave this evening. Our plan: to go climbing at Exit 38 (Jody was abstaining, heading back to Portland instead for studying that she's been putting off for over a week now). We three went to another local establishment for breakfast, then parted on our two paths.

The last three times I'd been out to Seattle, I always got at least one day of climbing in. Either up in Squamish (British Columbia), out at Leavenworth, or...at Exit 38. This latter was a small-ish area along Iron Horse State Park, which, at 110 miles from end to end and only 20' or so wide, is one of the longest and narrowest - if not the longest and narrowest - state parks in the country. Along this walkway hikers and bikers travel - and climbers play on the railroad blasted cliffs. Exit 38 is primarily a sport climbing/top-rope climbing area - meaning that it is heavily bolted (that's the norm) for people who want to lead climb, and for those who don't, there are anchors pre-set up top in order to top-rope from. The old guidebook (1996 by Bryan Burdo) to the area was 114 page spiralbound book offering 145 routes in three major areas: Deception Crags, The Far Side, and North Fork. The new book (2006, 2nd ed from a 2001 guide by Garth Bruce; 2006 guide image right) was greatly expanded. 248 pages, it offered over 100 new routes in new areas, color photos and maps, graphs, history to the area and to the growth of the guides, and "best of" lists for those people who don't have time to climb everything here, but are just breezing through.

In the past (2000, 2002) I had climbed at a couple of rocks at Deception Crags: Write-Off Rock and We Did Rock, doing the same routes each time. With the new guidebook in hand I wanted to explore new areas. For Francesca, having never been here before, anything we got on would be new and fun for her. So after having studied the guide a bit, I chose The Far Side, as it hosted one of the top-rated 5.7 routes in the area: Kiss Of The Crowbar. I imagine the name came from when the route was first put up, as the first ascent party was pulling and prying off loose rock.

Exit 38 is, as you might guess from the name, located off of Exit 38 on I-90, east from Seattle. So, pretty close to a major metropolitan area. Barring traffic, you can be from Seattle to crag in 30 minutes or so.

So after saying goodbye with Jody, Francesca and I headed out. The day promised to be bright, clear, sunny...and fairly warm. We were going against what late morning traffic there was heading to Seattle, and made good time. Got to Exit 38, then drove over to the parking area for The Far Side. Geared up and proceeded to hike in. Our destination was Interstate Park Wall, not quite the furthest of the developed crags (there is a lot more rock in the valley, but not all of it has been explored by climbers yet).

Getting to where we wanted to go took a little bit of time. About 30-40 minutes. But we eventually got to the area. And found a small group of people there! Turned out to be a couple guys leading a kids outdoor climbing session for a summer camp. They worked for an outdoor adventure business in Tacoma. They were very friendly and helpful, and offered for us to climb on any of their ropes that they weren't already using. That is almost unheard of back East. Outdoor groups there won't allow you to touch their ropes, and some can get downright hostile with you if you want to climb a route they have a rope on, but are obviously not using and aren't going to for some time. But I digress...

Looking around we could see more tall cliffs along the flanks of the valley, of which we were barely halfway up ourselves. But it wasn't a full-on wilderness experience - I-90 was just down there, below us. You could easily hear the traffic from atop of the rock.

These rocks were not the railroad cut blasted rocks that I had climbed on at Deception Crags. No, these were naturally weathered rocks. It would be very interesting to climb on this stuff, see what kind of song and character the rock had to offer.

So after talking with the two guys a bit, Francesca and I decided to take them up on their offer and got on one of their ropes. The wall they were set up on, Squishy Bell, was pretty short. 25-30' tall. Average for something in central Maryland, but looking around at the exposed rock faces around the valley, this was barely a blip on the scree field. But it was rock, it was vertical, there were ropes already set up, and we were going to climb.

Looking over the selection of routes on the wall, most were pretty easy. So I opted for us to do the rope in the middle at the tallest point of the wall, which would cover Winter Rushing In (5.8) and November Glaze (5.9).

Winter Rushing In wasn't too bad. Felt a little easy for a 5.8, but it was a pleasant climb (photo right of Francesca on Winter Rushing In). Francesca went up after I came down. At this point the two guys started taking down their other ropes. They were going to move on to another area, having just finished lunch. We offered to help by taking down the rope we were climbing on, since they were so gracious as to allow us to climb on it. They accepted. I then scurried up November Glaze and topped off. That felt a lot more like a 5.9 in difficulty than what Winter... did for its grade. But it was still a neat climb.

We gave to the two guys their gear as they took their charges and went back into the woods. I still wanted us to do Kiss Of The Crowbar, and we were already practically on top of it. Just a matter of finding the start.

We went around to the bottom of the overlook and started trying to match up the topo photo in the guidebook with what we saw of the rock (topo photo left). We found it readily.

As all the rocks here are top-rope or sport (bolted), we did not bring any trad gear with us. Just quickdraws and slings. I racked up while Francesca flaked out the rope, and up I went, trying to follow the bolt line when I could see the bolts. At first I went off too far left because I saw a bolt there, but nothing in the corner. But I managed to get re-oriented and got back on route again.

The route was pleasant. Not superbly fantastically great, but not bad. And didn't feel 5.7 in difficulty to me (felt more like 5.5 or 5.6, given my experiences in the East; then again, I've noticed in general that routes out West tend to feel 'softer' or easier than their posted rating vs. routes in the East). But it was still climbing.

After I went up, Francesca followed (photo right), cleaning off my 'draws as she went up. I then opted to try the 5.8, Attack Of The Butter Knives, off to the left. The start was a good 20-25' away from the start of Kiss Of The Crowbar, but the two routes converged about 1/3 of the way up and Attack Of The Butter Knives finished on Kiss Of The Crowbar.

...Butter Knives felt a good deal more difficult than Kiss Of The Crowbar. Definitely more in the 5.8 range. But not impossible, just attention-getting. Once I was past the two cruxes, I was back on Kiss... . I lowered off and let Francesca have a go at it.

Then we were done. It was getting late (4pm), we still had to get back in time for dinner with Karyn and then get Francesca to the airport. We packed up and took an alternate trail out.

At this point all the after-work climbers were showing up. We met no less than a dozen coming up the trail on our way out. Yep, this is a popular area.

Once back down on the road we opted to stop at the Snoqualmie River. It was much hotter now, down here, and in the sun. The water was inviting and cool. Unfortunately, neither of us had thought to bring swimsuits, so we just waded in as far as we could, and played with the river rocks a while. And okay, yeah, the water was pretty cold (photo right of Francesca expressing how cold it is). But definitely refreshing! And very clear - so clear that you could see where the rocks across the river went into and under the water, and formed underwater cliffs. The river wasn't overly deep at this point, but I had a brief wish to have had either my snorkel or scuba gear with me to drop down and explore the bottom. Ah well. Another time...

After our wade we got back to the car, and made the drive back to Karyn and Bob's, doing an admirable job of going against pretty much all traffic there was! Had to take three different highways, and by gum, the main rush hour flow was always opposite our direction. Go us!

After dinner Francesca got herself packed and the car loaded. I drove her down to the airport and dropped her off. Her adventures here in Washington were now coming to a close. But for me, I still had one more day to do stuff.

On the drive back I had hoped to catch a second glimpse of the noctilucent clouds, but instead I was treated to lower altitude clouds that dropped rain. However, they were localized (mostly localized over where I was driving!), and off to the west, along the horizon, there was a break, and I could see the reddish sky of the deepening twilight. And the sliver of a thin crescent moon. No place for me to stop off of I-5 to easily get a photo, I just glanced at it when the opportunities allowed, between raindrops and cars.

Back at Karyn and Bob's it was my turn to pack. After breakfast tomorrow I intended on heading back out to the area we were just at today and do some geocaching hiking. Then meet up with another friend of mine named Karen whom I haven't seen in years, then get myself on the plane for the flight home.