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Washington's Cascades

More of Goat Rocks Wilderness

The weather stunk and I could rarely see a thing, but I was loving it anyway.

A tough (but exciting) day in Goat Rocks

The clouds and rain subside long enough for a rainbow to appear, just before another storm front rolled in for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

The amazing Mt. Rainier, another of the Northwest's geological freaks. It is the tallest mountain in the Cascade Range and is the most heavily glaciated peak in the Lower 48, with 26 major glaciers and 35 square miles of permanent snowfields and glaciers. However, the retreat of these glaciers has been rapidly accelerated by man-made global warming: the area covered by glaciers shrank more than 20 percent from 1913 to 1994, the volume of these glaciers by almost 25 percent. The Nisqually Glacier has retreated nearly a mile (see photo).

Rainier appears bigger and bigger as you hike away from it -- it towers over everything near it.

A field of buttercups north in the Norse Peak Wilderness.

Horrible-looking clear cuts in the Central Cascades, a low elevation stretch between Rainier and Snoqualmie Pass/Alpine Lakes Wilderness. This land is a checkerboard of ownership -- the Forest Service, Plum Creek Timber Co., and several railroad companies (which were given lucrative land grants by the federal government in exchange for building their lines, making it a win-win situation for them) all own mile-square sections. The USFS land is generally still forested, but the other lands have usually been raped, which would be okay (after all, it's private land) if not for the externality costs of such activity (including soil erosion, loss of natural flood control, unnatural sediment carrying by streams and rivers, and loss of or adverse effects on wildlife habitat) that must be absorbed by everything else.

Mt. Rainier from Alpine Lakes Wilderness, 100 miles north of Chinook Pass (the closest point to Rainier along the PCT).

Steep tongues of snow covered the trail in the Alpine Lakes, making this a particularly hairy section, especially since I had long ago sent back my ice axe and crampons.

Alpine Lakes, for obvious reasons, is one of the most popular wilderness areas in the US, especially since it's located about 60 minutes from Seattle.

Some hairy sections in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness

The appropriately named Devils Club, one of the many leafy plants that grow in the lush Cascades, this one being particularly ornery.

Black bear prints near Stevens Pass.

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