Swamp Lake

Swamp Lake, WA
Family Camping Trip
Sep. 10-22, 2005

Time for our annual rainy family camping trip. We tried hard to find a desination that would offer good views, possibility of dry weather, and fishing. That's not an easy task, especially with a bad weather forecast. We settled on Swamp Lake, a remote area to the east of Mt Rainier. It turns out it stayed pretty dry and the lake was supposedly stocked with fish, but we didn't get any views and we didn't catch any fish. But as usual it was a pleasant and relaxing weekend and lots of fun spending time in the great outdoors with my family.

Swamp Lake

Cannon Beach

Cannon Beach, OR
Sep. 3, 2005

After visiting my dad in Portland for his birthday, Kirsten and I headed to the coast to join up with a gaggle of people there to do some surfing. We spent the afternoon Saturday checking out different places on the 7 mile stretch between Arch Cape and Cannon Beach, including Hug Point and Haystock Rock. Growing up, we vacationed almost every summer at my dad's aunt's beach house in Arch Cape, so this area is quite special to me. We spent all day Sunday surfing (for Kirsten and I, it was our first time), but I have no pictures of that.

Cannon Beach

Bugaboos

Bugaboo Provincial Park, BC
Alpine climbs
July 31 - August 5, 2005


I never composed a trip report for this big climbing trip Kirsten and I went on. In retrospect I don't know why. So I'm writing a brief blurb 6 years later. The Bugaboos were amazing, if but a trifle big and steep for moderate climbers like us. We did the Kane Route on Bugaboo Spire and the easy route on Pigeon Spire, which are probably the easiest two technical routes in the park. We had some shenanigans on Bugaboo: using a hand ledge as a foot ledge resulting in a barrage of cussing from Kirsten, then our rappel rope got stuck. Fortunately a couple of kindly Canadians helped us get the rope unstuck. Pigeon was fun and straightforward. Both climbs offered unimaginably beautiful views, as I think you'll see from the photos:

Bugaboos

We sandwiched some climbs in Squamish around the trip to the Bugs -- not exactly on the way, but friends were spending the week up there, so we actually cut our time in the Bugaboos a day short so we would have time to meet them on the way back.

Squamish July 05

Mt Rainier - Emmons

Mt. Rainier, WA
14,410 feet
Emmons-Winthrop Route
July 2-3, 2005

Mt Rainier - Emmons

Kirsten and I decided to do a fairly impromptu climb of Rainier over 4th of July weekend. The 4th was Monday, and the day when my sister-in-law, Johanna, would be getting her U.S. citizenship at the naturalization ceremony at Seattle Center, so we had to make sure and be back by Sunday night.

We stayed at the White River campground Friday night after a delicious hamburger at the Greenwater Tavern. The hike up to Emmons flats was pretty uneventful Saturday morning, although hauling our skis and boots strapped to our heavy overnight packs up miles of dirt trail was a little demoralizing. But the weather was perfect and conditions were looking pretty good for skiing from the summit even if the freezing level, forecast to be around 11,000 feet, was a little lower than would be ideal. We rolled into camp at Emmons Flats around 2:30 in the afternoon. Plenty of time to set up camp and get some snow melting for cooking and drinking water.

We slept in a little later than what is generally recommended because if we were to ski from the summit, we wanted the snow to have a little bit of a chance to cook so it wasn't bullet hard. That was our excuse, anyway. So we set out for the summit about 3:30am. As we lifted our packs with our skis attached, we noticed that the wind and the gravity were feeling especially strong. So strong in fact, that we both looked at each other and with little verbalization agreed that we would leave the skis behind. We had little if any regret about this on the climb up the glacier as the wind gusts made staying on your feet difficult enough without a sail-like ski structure rising up above our heads.

The wind was howling and we were pretty cold. Fortunately the climb was very straightfoward and there was no time spent standing around trying to figure out the route or anything, which meant we could keep moving--helpful in keeping warm. But around 13,500 feet, about 1,000 feet below the summit, I wondered if Kirsten was going to lose motivation because we were pretty miserable and she had been to the top before. Fortunately she was game to keep going and we reached the summit at 9:30. I'm glad she toughed it out! Even though the route had only a few minor technical challenges, putting one foot in front of the other at that altitude was one of the most physically demanding things I have done.

We found shelter from the wind just below the edge of the crater rim and were able to warm ourselves up in the sun and enjoy being on top of this huge landmark. By the time we started down the wind had pretty much subsided and the snow was in great shape for skiing. It was nice soft wind-deposit right off the summit. As we descended towards camp however, it gradually turned into knee deep mashed potatoes. It would have been great off the summit, but the final 1,000 feet to camp would have kind of sucked in our tele gear.

After packing up camp, we did finally put on our skis and started down. After 9,000+ feet of climbing in two days, skiing down on telemark gear with our big overnight packs was exhausting, especially when the snow got sticky on the Inter Glacier. I'm pretty sure we didn't do any tele turns, although there may have been a wedgemark or two in there. But I'll still take skiing down over walking down any day.

Video Footage:


Steady progress toward the summit.



On the summit of Mt Rainier