10/02/2008 Mostly cloudy, mid 60's, rain late

Weather's turning wet, Indian Summer is ending. The zucchini's are rotting in place, the cherry tomatoes splitting and the big tomatoes dropping off the vines. Spiders are spinning their last hurrahs everywhere in the woods and fields. Our vacations are all done. The boys have gone to school. It's just the two of us and the cat and a couple goats in the field and the long gray winter approaches. Not that we don't have anything to do. Yesterday evening I got out and mowed the lawn mowed after a long day of inertia. We still need to buy hay for the goats and oil for us for the winter. The garden is unkempt. There's several years' worth of stuff around the house to be filed away and long-deferred maintenance to be done. Making a little progress on that front. A few days ago we signed a contract to have the roof replaced. Next, in the front yard the multiple trunks which sprouted 20 years ago after the top of the cedar was pruned are now tall enough to threaten that new roof in a storm, so they have to go.
It's a little disconcerting that there's nothing coming up on the calendar. Normally I'd have a marathon or two or three in the near future but with the tendon problem, I don't know when I'll be able to run another one. Could be a month, or maybe a year. No vacations planned, no milestones approaching - there's a void in the things-looked-forward-to department right now and as a result life feels a little flat.

10/06/2008 Little Naches thundereggs trip Ovc, mid 50's, light rain

Pat and Shirley were headed over to Red Top for the weekend so I decided to meet them over there Saturday morning, dig some agate nodules on the ridge for the day, then drive down to Little Naches to dig some thundereggs on Sunday. One delay led to another and by the time I was ready to go Saturday was almost gone. I couldn't contact Pat so decided to go directly to Little Naches. It's 84 miles to the wide Y in the road at the trailhead. When I arrived, I was the only one there, though I saw lots of hunters camped along 410 and the Little Naches road on the way over. Turns out Saturday was opening day of muzzleloader elk season.
I set up camp by the light of the car headlights then hiked up to the diggings because it was too early for bed. My hole from last year had been recently extended but wasn't too filled in so I dug there for an hour or so by the light of my headlamp and found a few small eggs. The vein had pretty well petered out. In the morning I resumed digging in that hole. Beautiful day, sunny and cool after some light rain overnight. The top couple inches of the tailings piles were damp and pretty slick but underneath the soil was light and dry. I found a few unbroken eggs there, up to about 5" diameter, but most were broken. After a couple of hours I moved over to Pat's original hole, about 30' to the west across the slope. I had to move about two feet of dirt and rocks to get down to the clay but once there I did pretty well, picking up another dozen or so decent eggs by lunchtime, mostly smallish but a couple up to 6" diameter. Not sure how the color will be on those since the broken eggs were all pretty pale.
Returning to the car lugging my two bags of eggs, I set up my folding aluminum table and enjoyed a tomato sandwich with hommous, Greek olives and chips and salsa. I imagine I looked a little odd to the four dirt-bikers who drove by. I hadn't seen anyone else all day though I heard a couple of trucks go by around dawn. On my way back to the hole I was able to reach Pat on the phone and learned that he and Shirley had driven directly home from Red Top after lunch on Saturday. They'd received heavy rain overnight on Friday night which had resumed around midday after a respite in the morning. Pat described the location of the productive hole he'd been working in on his last Little Naches trip, although he said he'd pretty well dug it out. It was about 50' downslope from his original hole. I couldn't determine which of the big holes down there was his so I resumed digging in my second hole. About 5' down I was still in clay but not finding any more eggs; they seem to occur mostly near the veins and ledges of rock which are interspersed with the clay.
Around then company showed up, a man a little older than me lugging a shovel and breathing hard from the climb up to the diggings. His name was Richard Peet, from the Fort Lewis club I think, and he seemed new to the spot so I showed him what I was finding and where. We dug a little together in a couple holes below my original spot then I wandered off to find another hole, ended up over in the area of Pat's hole, picked one and dug down to new clay. A few inches down into the undisturbed clay I struck eggs, a cluster of two or three 5" eggs together, and beyond them a bunch more. Within a few minutes I had half a dozen large eggs and by the time I quit a couple of hours later, I had enough to fill a 5-gallon bucket. Richard had given up digging and was collecting broken eggs, eventually filling four 5-gallon buckets which he began slowly hauling back to his car. Around 4:30PM I quit digging, packed up my gear and my eggs and started out myself, although not before hopping back into the hole one more time and prying a cantelope-sized egg out of the floor of the hole. It took me two trips to get it all back to the car. We reached our cars about the same time, around sunset; before Richard left he gave me a raspberry Twinkie to show his appreciation for my advice. I told him I'd save it for dessert.
I was wiped out from digging all day but managed to heat up some beans and zucchini before collapsing in my sleeping bag for nearly twelve hours. Light rain fell off and on during the night. Towards morning I heard an elk bugling some distance away and downslope. Clear notes, not as wheezy as I remembered. Also heard a barred owl higher on the ridge, and around dawn, a pygmy owl. The morning was foggy with intermittent light rain, just enough to make the bushes wet. I spent the day checking out the other Little Naches sites, none of them worth re-visiting. Along the way I ate lunch at the fish ladder and stopped at a camp area along the river a mile or two upstream to photograph the foliage. Vivid mode helped compensate for the heavy overcast. I stopped for photos again at Chinook Pass where the clouds were right at pass level and Saturday night's snow had only partially melted away. Nice color.
The market only dropped 400 points while I was away, though midday Monday it had been down 800 at one point.

10/10/2008 Snoqualmie Mountain hike Sunny, 30's   Route  Photo Gallery
Tim's heading down to California tomorrow to visit his parents so he could only spare an afternoon for our hike. We used it all. We started up from Alpental at midday and had just enough light to get back out of the woods at the bottom. The hike was only a little over three miles even with taking the scenic route up the valley along Cave Ridge, then up the SE ridge of Snoqualmie and around behind the crag just east of the summit. Short but sweet and much more interesting than the direct route up the south ridge - almost a little too interesting for Tim where the snow-covered shelf turns the corner around the top of a 50' cliff. He didn't look happy about it but he did it.
We both carried cameras but didn't find much photoworthy until a family of camp robbers accosted us in the talus where the Guye Peak trail turns off. After we delighted them with portions of pb&j sandwiches they accompanied us up to the waterfall ledges, foraging in the bushes beside us along the way. At the ledges we stopped for some lunch and the jays were rewarded for their persistence. Sedum and Arnica were still flowering even though the puddles were iced over and shaded rocks were dusted with snow.
In the valley we found the streambed still covered with a hard-frozen avalanche deposit from last winter. Tree tops up to 6" in diameter were strewn about and low ridges carpeted with fir needles protruded through the inch or two of new snow. The ledges of Cave Ridge glittered with icicles dripping and falling in the sunshine. We took pictures and dodged the falling ice. At the head of the valley we found a few alpine huckleberries among the bright red leaves, tangy and soft from repeated freezing and thawing. Nice views down to Snoqualmie Pass and north to snow-dusted peaks. Reaching the summit ridge we stepped out of sunshine into a freezing northwest breeze. As we started up the snowy ramp we stumbled on to four white-tailed ptarmigan, their mottled brown and white plumage matching the colors of rock and snow. Fantastic photo op. I ripped off my gloves to work the controls on my camera, then my fingers went numb so I couldn't feel the buttons anyhow. The photos turned out fairly well considering my haste and the cold.
We lingered briefly in the sunshine again on top before heading down the rocky trail. The sun set about half-way down. We took our last few photos of the fingers of cloud streaming over the pass below us. Despite the comfortable pace of our descent my quads were pretty fried by the time we reached the bottom. Fortunately my anterior tib tendon was OK. Down on the rope tow slope we stopped one more time, propping our cameras on logs to photograph clouds swirling around the moon over the shoulder of Guye Peak. Frost had already formed on the cab of Tim's pickup.
Found out later that the market bottomed out below 8000 while we were driving up to Snoqualmie, then recovered to close down just 128 points at 8451. At that price our retirement fund has dropped back to the vicinity of my "magic number" for the first time in several years. We used to speak at work of our magic number, the value of our stock and options at which we figured we could safely retire. The prospect of dropping below that number again made for an uneasy night - the trials of trusting in mammon.

10/13/2008 Overcast, near 60, rain late
Over the weekend I did some reading and figured that based on historic values of the S&P500 price-earnings multiple, the market could easily drop another 2000 points. In anticipation of that I picked out several stocks which looked like good sell candidates for Monday, figuring I could reinvest the cash after the market dropped further. I assumed that everyone else would be spending their weekend the same way and coming up with similar conclusions so I expected to see the market down at least a couple hundred this morning. Having stayed up well past midnight again, I gave the market plenty of time to find its direction before I logged in. Well, it found its direction all right - straight up. Already up over 500 points by mid-morning. Up 963 points to 9413 by the close, an all-time one-day record 11% gain. That's an entire year's worth of appreciation in one day!
I don't know why it is that I feel more discouraged about our finances when the market makes a big gain than when it drops by a similar amount. Perhaps when it drops I figure if I just sit tight we'll be all right, but when it goes up I think about all the stocks I could have bought before it went up, but didn't. In any case I had kind of a down day, reflecting on how little I know about managing our money even as I researched some of the individual stocks in our portfolio. I didn't end up selling anything. I didn't end up going for a run either, and didn't get outside to work in the garden until it started to rain, so I started reorganizing the workshop instead. That's another big job, made more difficult by my reluctance to throw anything away. I managed to fill a 30-gallon trash barrel with stuff I haven't used in twenty years, much of it real junk, and felt terrible about it.
Felt better after Susan and I fixed supper together. I baked a chunk of QFC Coho and steamed the little zucchinis I salvaged a couple days ago from the frost-killed bushes. Both were very tasty; I couldn't find the tarragon so used sweet basil on the salmon and that worked fine. Susan baked an upside-down caramel plum cake, a delicious confection which converted mediocre grocery-store plums into a work of gustatory art. I also fixed Forbidden rice but it wasn't ready in time so we saved it for tomorrow. It was a blessing to work in the kitchen together. Although we haven't been spending an awful lot of time in one another's company since I've been at home all day, the time we do spend together has a comfortable peaceful feeling about it.

10/19/2008 Snoqualmie Mountain hike #2
Increasing clouds, 40's   Photo Gallery
Another sunny weekend after rain during the week. We didn't do much yesterday but today the boys and I hiked up Snoqualmie Mountain. It was either that or Faye Peak up by Mowich Lake and I figured out that Snoqualmie would involve less time on the road and a lower fee to park at the trailhead. I picked the boys up at school around lunchtime so we didn't get an early start. We hiked up the valley again. I was surprised to find no ice on the Cave Ridge ledges and no snow anywhere this time, even on the ramp behind the summit crag. David stopped to photograph a snowcave in the avalanche debris; by following his lead I found my best photos of the day. From the head of the valley we scrambled up the ledges to the left rather than following the ridge past the crags. Crumbling granite ledges made the lower section a little sketchy. Up on top we found no ptarmigan but did see a flock of about 150 grey-crowned rosy finches. Another hiker was hiking up from the north side of the actual summit, presumably coming cross-country from Snow Lake. We didn't leave the summit ridge until after 5:30 but took only an hour to descend to the car so we made it out just before dark. Tough quad workout and a little hard on my left knee. We met Susan at Ranchitos an hour after leaving the Alpental parking lot then drove home to have pear crisp for desert. Nice to have the boys home again for a couple of days.

10/26/2008 Sun, mid-50's
Another sunny weekend. The week was mostly dry as well. Wednesday I drove down to Centralia and spent the night with Pat and Shirley so Pat and I could get out early to go agate-hunting. We found quite a few although the agates weren't quite as colorful as the photo at right would lead you to believe.
My anterior tibialis tendonitis continues to improve. I ran ten miles on Friday, my longest run in five weeks, with no ill effects. Did another five Sabbath morning. I ran part of each run barefoot, almost five miles in the two runs together. The calf tightness I experienced when I began barefoot running a couple of months ago has cleared up as have the blisters on my big toe and heel but the rough pavement around here still limits me to three or four miles at a time. Not sure how to get beyond that.
Sabbath after my run I made it to church. I went to North Hill since afterwards I needed to pick David up at school. Pastor McClarty preached on the first three chapters of Revelation. I was encouraged by his emphasis on grace, as in "Grace to you, and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ..." Rev 1:5. He pointed out that some would narrow God's grace so that it applies only to the elect, or to the obedient, but grace sums up God's attitude to all mankind, sinners as well as righteous. He also observed that God's criticisms of the seven churches do not indicate that He rejects them for their failure to perform, but instead they point out the way that He desires them to go, that they may receive greater blessing. A glass-half-full approach to be sure, but I could use a dose of that for a change.
The afternoon being a little short for a hike, David and I elected to mountain-bike down to the river with our cameras, to explore the trail and take some pictures. I managed (with one redo of the hairpins after the bridge) to ride the entire new trail eastbound even though the tread was pretty chewed up and mucky in places from horse traffic. We made a loop of it by pushing our bikes up the trail to the end of the Caitlin's road, then stopped by to say hi to Zack on the way home. He supports Palin enthusiastically, thinks that she's the kind of leader we need to root out the corruption on Wall Street which has gotten us into this economic mess. We are at opposite ends of the political spectrum and that both constrains and enriches our friendship.
It was a cold ride home as the sun set.
Susan fixed a Thai dish of noodles, sweet red peppers and chanterelles with tamarind sauce. It was delicious but made me very thirsty. After supper I took David home, ie. back to school and hung out with him and Daniel for a while. Daniel seemed a little morose, which he attributed to fatigue as he sat with his laptop in his lap debating religous doctrine on Facebook instead of going to bed, which admittedly would have been a little difficult since David and I were sitting next to him on his couch looking at David's recent photos. Both boys have cozy and inviting dorm rooms so I was reluctant to leave even though I was falling asleep myself. I stayed awake on the drive home by drinking yet more water.
This morning I took a few photos before breakfast as the fog burned off. Beautiful day, sunny and mild, but I have a bit of a sore throat so I took it easy, weeded the driveway and transplanted the three remaining Hostas instead of going for a run and ride.

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Boulder Basin backpack trip 10/28-30/2008

10/28/2008 White River/Boulder River trail 7 mi, 2500' Sunny, high 40's.   Route (miles 0-7)   Photo Gallery
I set out from the White River trailhead at 3:45 on a beautiful afternoon though the river valley was already in the shade. It's about 120 miles and 2 1/2 hours from Seattle via Steven's Pass, the Lake Wenatchee Hwy and the White River road. Not much color left over the pass but the cottonwoods were still bright around Lake Wenatchee but the color is pretty well gone in the mountains. I had intended to start earlier knowing that I had at least a four hour hike in to Boulder Basin where I wanted to camp, but in my usual reluctance to leave home I answered email and rechecked the weather and waited for the roofers to show up, then I had several errands - get gas at Costco (down to 2.39/gallon now), pick up a map and a forest parking pass at REI, and stop somewhere for a hunter orange vest since rifle elk season opened over the weekend.
As it turned out there were no hunters up the White River valley, and not much elk sign either, just a few sets of solo tracks wandering across the high country. Deer sign was more common, some of it fresh though I didn't see any animals. After I crossed the Boulder River, after dark, I came across a set of cougar tracks in the trail but they were several days old and I hoped the cougar would be more interested in the deer than in me. The bear tracks heading down the trail below Boulder Basin were also several days old. The freshest tracks belonged to a couple of coyotes or foxes which had been playing in the snow near Boulder Basin camp. The Boulder Pass trail was pretty chewed up in places by horses but no parties had been up that way since the snow fell about a week ago. There was one hiker ahead of me on the White River trail, presumeably associated with the blue minivan at the trailhead. I assume the tracks continued up the White River valley because I didn't see them after I turned off onto the Boulder Pass trail.
The trail moseys through groves of big trees (and a few groves of big stumps cut before the area was included in the Glacier Peak Wilderness) and crosses a number of avalanche runouts of slide alder, vine maple and thimbleberry, mostly bare now. In openings damp dirt in the trail was partly frozen. The river is rarely within sight. It isn't white, rather more of a clear blue-green hue in pools. Maybe it was white a few decades ago before the glaciers melted back. The woods were dotted with mushrooms, flowers of the fall, mostly in pallid shades of white and brown, or rotted black. Now and then I caught a glimpse of the sunlit slopes of Clark Mountain, nearly free of snow, above the dark treetops.
I reached the Boulder Pass trail around 5:30 and stopped to rest and eat a couple of bars. There's a nice camp by the river at that point, and another about an hour up the Boulder Pass trail in the woods before the Boulder River crossing. By that point I was using my headlamp. The stream crossing, trivial this time of year by daylight, was tricky in the dark and I almost got wet feet. Above that point the trail was filled in with several inches of old snow and trees were few. Above the brush visible by my headlamp I could dimly make out pale snowfields on high ridges. My shoulders were getting sore from the pack straps and I began to wonder if I should have camped back in the trees before the crossing, but if I wanted to do Clark tomorrow I needed to make it fairly high this evening so I kept going. Around 4600' I found a dry flat hollow between two big firs just above the trail. The air was dry and the spot just big enough for my pad and sleeping bag so I didn't set up the tent. I was in my bag at 8:30, relieved to be off the trail. Hiking in the dark makes me a little anxious; I prefer to see what's around me. Knowing a cougar was in the area didn't help and I was also a little worried about my anterior tibial tendon; it felt a little irritable during the hike. Hiking doesn't usually bother it so the irritation was probably due to the 11 mile run yesterday.

10/29/2008 Clark Mountain 6 mi, 4500' Partly cloudy, high 30's, wind SE-SW, 3-15.  Route (miles 7-12.7)

I slept well under the stars, sandwiched between my two big covering firs. I awoke at 1:15 with the downvalley breeze still blowing cold on my face and the stars bright overhead. The temperature was around freezing. I supplemented the baffle on my 0F-rated bag by wrapping a pair of long underwear around my neck and managed to stay pretty comfortable, though not at all too warm. I awoke again as the dark sky was just beginning to fade into dawn. A dream woke me up, something about the car brakes not working when I needed to stop. There was more to it than that and as I lay half-asleep pondering it, I gained clearer insights into the fear which has accompanied me all my life. Unfortunately I wasn't able to recall either the dream or the insights when I woke up fully at dawn.
Part of the appeal of solo backpacking for me is the opportunity it provides to cope with tangible but manageable fears of things such as solitude, darkness, animals and heights. Those fears sharpen my focus and enrich my experience of the mountains. They make the colors brighter, the sounds more distinct and each footstep more significant. They offer a refreshing though temporary distraction from the intangible fear that exerts its authority over my decisions in the weightier matters of work and goals and relationships. They also tend to turn my thoughts towards God.
While I was awake during the night I thought about the resentment I feel towards God, the anger I have accumulated towards Him over my failure to meet His demands. But He doesn't condemn me, nor does He want me to see Him in that light. When a relationship between two people breaks up, the one who suffers more is the one who loves more. There is no doubt that in my relationship with Jesus, He is the one who loves more. In the separation from Him which I have been cultivating in my bitterness, He is the one who suffers. I may not love Him much but I truly do not want to grieve Him either. I no longer want to cultivate this bitterness towards Him and there between the two firs under the stars I sought His help to return to Him. I fell back to sleep knowing that I will return to Him. I prayed for a safe hike too, that I would also return to Susan and the boys who still need me.
In the morning I packed up a little before sunrise and hiked up into Boulder Basin before breakfast, seeking a flat spot to camp. At the up-valley edge of the last grove of big trees I passed an apparent camp but the tent sites were shaded and blanketed with snow so I continued on. In the floor of the basin I found a gently sloping meadow of golden sedge-straw dotted with boulders and partly covered with patches of snow. That would have to do because higher up in all directions the slopes only became steeper. I cleared the crusty snow between several boulders, pitched my tent and ate my breakfast.
Having seen from down along the White River that the south slopes of Clark Mt were mostly free of snow, I had decided to go for the summit. I set out around 10AM with food and a few extra clothes and emergency gear in my fanny pack. My route out of Boulder Basin ascended the talus apron, scrambled over a rock outcrop, followed a game trail up through a patch of scrubby trees then traversed up across steep grassy slopes to the horizon, pretty much straight up behind the peak of the tent in the photo to the right. It was more difficult than it appears so on my descent I hiked down through the snow from the left side of the shallow notch. It was also more difficult than it looks in the photo but probably not as bad as descending the steep and slippery slopes of matted grass I'd crossed on the way up.
Once out of the basin I continued up to a flat spot on the ridge at about 7000' and ate a couple of bars there. My next objective was a notch in the southeast ridge of Clark Mt which I had read about in a trip report on the web, and from which a gully drops 200' down to Clark's south slope. This gully provides the only non-technical way to cross the ridge and gain access to the summit from the east. Somehow I had understood that the notch was at 7100' on the ridge but it's actually just above 7300'. From the east it doesn't look much like a notch but from the west the 200' gully is obvious, especially when it is highlighted with snow. Descending the gully was pretty intimidating because if you slid you'd drop off a couple of small cliffs onto a very steep slope. Fortunately the snow was deep enough to provide good footing and the cliffs at the bottom could be avoided with a traverse to the right across a narrow dirt shelf. The steep slopes beyond the gully, though no picnic, were definitely an improvement over the gully itself. The last mile to the summit was a cakewalk, mostly on snow, up the lower of two slanted ramps up to the gentle south ridge of the peak.
Up on the south ridge I stopped to try calling Susan again. I hadn't been able to get a signal below about 7000' and at 7500' I was able to connect but couldn't make out what Susan was saying. The call was clear at 8200'. The shingles were being delivered for the roof and I wasn't sure we had enough in the checking account to cover them so I called the bank and was able to make a transfer over the phone. Pretty cool, to be able to take care of that from a peak high in the Cascades with no sign of civilization in any direction. Or not, depending on your perspective. I guess I like my wilderness slightly civilized.
As I reached the summit a falcon soared overhead. I dug out my binoculars and identified it as a prairie. Shortly afterwards a second prairie sailed around the shoulder of the summit and out over the glacier, then doubled back and flew low over my head, as if curious about me. I wasn't expecting the close flyby so didn't have the camera ready. The views are fine from the summit, north to Baker and south to Rainier, west to Glacier and Sloan Peak, east to Mt Maude and the Entiat mountains beyond the Napeequa and Chiwawa valleys. The White River runs practically underfoot, two miles away and 6000' down.
The breeze from the west was cold, 33F by my thermometer, but I lingered on top long enough to eat some bread and sardines for lunch before starting down. Then I didn't descend very far before stopping in a sheltered spot to call Susan again. She was going to get me a weather forecast and she did - it might rain. I suggested I might like to spend an extra night out and that was fine with her. The roofers were making an awful commotion, scaring Puss into hiding all day. Susan was planning to get out of the house tomorrow and go have lunch with David. While we were talking a redtail circled up over the meadow slopes a couple thousand feet below me, then a golden eagle soared up from the valley and did a couple of roller coaster dives off to the west. Not many other birds around - a few varied thrushes, chickadees, golden-crowned kinglets, pine siskins, robins. Haven't seen any mammals other than pikas. It was nice to talk with Susan, and took the edge off my solitude.
I descended the ramp on snow, scrambled up the gully with no difficulties, used snow to cushion and brake my descent back into Boulder Basin. Back in camp two hours from the summit of Clark, I boiled water and prepared ancient Vegetarian Lasagna. It was still quite good but I accidentally stepped on it while it was rehydrating under my sleeping bag and made a mess of a couple of (fortunately extra) long-sleeved tech shirts. Better the shirts than my sleeping bag. I crawled into my bag at dark and wrote for a couple of hours. At bedtime the stars were still bright, a gentle 35F downslope breeze was blowing and the night was silent except for the everpresent sound of falling water. I lack a word for that sound; perhaps the Bible describes it best as "the voice of many waters".

10/30/2008 Boulder Pass 12 mi, 2800' Overcast, high 30's, wind W 0-5  Route (miles 12.7-16 and 8.3-0)

Two sides of the same ridge
The two photos above show the dramatic difference between the southeast and northeast slopes of the east ridge of Clark Mountain. Both photos depict the same three crags on the east ridge of Clark above Boulder Basin. The photo on the left is taken from 1.2 miles ESE of the nearest crag while the photo on the right is taken from 1.0 miles ENE of the same crag. Treeline on the slope in the left half of the left photo is at 6400' which is about the same elevation as the crevasses in the lower right corner of the photo on the right. Apparently a little sunshine makes a big difference.

I didn't sleep as well as I did on my first night in. Again I woke up before dawn and waited to get up until I could see by the light in the sky. The altostratus overhead acquired a pink tint briefly before reverting to gray. No wind, 35F on the thermometer but the air felt warmer than that. I ate my granola then set out on a day hike up to Boulder Pass then either drop down into the Napeequa valley or climb up to the 7200' point on the east ridge of Clark Mt directly above and one mile north of my camp. My inclination is always to hike up so it was hard to get excited about descending 2000' down to the Napeequa river. I expected alot of snow on the east side of Boulder Pass as well and didn't look forward to having cold wet feet all day. Leftover fatigue from yesterday confirmed my decision to stay high; that way too I could keep my option open to hike out today rather than camp another night if the weather threatened rain. I ended up hiking in snow most of the morning anyhow but my feet were OK.
I hiked up to the right side of the headwall above Boulder Basin to scout for a direct route up to the 7200' point; it looked feasible on the map but up close it involved at least class 4 scrambling. I traversed instead northeast up steep meadows above the pass then continued north across a snowy boulder field on the east side of the ridge, crossing above a small but still intimidating headwall then up an easier slope to the northeast ridge of my target peak. Interesting rock, alternating between massive white granite and gray schist with lots of convoluted layering. Ledges of the schist fractured in such a way as to make for easy scrambling while the jointing in the granite tended to produce larger blocks which were more difficult to negotiate. I crossed over the ridge by following a contact line between the two rock types and found a big snowfield on the other side - the stationary east end of the Clark Glacier. The gentle slope of the glacier provided the only feasible route up to the 7200' point. About a foot of settled and slightly sticky new snow lay on the icy surface of last year's snowpack, enough to cover but hopefully not fully conceal any crevasses. I probed suspicious spots with my ice axe as I hiked up but didn't expect or encounter any problems other than a schrund at the summit which I was able to work around.
The flat light and bright overcast had made bleak conditions for photographs on the way up to the pass but worked much better for me once I reached the snowfield, accentuating the patterns of snow ice and rock. I took lots of pictures. The peak was a narrow ridge of granite blocks encrusted with black lichen on the windward, snow-free side. There was no wind and no sound except for the hush of falling water wafting up from the valleys.
Although a little chilled, I lingered on top to eat a lunch of kippered herring, bread, tomato and dark chocolate. After lunch I hiked down the snowfield hunting for photos. The new snow cover thinned to a few inches but was just sticky enough to hold on the old ice as long as the slope didn't get too steep. I hiked out to get a close-up view of a nearby crevasse, picking my route to minimize the risk of sliding into trouble if the snow didn't hold. On the way back my axe twice plunged into a skinny little crevasse under the snow. That got my attention! I wanted to reach a set of crevasses at the edge of the glacier below me but the only route down crossed ice-covered ledges which I didn't want to tackle without crampons so I settled for zooming in as best I could.
I followed ledges back up to the ridge and descended to the east side of Boulder pass on a series of rounded ridges of eroded schist vegetated with grass, sedge and mountain heath. Snow-free and easy walking, particularly on level places where Glacier Peak pumice had accumulated. When I reached the trail it was decision time. If I headed back to camp I would still have enough time to hike out by dark but if I dropped down to scout out the Napeequa valley I would be committed to spending another night in Boulder Basin, and by the look of the sky, would be hiking out Friday morning in cold rain. If I'd had my flyrod I probably would have hiked down to the river but I didn't, and the light was flat and the overcast thickening so I hiked up over Boulder Pass and back to camp. It turned out to be a good decision; based on a webcam view of rainy Lake Chelan the next morning, Boulder Basin would have been very wet.
I cooked up some ancient Fettucini al Leonardo for an early supper and boiled up some extra water while I packed up camp. I brought a water filter but it was easier just to boil extra water for drinking. The air had warmed up into the low 40's and much of the snow around my tent had melted away. Overhead the clouds faded into featureless gray and the peaks and ridges began to fade with them.
I had intended to start out before 3 but didn't leave until 4 so again the last hour of my hike was after dark. I reached the White River trail junction at 5:45 just as I had on the way in. A half hour later I had to dig out the headlamp. From that point on I sang to alert the bears of my approach, or maybe to scare them away. At first my singing seemed very out of place among the big shadowy firs but as I considered the meaning of the hymns I was singing, it began to feel appropriate to praise God out there surrounded by His forest, His mountains. I also discovered that I'd forgotten most of the words to the hymns I knew back when I was more fervent in my faith. After I ran out of words I whistled instead. Either way my noisemaking apparently worked because I saw no bears, only a large white rabbit which zig-zagged off into the darkness ahead of me. I reached the car soon after seven. The 8 1/2 mile hike out and the 150 mile drive home each took 3 1/4 hours.

11/07/2008 Showers, low 60's
Photos from the garden, which I haven't yet cleaned up. The sparrows find refuge and food in the jumble of weeds and yellowing foliage. Only the kale is still reasonably healthy. Mice are gnawing on the beets and rain is rotting the parsely crowns. It has been a wet week. 3.1" of rain yesterday alone half-filled the goat bucket down by the gate and before that we had days with 1.2", 0.8" and 0.5" since the beginning of the month. No water is accumulating yet down by the mailbox though; down deep the soil must still be dry.
I finished writing up my Clark Mt hike, spent a day agate-digging with Pat and met with Zack over breakfast for the first time in several months. We had the cedar tree pruned and the roof replaced; both jobs seem to have been done well. On Tuesday the country voted historically for Barak Obama for president. We were delighted and excited; it really did seem to be an occasion for hope. The market wasn't so pleased. The Dow dropped over 900 points on Wednesday and Thursday but ended down only about 2% at 8944 for the week.
I ran 26 miles last week, my biggest week since the Maui Marathon eight weeks ago. Since I didn't notice any AT irritation all week, I'm going to try a longer run Sunday, maybe 16 miles. It's actually hard to tell for sure if the tendon is OK because I've had some soreness in the same area, just front of my inside ankle. Today I did 5 880's with an average time of 3:22 down on the Interurban trail near the YMCA. Two were barefoot. It felt good to do speedwork again, especially on such a balmy day. My heartrate was relatively low, as it has been recently. Since I've had to cut back on my mileage, it's often been down in the low 130's at 10 min/mile. My max seems to have dropped too; I hit 183 by pushing hard on the last half of my last 880, about 5 bpm lower than six months ago.

11/11/2008 Boston Clear, low 40's
Despite having had plenty of time to pack and prepare to leave for the week, somehow once again too much was left until too late. I slept two hours, Susan even less, before we awoke at 3AM to drive to the airport. The day passed so quickly that the sun was already approaching the horizon as we descended into Boston and all the cars had their headlights on when we emerged from the subway at Newbury Street. John was reading a newspaper in the lobby of the Harvard Club when we walked in. We hugged Mom upstairs then retreated to our room for a nap before dinner. I would have enjoyed the Petit Robert Bistro more had I not been still so tired. Our waitress smiled alot and spoke with a faint French accent. When I summoned up the boldness to ask where she was from we learned that she'd grown up in San Francisco and graduated from Boston University with a French major a couple of years ago. She spent a year and a half in France during and after college and the accent returns unintentionally when she's in the restaurant.

11/12/2008 Boston Some high clouds, mid 40's
John and I enjoyed a sunny walk downtown to the bank via the Public Garden and the Common. At the meeting we tried unsuccessfully to determine whether or not the managed portions of the estate's investments were outperforming the unmanaged collection of stocks. In a more general discussion of the economy, Rob, who has made alot of money by investing in oil wells, stated that he expected oil to trade between $40 and $60 for the next several years because oil companies have no problem making money on oil at those prices. I've been expecting oil to recover more quickly than that. Afterwards John and I enjoyed the view for a few minutes from the Boston College club down the hall. While I was trying to pick out landmarks on the South Shore a Peregrine Falcon soared by, quite close. I had my camera out but didn't think to try and get a photo. At first I thought it was a merlin until I realized that the herring gulls also looked pretty small from that vantage point. Clouds were moving in as we walked back to the Harvard Club and we didn't see much sun for the rest of our visit.

11/17/2008 Returning to Seattle Sunny, high 30's   Photos from NH visit
John and Mom drove us down to Portsmouth to catch the bus to Logan airport. It was a nice low-key visit. John and I talked about investments. I had several good runs including about 5 miles barefoot despite the cool temperatures. On one of my runs I carried my camera and took pictures of some of the old places along the road - Cheney's, Overlook, the Davis farm.
Cheney's was Aunt Ada's when I was a boy, where my great grandmother Nana lived with her sister Ada. Ada was confined to a wheelchair in the living room, having had both her legs amputated due to diabetes. I would walk up along the brook and stay for dinner on occasion. Nana had run a boarding house at Brookside Farm 50 years earlier and fixed our dinner as if she still had boarders to feed, urging me to eat seconds and thirds of roast beef and mashed potatoes, green beans and gravy and tollhouse cookies or pie for dessert. I happily obliged and I still remember feeling overstuffed like the sofas we sat on to watch Lawrence Welk afterwards.
Sarah and Roger and Eric joined us for dinner out several nights, a decent meal at the Wildcat Tavern, fancier fare at Libby's Bistro in Gorham after a very foggy drive up through the Notch.

12/01/2008 Overcast, 50
I ran 20 miles today, my longest run since the Maui Marathon and since my anterior tibialis tendon began bothering me. The tendon began to get a little irritated again after about 10 miles and abruptly became quite sore at 13, so I walked and stretched it a bit and it cleared up for another 5 miles before getting a little irritated again in the last couple of miles. It's encouraging to be able to do 20 though; it means I'm still on track to run a marathon before the end of the year.

12/06/2008 Overcast, 50
The UPS man delivered my new (to me) 80-400mm lens today so I took it out for a spin. The local birds were very cooperative, including a male White-throated sparrow, the first I've ever seen in our yard. They're reported as uncommon in western Washington in the winter. The lens brings the subjects in nice and close but I had difficulty getting a really sharp shot with it, in part due to having to push the ISO to 800 in order to get an acceptable shutter speed. I guess it will take a little more practice and experimentation to figure out how to use it well.

12/10/2008 Overcast, 45
I earned by Washington Trails Association hard hat today, my reward for participating in 5 work parties. About two weeks ago I was bicycling down to the river when I noticed a hand-lettered sign tacked to the post at the entrance to the new trail, advertising WTA work parties during the next two weeks. I've been thinking about volunteering to do trail maintenance with the WTA for a month or two now, so this was an opportunity too convenient to pass up.
The first day I drove down, not sure what to expect. The work party consisted of a grizzled veteran leader named Mike and about four other volunteers. We parked by the pear tree and hiked up the new trail about a half mile, where we set to work digging shallow ditches across the new trail where it ran down through some clay-rich soil. Our "corduroy cuts" would help anchor the crushed rock which would be laid down on the clay to harden the trail for horses. We finished our corduroy and broke for lunch at noon for about 45 minutes, sitting along the edge of the trail. The experienced volunteers had each brought small sections of foam pad to sit on; I used my plastic lunch bag.
After lunch we dug drainage ditches along the trail, first just on the downhill side, then at my suggestion, on the uphill side as well to intercept water seeping out of the backslope, the cut bank above the trail. Since then Dan, who maintains trails for King County, has put down a layer of gravel on top of the crushed rock. That makes the mountain biking considerably easier but keeping out of the ditches is still a little tricky .
The Thursday crew was completely different from the Tuesday crew. They all seemed to know each other and had been working together for WTA for years. Most had been retired for a while and did trail work regularly once or twice a week, particularly during the winter, the hiking off-season. I dug out a tree on Thursday, working solo and trying to keep my heartrate up. Trailwork can be a pretty good workout; I figure the 4 hours of digging plus the bike ride back up the hill to the house was roughly equivalent to a 16 mile run.
Friday I worked briefly with the O'Grady trail crew then had to return home to await a delivery. Good day for photos, beginning with frost-covered tansy heads in the O'Grady pasture and concluding with spectacular lenticular clouds behind Rainier at sunset.
Today, the 10th, was cold with occasional drizzle. The clouds were supposed to break up after lunch but did not. We regraded a new section of the trail and built a wall of logs to support the outslope. That was fun, chopping fallen trees into logs and hauling them over to the trail. Good workout. I worked one more day after that then David came home. That was the end of the O'Grady work parties for a while so future trail work parties won't be quite as convenient.

12/12/2008 Rain, 38
Yesterday evening while I was taking a shower downstairs in preparation for a date at the Symphony with Susan, the drain stopped draining. Flushing the toilet confirmed my suspicion that the main line out to the septic tank was clogged again. I called Rescue-Rooter before we left for Seattle then got up early the next morning to dig out the tank before the Rescue-Rooter guy arrived at 8. It started to rain about the time he arrived and it was raining pretty hard by the time he found the root mass and cut it loose. It took him two tries; on the first try somehow the snake got by the roots and was halfway up the hall to the master bathroom before I figured out what was happening. The man was very helpful and recommended a couple options for fixing the problem permanently. When his boss showed up to sell me on the more expensive (like $6000) option I knew what to ask for and got a quote of $495 to replace the pipe junction where the roots are getting in. I decided to fill in the hole that afternoon, covering the tank openings with plastic milk crates draped with garbage bags to facilitate digging them out next time.
Good thing, because the ground froze overnight and the next day it began to snow.

12/21/2008 Snow, 30
Very strong east winds were forecast for the evening of the 13th following snow beginning around midday so after picking up David at UPS I rushed up to Des Moines to rent a generator, which, as it turned out, didn't have a plug which fit our power cord. We waited anxiously for the winds to start but here at the house the air remained calm, the snowflakes drifting gently down to the ground. Off to the southeast we could hear a hushed roar like distant traffic but it was not the sound of traffic. It was the wind 8 miles away in Enumclaw, a steady 45 mph wind scouring the snowy streets with gusts clocked at over 70. All the TV news stations had reporters in Enumclaw freezing in the gale while at our house we had no wind all night. My theory is that the wind took the form of a wave rolling east over the mountains to touch down in Enumclaw then rebounding over us before sweeping down again on Auburn and Kent, which both had gusts to 35mph during the evening.
The next day I bicycled down to the river and out the O'Grady trail, carrying my camera with the 80-400mm lens again. Too dark for really sharp photos.
In the evening we drove up to Bellevue to meet Gary and Udell Fresk at Maggione's where the food was delicious and the portions enormous. Udell designs and creates flower displays made of lights at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens every year, so after dinner we drove over to see her handiwork, the Garden d'Lights. It was stunning. It was also very cold; Gary's ears were freezing but he was gracious about it, as always. Both Susan and I really enjoyed the evening with them.
Very cold yesterday (the 20th) with the new remote sensor on the raingage post across the driveway reporting a low of 6F. The back porch thermometer, warmed by radiant heat from the house, showed 14. It snowed in the afternoon and I dug out my old cross country skis from the workshop and went out skiing for the first time in over a decade. Running still bothers my anterior tibialis tendon but skiing does not so I skiied an hour again today, mostly on our road.
Susan has been putting out seed for the birds. The snow keeps burying it so she keeps putting out more. Word has gotten around and we're accumulating a pretty good flock of juncos and siskins along with the resident song sparrows and the wintering fox, golden-crowned and white-throated sparrows. Several varied thrushes and flickers are hanging around as well, and the red-breasted sapsucker.

12/25/2008 Snow showers, 30-36
A white Christmas, the first here at home that any of us could remember. David and I got up first, around 9, and trekked over to the neighbors to feed their pugs and fish. As usual we didn't have a formal breakfast; instead we nibbled on stollen and fruit. The boys opened their stockings on the sheepskin rugs in front of the fireplace. Not long after that we all opened presents. Sarah gave Buffs to the boys and me and we put them on immediately. David with a little help from Susan managed to put his on as a tube top but we decided we preferred more traditional uses. I fell asleep in the middle of opening presents, woke up to find everyone done but still sitting around reading, relaxing. A snow flurry around midday deposited another inch of snow that somehow managed to be fluffy and sticky at the same time. I went out skiing even though the snow was too warm for my wax and I slipped back a lot. Later in the afternoon Susan was tired so we decided to postpone Christmas dinner to another day. All in all a very pleasant day.

12/27/2008 Cotillion Drizzle, then rain. 38-42
David and Ian escorted Emily to the 48th Tacoma Cotillion dinner and ball. As David's parents, we also had the privilege of attending. We had a good time and I think David did too, despite having to wear a tuxedo and attend a rehearsal ahead of time. Though the dinner was unremarkable, the dancing was fun and we enjoyed visiting with Emily's parents and Ian's Mom.

12/31/2008 
By the end of the year the snow was mostly gone though our big pile in the driveway hung on pretty well. David and I were back to biking the O'Grady trail while the skis went back on the workshop shelf for another decade. My jaw is a little sore after a filling on the upper left turned into a crown and perhaps a root canal too for good measure. The stock market bumped up over 9000 for the first time since the crash but I wasn't paying attention and missed it.
I also wrapped up my diet log at the end of the year. For a long time I've been curious about the relationship between my weight, calorie intake and calorie expenditure so for the month of December I recorded what I ate and what I did for exercise. From that I calculated my calorie, protein and Sodium intake and how many extra calories I burned with exercise. Over the course of the month I consumed between 1800 and 4400 calories per day with an average of about 3200 and I burned an average of 700 calories per day in exercise. During that time I also gained about a pound as best I could tell. That works out to a baseline burn rate of about 2400 calories per day. I devised a formula based on heart rate to estimate the calorie burn of my various exercise activities: Calories burned = 7 * (Activity Hrs * (Avg hr during activity - resting hr)). Generally I assumed my resting hr to be about 60. The resulting calorie numbers corresponded pretty well to published burn rates for various activities, including running at different paces. It was a lot of fun but after a month I got tired of remembering to record everything I ate. BTW, protein intake averaged 92gm/day, fiber 58gm/day and sodium over 3000mg/day. Though time-consuming, the exercise of observing what I ate did tend to curb my consumption of junk food somewhat, especially at first. It also highlighted the incredible calorie content of most restaurant food; it was not difficult to consume 2000 calories or more in a single restaurant dinner.