Chattermarks

[The third installment in our ongoing Road Trip series, in which Institute staff visit other amazing places around the country and bring back stories and photos to share! This article is the final installment in a three-part series.]

After spending 11 days on the Colorado River, we took a rest on our twelfth day and set forth on land to discover the wonders of Tapeats Canyon.  There are stories that a waterfall cascades down the canyon wall for hundreds of feet to the canyon floor with feats of grace.  Cottonwoods grow along the river’s edge while mosses and ferns carpet the canyon wall.  After 11 days on the Colorado, where the majority of the plants we saw were of the cactus family, Cactaceae, we were driven up the canyon to explore paradise.

» Continue reading Road Trip: Exploring the Grand Canyon, part 3

[The third installment in our ongoing Road Trip series, in which Institute staff visit other amazing places around the country and bring back stories and photos to share! This article is the second of a three-part series.]

Continuing our journey down the Colorado River, our fearless group reached Hance Rapid (rated an 8 on the Grand Canyon Scale) on day six of our voyage. The entryway to Hance Rapid is marked by a basalt dyke that interrupts the perfectly placed layers of the deep red sandstone of the Grand Canyon Supergroup.  John Wesley Powell described what laid before us:

The gorge is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above, with crags and angular projections on the walls… Down in these grand gloomy depths we glide, ever listening, ever watching.

We took Powell’s description in stride as our boats glided down the wet, cold tongue of the Colorado River.  We passed through the entry gate at Hance Rapid and slipped into the dark walls of the Inner Gorge.

» Continue reading Road Trip: Exploring the Grand Canyon, part 2

[The third installment in our ongoing Road Trip series, in which Institute staff visit other amazing places around the country and bring back stories and photos to share! This article is the first of a three-part series.]

On the morning of November 11th, one of our boatmen sat perched on the bow of his raft and read the following from John Wesley Powell’s journal:

With some feeling of anxiety we enter a new canyon this morning.  We have learned to observe closely the texture of the rock.  In softer strata we have a quiet river, in harder we find rapids and falls.  Below us are the limestones and hard sandstones which we found in Cataract Canyon.  This bodes toil and danger.

Shortly after, we pushed off from the shores of Lees Ferry–river mile zero of the Grand Canyon.  For the next 20 days, I would travel 226 miles on the great Colorado with fifteen other people and the words of John Wesley Powell and Edward Abbey.

» Continue reading Road Trip: Exploring the Grand Canyon, part 1

By Jack McLeod, guest blogger

I recently took the Spirit of Place writing workshop at the Learning Center with Nick O’Conell. Here’s my story from that workshop about a trip to Sahale Glacier. This is the third program I’ve participated in at the Institute and they’ve all been wonderful — so thank you!

My tent shook violently. Straining its granite-bound guy lines, I was afraid it would release and pirouette like a wayward balloon to the valley 3,000’ below. An arc of stones only partly protected me from the midnight river of air as the tempest commanded our miniature snowbound island.

We had hiked to the realm of skydivers and found our rocky outpost was directly in the channel of atmospheric winds traveling from one side of Washington to the other. I’d waited 6 months for this date, a dark moonless night in the mountains and perfect venue for the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. But atmospheric forces make the ultimate decision around here and they threatened to blow us off the mountain. In the spirit of a long-ago boss’s mantra “we don’t have problems, we have challenges”, the question became could we turn nature’s uncontrollable forces into our hoped-for glorious experience?

The three of us intended to camp just below flower-covered Cascade Pass, an easy four-mile hike. Bob had minor backpacking experience, Brandon had none so we chose that site for its beauty and easy access. The ranger made sure we had the required bear canister to protect our food – and us. “You don’t want anything smelling of food, including your skin, pack, tent or clothes.” Ah, we thought, just why we went camping in the woods – to have meticulous hygiene. She also told us the forested, creek-side camp we planned to stay at for two nights was full. But there were still sites available at Sahale Glacier. What’s a couple more miles and a couple more thousand feet of climbing with a full pack? And no trees or tumbling stream. Camped next to ice. In August. We had come to get away from it all so the ranger’s only campsite choice became a perverse type of trip insurance. Little did we know how this change in locale would change everything about our experience.

The hike to the pass was uneventful – no slabs of ice came crashing down from cliff-hanging glaciers 2,000 feet above on Mt. Johannesburg – all the guidebooks mention this as a possibility. The route to our newly designated camp led across Sahale Arm, high above an ancient trade route between western and eastern Washington and on this day deep in blue and white candles of lupine and bistort. Indigenous travelers and traders crossed this pass between the lush, green forests of the Skagit River valley and the dry plains of the Columbia Plateau. A nearby archaeological site was dated to 9,600 years ago. Stone tool fragments were found but no signs of plastic bear canisters or 4 ounce isobutane stoves.

» Continue reading Sahale Stars

What is a summit experience? For the 10th cohort of graduate students,  in NCI’s residency program, the 9-day backpacking trip that culminated their first quarter of graduate school was a summit experience, both literally and figuratively. This year the cohort split into two groups, with six students and one instructor with each group. Team veg started on the East Bank Trail of Ross Lake, climbing Desolation Peak on their fourth day. Team bourbon started on the west side of Ross Lake, hiking through old growth forests and over Big Beaver Pass. On the 5th day, Gerry Cook of the National Park Service met us with the MULE to transport each team to the other side of the lake. Team bourbon then hiked Desolation Peak and backpacked out along the East Bank Trail.  Unfortunately, an injury on team veg necessitated an evacuation. The team decided to stick together and continue learning about the North Cascades through front-country camping experiences in the Methow Valley. While the two groups had very different experiences, all students finished their trips elated, exhausted and in desperate need of showers! Here are reflections from each student about the experience….

» Continue reading Summer’s summit

August is here and so is the second session of Cascades Climate Challenge!

As summer temperatures begin in earnest, the intrepid second session students have arrived and are getting set to head out into the field. After meeting at Seatac airport, we spent our first few days getting to know each other and our surroundings.

» Continue reading Starting Out Hot!!

As much as we love North Cascadian landscapes — and with over 7,000,000 acres of protected public lands in Washington and British Columbia, there will never be an end to options for explorations — we here at the Institute are still called to visit and experience other amazing places on our planet. We’ll publish accounts of some of the places NCI staff and graduate students visit in our new Road Trip series…

My first 2010 trip away from the Salish Sea occured in May when I caught the Keystone Ferry for Port Townsend and spent a solo week in Olympic National Park, hiking, paddling and observing the emerging lushness of spring.

My first destination was Lake Ozette in the far northwestern corner of the state. I posted up at a nearly-empty campground on the northshore, dropped my sea kayak on to the lake and paddled a couple of hours south to a remote backcountry campsite at Erickson’s Bay. I was lucky to have decent, stable weather, no wind and Ozette — the third largest lake in the state — all to myself. Trails from the bay, as well as from the northshore campground, wind 3 miles through coastal forests, prairies and the remains of homesteads to the wild Pacific coast, where one can explore tidepools, view sea stacks, observe seabirds and seals and search for migrating grey whales and the famous Wedding Rocks pictographs.

» Continue reading Road Trip: The Olympic Peninsula

Tell me about a path less traveled and I will take it.

In the North Cascades National Park, there is such a plethora of paths to choose from when planning an adventure that it seems so many can become overlooked. On cold winter days, when light is little, I aim to try out these less-traveled paths.

Stetattle Creek trail is one of those paths. Perched on the edge of the Skagit River’s Seattle City Light town of Diablo, it is a short drive from the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center. More often than not, it is bypassed by adventurers in summer aiming to conquer the feat of Sourdough Mountain, the trailheads less than a mile apart from one another. But when snow is heavy on the summits of the tall peaks, Stetattle Creek is a great late fall and early winter jaunt.

» Continue reading A saunter up Stetattle Creek

Fresh snow on Mt. Baker, night time lows near 20 degrees in the mountains, and forecasts calling for snow below 3,000 feet; we had to go skiing. Let’s be honest, we didn’t have high expectations, it was the first day of November. But, as Ian, Arielle, Adam and I loaded the car in the dim morning light we were hopeful. Why couldn’t the snow be great this early in the season? We live in the Pacific Northwest after all; snow comes early to our mountains.

» Continue reading Fall skiing on Marmot Ridge

The morning of September 27th was one of those mornings that you wake up, look out the window and know instantly that there is nothing keepin’ you indoors. When I walked out into the day, it didn’t matter what I did as along as it involved being active in my huge backyard of the North Cascades. At breakfast in the dining hall, Katie mentioned she was going to hike up to Trapper’s Peak and, just like that, my day began.

Katie, Justin, Rebecca and I all piled into Katie’s car, drove to the Thornton Lake Trailhead, just down valley from Newhalem. The 10+ cars parked on the road surprised us. Apparently quite a few people had the same idea we did. The first quarter of trail was an old logging road and had a low grade of elevation. The variety of mushrooms lining the trail was incredible. It seemed as though there wasn’t a size, color or shape we didn’t come across.

As we climbed higher in elevation, the blueberries were at the height of their season. We could barely take ten steps without having to stop and gather a handful. The berries’ deep blue color created a beautiful contrast against their bushes, which had begun to change from green to a reddish-brown. Justin’s lips and fingers, in particular, maintained a blue tint throughout the hike.

» Continue reading Blitzing Trapper