It is Mom and Dad's last day in town so I took them on a hike up to the top of Rattlesnake Ledge. It was a pretty nice day so we had a great view from the top. I, of course, took another panoramic photo. You can click on it for the full size view.
Pacific Gaper Clam
When we were walking along the beach at low tide, we were startled when streams of water started shooting up around us. Most were only about a foot high but some shot four feet up in the air. We couldn't see what was causing it, but after some research, I think I have figured it out.
The mystery animal is a Pacific gaper clam, also called a horse clam. They live 6-12 inches under the surface and have a long "neck" that sticks up to the surface as a siphon. When they are startled, they quickly retract the siphon which shoots water up into the air.
It was hard to get a photo since each shot happened so quickly. I took a bit of video which is embedded below. I don't know if you can pick out the streams of water. There's one at 0:03 seconds in the lower right quadrant, one at 0:08 on the right middle, and one at 0:14 on the left side.
Fort Flagler Camping Trip
What a weekend! As I mentioned in the last post, the whole crew headed to Fort Flagler State Park on the northeast part of the Olympic Peninsula. Tim, Chelsea and I got there on Thursday night. We set up the tents, had a quick fire and then headed for bed.
On Friday we explored the beach area a bit and played a lot of cornhole. Throughout the evening, Tyla, Andy, Stephanie, Matt and Laura arrived. For dinner on Friday, we took our Mexican aluminum foil food packets down to the beach and ate in front of a gorgeous sunset.
Saturday was the day for the big hike through many of the old fort installations. It's hard to imagine the amount of firepower that was aimed out into the Puget Sound. I would not have wanted to be on the receiving end. It's no wonder that the bunkers are all still in tact. I don't know how you would have gotten close enough to take them out. We followed that hike up with cornhole, another gorgeous sunset, and some great dinner courtesy of Laura.
On Sunday we packed up the campsite, spent a few more hours walking along the beach at low tide and finally headed home. We had to wait over an hour for the ferry back, but it was a smooth trip. I'm sure ferry rides get boring after a while, but it's still pretty new to me and you can usually find me out on the observation decks.
With eight people at the site, it was the biggest camping trip I've had out here. From early morning walks on the beach to late night chats around the campfire, it looked like everyone was having a great time. There were well over 1000 photos snapped on various cameras throughout the trip. I've picked through the ones that Chelsea and I took and posted some in the gallery. A few of my favorites are shown below.
Where in Washington is Ben?
This weekend is our second camping trip of the year, and it's a big one! Our campsite is packed as full as they allow. Campers include Laura, Matt, Andy, Stephanie, Tyla, Chelsea, Tim, and me. Chelsea, Tim and I are getting a heard start on everyone else. We actually arrived at the campsite last night and everyone else is coming this evening.
The popular state parks fill up very quickly. We find the more popular parks by looking far ahead and seeing which ones are booking up. Washington has a great online booking system which makes this easy. On the last day of 2007, we hopped online and reserved a campsite at Fort Flagler. It's over on the Olympic Peninsula so we'll be hopping on a ferry to get there.
The website lists some interesting history for the park:
Fort Flagler, along with the heavy batteries of Fort Worden and Fort Casey, once guarded nautical entrance to Puget Sound. These posts, established in the late 1890's, became the first line of a fortification system designed to prevent a hostile fleet from reaching such targets as the Bremerton Naval Yard and the cities of Seattle, Tacoma and Everett. Construction began in 1897 and continued in one form or another until the fort was closed in 1953. The property was purchased as a state park in 1955. Fort Flagler is named after Brigadier General Daniel Webster Flagler.
As you probably guessed, our weekend will be full of good food, good times, and plenty of cornhole! Pictures will be abundant next week. Have a great weekend!
Iron Horse Trail
The Snoqualmie Tunnel is at the top of the trail. It's 2.3 miles long, and even though you can see a tiny point of light in the distance, it's absolutely pitch black when you shut off your headlamps. We couldn't see our hands in front of our faces. Bring a powerful headlamp. You'll need it. Even with the headlamps, if we looked up from the ground in front of us and focused on the light in the distance, we'd quickly start wobbling and running off the trail toward the walls. It's crazy, but really fun.
After the tunnel, we made good time down the rest of the 22 mile trail. We hit some rain along the way, but we were prepared with rain jackets and it wasn't too bad. All in all, it was a pretty cool trip, although it wasn't nearly the workout I had expected. The road is extremely well maintained and it's very smooth and flat since it was a railroad grade. We finished the ride in well under three hours.
While we used two cars to avoid riding both ways, we found out there is a shuttle that runs back and forth so look into that if you want to follow in our tracks.
A few more pictures are available in the photo gallery under Outdoors > Iron Horse Trail.
Attacked by the Tiger
Tim and I met at the main Tiger Mountain trailhead after work yesterday for a quick climb up the mountain. I decided to make the trip a bit tougher on myself and added two gallons of water to my backpack. (If you watch Good Eats you'll know that "a pint is a pound the world around" so it's easy to figure out that a gallon of water weighs 8 pounds.)
We were on a personal record setting pace. We stopped three times for about 5 minutes total and were on pace to make the summit in just over an hour. When we got about a half mile from the top, a storm started to roll in. That's right, a thunderstorm in Seattle. We've been having a bunch of them the past couple days. We sat out on the deck the other night watching the lightning. It's a very rare site around here, but it's not one that I really wanted to see on top of a mountain. We made it to about 0.3 miles from the summit when I finally caved and told Tim I wanted to turn around. Everyone coming down from the top said it was getting nasty up there and I really didn't want to be standing on top of a mountain in a lightning storm. As it turns out, we might have been ok since the storm didn't go directly over head. We got a little wet on the way down but nothing serious thanks to the thick canopy overhead.
I concluded carrying an extra 16 pounds is a great incentive to lose weight. I kept thinking "I should just pour out one of them. Eight pounds less would feel so good. Wait, I could just lose 8 pounds. Then I would feel this much better all the time." I'm happy to say I made it through the entire hike without reducing my load, but it was a big challenge.
Kanaskat-Palmer State Park
As we sat around the fire on Friday night, somebody thought they heard something. Flashlights flipped on and a pair of glowing eyes stared back from the edge of our campsite. It was a full grown raccoon. We scared it away, but it reappeared three more times that night in different parts of the campsite. On Saturday, we peed a perimeter around the campsite. Did it work? I don't know but we only saw the raccoon once on Saturday night and it didn't get as close as before. Also, it was fun to try to pee all the way around the campsite.
Other than peeing, we went on a little hike on Saturday. The park borders the Green River rapids. While the trail didn't give us great views, it was pretty impressive. They have class II, III, and IV rapids, and it was neat to see them up close.
We played a little bocce ball and a lot of cornhole. Our games of cornhole usually get a lot of attention from other campers, but this time was a little different. We only got two comments. One was a little kid riding past who said, "They're still playing that game?!" and an older lady who said, "Oh, I see, you have to drink when they get it in the hole. Now I like it."
A little rain on Saturday night made for a wet night, but we had strung some tarps up over the tents to help keep us dry and they worked fairly well.
All in all, I'd say it was a very successful start to the camping season!
Pictures are available under Outdoors > Kanaskat-Palmer State Park.
Office Decoration
When I moved into the new office, I came up with an interesting way to decorate the back wall. I used the National Geographic Topographic maps software to create a bunch of 8.5×11 PDFs. I printed everything off at Kinko's and then painstakingly placed each sheet on the wall with thumbtacks.
The whole process took forever. If I had it to do over again, I would pay extra to have it done on a plotter or some other large format. This would have saved a lot of time and also I think it would have looked better because some of the sheets didn't quite line up when I tried to place them on the wall.
That being said, I still think it looks pretty good. I get a lot of comments from people as they walk by my office. The map goes from Seattle in the lower left corner, east to Stevens Pass, and then north up to almost the north end of Whidbey Island. The smaller map on the side wall shows Mt. Rainier. As I go on various trips, I print off a small picture and stick it on the map.
I don't think I'll do it again (at least in this manner), but I'm happy with the way it came out.
The Quiet Side of Tiger
It just occurred to me that this title would work for a golfing post, but that's not what this is about. On Sunday afternoon, I headed down to Tiger Mountain as soon as I got home from church. It was 70 degrees and sunny so the place was busier than I've ever seen it before. Thankfully I had spent some time with the map the night before and figured out a route that I thought would avoid the crowds.
Tiger Mountain is made up of a series of peaks and my route took me across all three of the biggest peaks which are numbered 1, 2 and 3 from east to west. The photo above is taken from the street that leads away from my house. The main trail up the mountain only goes to peak 3 and it feels like walking through a busy mall because it's so crowded and loud. My route headed up the eastern side of the mountain: High Point Trail, Dwight's Way, Lingering Loop Trail, Tiger Mountain Trail, east at Fred's Corner, north on West Tiger No 1 Trail, then west along the peaks trail and then straight down on the cable line trail. All in all it was 6.5 miles and 2700' total vertical gain.
I saw maybe five or six groups all the way up to peak 1 and across to peak 3. When I got about two tenths of a mile from peak 3 I started to hear the whoops and screams from the huge crowd (30+ people) on top of the main trail.
It was my first time on the other two peaks and I was incredibly impressed. The east side of the mountain offers a very different feeling and peak 1 has an incredible view. It was hazy but I could see a long way south, west to the sound, and northwest to Seattle and Bellevue. I was also looking down on a bunch of the paragliders that launch from the southwest side of the mountain.
On the hike up I was thinking about the numbers from Lost and trying to figure out if I could make 4 8 15 16 23 42 spell something interesting. About that time, I heard voices coming through the woods. I rounded a corner and saw a radio tower! A few minutes down the trail and I came up to a building that was surrounded by a fence carrying signs about staying out due to some weird radiation from the towers. Luckily I didn't see any polar bears.
It was a long trip and wore me out. Other than the 30 minutes I spent on top of peak 1 taking pictures and trying to call Dad for Father's Day, I only stopped for a total of 20 minutes on the entire hike. It's great to get out there alone with my thoughts and enjoy some scenery.
Photos from the trip are in Outdoors > Tiger Mountain (the first five are from this hike.) And of course there is a new panoramic photo from this trip. I hiked up with a small tripod in my backpack to help with this one. It came out fairly well, but unfortunately the dark spot on the lens inside my camera is getting worse. I've noticed it for a while but it's to the point where I'm thinking of replacing the camera. I've tried to edit it out of the photos. That's a story for another day though. Click on the panorama below for the full size image.
Iron Goat Trail
My hike started at the Windy Point trailhead which is about in the middle of the Iron Goat Trail. There are some ADA accessible trails, but I headed up a series of switchbacks to get straight up to the railroad grade. Unfortuantely, on the way up I missed one of the switchbacks and ended up on a large scree field. I figured the trail had been washed away by an avalanche and I knew the railroad grade was probably at the top of the scree field. So why not hike straight up? Well this probably was one of the dumber moves I've made while hiking. The field was about 500 feet long and very steep. I knocked many boulders loose on my climb up but eventually made it to the top. I was hoping that I would find the trail on the way down so I didn't have to try to down-climb that field.
Once I reached the railroad bed, I headed east and quickly came to the west end of the Windy Point tunnel. This is about 3 miles west of Wellington where the train was hit by the avalanche. A short hike around the tunnel (it's not safe to go through it anymore) brought me to Windy Point which offers a nice view of the pass. A group of volunteers and some rangers were there eating lunch so I chatted with them for a bit before heading on.
My plan was to hike 2.5 miles from there up to Wellington, but at about 0.4 miles, I started to hit snow. That quickly transitioned to full snow. While it's not terribly hard to hike through, I kept breaking through spots where streams of water were running underneath. I decided to turn back and avoid 4 more miles (2 each way) of that kind of hike.
After finding the trail down which avoided the scree field, I got to my car and drove to the top of the pass. Tye Road near the top of the pass leads down to Wellington and it's a short hike from that parking area to the scene of the disaster. Unfortunately that road is still covered in 3-4 feet of snow so I wasn't able to make any progress.
Viewing of the Wellington area will have to wait until another day later in the year, but it was still great to hike along the trail. Railroad spikes and old scraps of iron are easily found all over the trail. It's so nice to see it all preserved there and not carted off by all the hikers!
On the way back down US 2, I stopped on the side of the road to see if I could figure out where Wellington was. While I'm not sure I found that spot, I did see the concrete snowshed which was just west of Wellington. It also looked like the trail had a bit less snow on it near the east end so I wonder what would have happened if I had kept hiking. Oh well, that mystery will have to wait for another sunny weekend!
Photos are available under Outdoors > Iron Goat Trail. I tried to give some description on each of the pictures.