Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Panorama

Crystal Clear Skiing

We have been in a dry spell recently. Strange weather has given us 50 degree temps at the top of the mountain and temps below 40 in Seattle (6000 feet lower.) This has resulted in rock hard conditions on the mountains after they freeze overnight. Sounds like a terrible time to ski, right?

Wrong. On Saturday, I headed to Crystal Mt. with ClemensK. I was a bit nervous to be there with someone who grew up skiing in Austria, but thankfully I don’t think I slowed him down too much.

We started off on Forrest Queen for some fresh groomers. The hard snow challenged us to make good use of our edges, and we had a blast bombing down the runs. Next we spent some time in Green Valley. After the sun had a few hours to beat down on the south facing slopes under Rainier Express, we headed over there to explore some stuff off the groomers. We found nice soft bumps and had fun playing over there. After a quick stop in the lodge, we ventured up the High Campbell lift. Ski patrol was at the bottom questioning our skills before we headed up the experts only lift. They were right to do so because it was really nasty up there. We picked our way down one run and decided to finish out the day under Rainier Express. Unfortunately I never got to show him the Northway Lift. There are not many south facing slopes over there and it must have been like a hockey rink. We left around 3:30 as the shadows started covering the mountain and freezing up our favorite runs.

All in all it was a great day. The skies were an amazing shade of blue and you could see FOREVER. We spotted Baker to the north, Adams to the South, the Olympics an Puget Sound to the west, and we could even see over the Cascades into eastern Washington! Here is a map to show you just how far we were seeing. The red dot is Crystal Mountain.

I was able to snap a 180 degree panoramic photo from the top of High Campbell which gives you a little idea of what we were looking at or better yet, view the panorama with HD View. Click on the image below for the full size view. If you look far off along the horizon, you will see two peaks. The one closest to Rainier is Mt. St. Helens and the other is Mt. Adams. You can see more photos in the photo gallery.

All week I heard people whining about how terrible the conditions were. I’d like to thank each and every one of them for staying home and keeping the lines short for us. We racked up just over 29,000 feet which ranks as my second biggest ski day behind only my ski marathon last spring. It was a great workout and much better day than either of us were expecting.

[UPDATE] I like this panorama so much that I made it the header photo on the site.

benmartens January 19, 2009 Panorama, Skiing

Rattlesnake Ledge

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.

benmartens September 2, 2008 Outdoors, Panorama

Twin Falls

After my abysmal physical performance on Friday, I was pretty down on myself so I decided I need to get back on the trail and prove I wasn't a tub of lard. After church on Sunday, I drove to exit 34 and found Twin Falls State Park. The trail is not very strenuous (2.2 miles each way with 1300 cumulative elevation gain) so I set a quick pace and didn't take any rest stops. That was the plan anyway, but I did end up stopping at two points along the trail to view the amazing waterfall. It's not as big as Snoqualmie, but the hike up there makes it much much less crowded. If you click the image on the right, you'll see a large stitched photo of the full falls. It's hard to get a perspective from a picture like this, but the falls are 135ft high and about 30ft wide.

Our book of trails says this is a 2-4 hour hike, but I pounded it out in 1 hour and 23 minutes, and according to the GPS, I was stopped for 11 minutes of that time. As I came back across the bridge over the falls which is 1.2 miles from the trailhead, I crossed paths with the two groups that had left the trailhead at the same time as me. In the time it took them to go 1.2 miles, I had gone 2.2 miles up to the top and then 1 mile back down to that bridge. That brought a smile to my face.

The top of the trail connects with the Iron Horse Trail. That's the old railroad grade that goes all the way up to Snoqualmie Pass and includes a 2.2 mile long tunnel under the ski area. Tim and I have plans to ride our bikes down that one of these days so it was nice to see what the trail actually looked like.

This was the first time that I have ever hiked by myself. It was a great way to recharge my batteries, clear out a head that has been consumed with a lot of thoughts lately, and get in a good workout. After getting home, I proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch watching NASCAR, but somehow I didn't feel too lazy which made it even better.

More pictures are available in the photo gallery under Outdoors > Twin Falls.

benmartens June 11, 2008 Outdoors, Panorama

Rattlesnake Lake Hike

After I skied on Saturday morning, I met Rachel and Tim at Rattlesnake Lake for hike #10 from our hike book. As you can see from the GPS track below, we walked down to the lake since we had never been there before. The lake looks a bit low and the map seems to confirm that as it shows we were supposedly walking in the water.

Looking up from the lake, it's easy to spot Rattlesnake Ledge jutting out from the mountain. The hike from the lake to the ledge isn't too difficult. The trail is wide and very full of people. It gets a bit annoying at times, but we made great time up the mountain and passed a lot of people. After a quick stop at the crowded ledge, we continued up the mountain and left the crowds behind.

From that point, the trail gets more difficult and there were only a few hikers. We had plans of going all the way to the top, but after we realized there was snow on the last mile, we decided to turn around. Our footwear wasn't ready for that much snow and we would have ended up with cold, soaked feet.

The hike was fantastic and has jumped up near the top of my list. If you go on the same hike, bypass the first ledge and go up another 0.5-0.75 miles to find another smaller ledge that will be much less crowded and offer even better views.

Saturday was good practice for my Camp Muir hike which is coming up on June 6. Mike and I have scheduled vacation for that day, and I rented randonnee ski gear. Hopefully the weather is as beautiful as it was today!

There are pictures in the photo gallery and more panoramic photos. There is a bug in the photo gallery which doesn't let me put these panoramas there, so I'll leave them in this post. I think they help to communicate the vast views better than the single photos.

benmartens May 28, 2008 Outdoors, Panorama

Sunday Ride

Rachel and I hopped on the motorcycle on Sunday and went exploring. The first interesting site was the split in the road pictured below. You can click on it for the full view. The road splits and both directions have a Dead End sign. I feel like this is a good cover for a motivational book, or maybe there's a sermon topic in there for you Pastor Scherschel.

All of our exploration ended in either dead ends or dirt roads. (Jay, if we had your Jeep out here, we could drive on dirt roads to some incredible places.) We backtracked back down to the main road and headed for Snoqualmie Falls.

I've been to the falls a number of times, but it's still one of my favorite places to show people. It's my way of saying, "See how awesome Washington is? This place is 14 minutes from my house!"

The near-record snowfall in the mountains coupled with the record warm temperatures has created a very fast melting snowpack that is sending flash floods down the hillsides. I was shocked at how much water was flowing over the falls. I've never seen anything close to it. Check out these comparison shots. I think it will be easy to tell which ones were from the weekend and which were from a previous summer.

 

I don't have a comparison shot for this last picture because the river is so high that all of these rocks are underwater. The normally calm river where people go tubing has turned into raging rapids.

Speaking of record snowfall, Alpental is staying open for another weekend. What an incredible ski season!

benmartens May 21, 2008 Motorcycle, Outdoors, Panorama