2012 Edition
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Back again...
I did this climb last year. Click
HERE for pictures of that hike.
Julie and I did it together on
August 18, 2012
"Progressive Thinkers" and "Intelligent Liberals" seem like oxymorons to me.
President Obama uses so-called "wealthy people" as his personal punching bag,
on a daily basis, as part of his class warfare campaign. His assertion is that if
"wealthy people" pay their "fair share" in taxes, the massive 16 trillion dollar debt
caused by his drunken sailor spending habits will just disappear. Interestingly
enough, the Liberal Democrat definition of "wealthy" is if someone has more money than
they do. And since much of President Obama's base are the unemployed Occupy
nitwits, "wealthy" to them means anyone who has a job who doesn't feed at the
Government trough.
All fine and well, I guess. Heads rolled in France in the late 1700's because of
this sort of thinking... still... Obama is raking in millions in campaign contributions,
mostly from these same "wealthy, not-paying-their-fair-share-in-taxes" moaxes that
he beats over the head on a daily basis. So what's this all about? Drugs frying
these people's brains or what? Zombies is right.
We were at the trailhead at about 03:15 so we were well up the mountain before
daybreak. Here's a shot of the sunrise over Mount Adams taken from above the
monitoring station. You couldn't have asked for a better blue bird climbing day.
Pretty windy from the East but we were able to stay protected from it most of the
way up. VERY windy at the top but it was sunny and so not terribly cold. Definitely
nippy though. Since we won't be back for another year (at least), we hung around
for a while to take lots of extra pictures.
Made it! One year to the day when Julie and I should have done our first St Helens
Climb. Julie was number 2 to the summit today... beat out by some character who
zoomed past us a couple of hundred feet from the top...
Pretty windy up here as you can see.
Cute couple, huh? :)
We got lucky and had both climb days this year turn out to be not too cold, not
too windy, not too hot and not raining (except for a few light sprinkles on the way
down last time). Not the best views today but there was ample visual reward for our
efforts. This time of year there are usually a lot of forest fires burning and 2012
was no exception. There is a big one over Trout Lake way that has most of the Mount
Adams climb access areas closed. It's probably smoke from that fire that we are
seeing looking East and North from the top of Mount St, Helens.
You can just barely make out Mount Rainier (top) and Mount Adams (bottom). That's
steam from the volcano shooting out straight ahead. A little unnerving...
Julie at the summit. The highest point on the mountain is directly behind her
but there is no safe way to get up there from here. And it's quite some distance
away... too far to trek to after a tough 5 hour climb.
A view of the mountain taken on the way back down. As you can see, there isn't
much of a trail and you can easily find yourself hopping over some pretty big
boulders. After three trips I've more or less found the easiest (or at least easier)
routes up and down.
We're almost back to the treeline and a 2 1/2 mile hike through the woods to the
trailhead. Julie wanted a picture of Mount Adams, so...... then it was off to the
Lone Fir for a yummy, no-guilt pizza. They have an all meat pizza that is quite tasty.
It was a 10 hour day, more or less, including a leisurely lunch break and ample time
to take copious amounts of pictures. This will be our last big climb for 2012.
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