Mount Hood

[VThillman]

Didn't know where to put this. The shades of color create a flow-of-mood in me. Thumbs up.

 

[Bacpacker]

Nice pic. I'd love to see that in real time

 

[backlash]

I droved by it last Thursday and I'll drive by it again on Monday going home.

 

[Weedygarden]

I've driven by Mount Hood, in 1976. Somewhere within view of it, were mint fields. I was in awe.

 

[joel]

Just stay off it if you do not know the weather, people get trapped on Mount Hood every year.

 

[Wingnut]

Yes, mountaineering is a serious business... with many subjective & objective hazards. I feel fortunate to have been drawn to technical rock climbing & mountaineering in the past, and I'm grateful for all the good times I had while standing on some peak with close friends & climbing partners. The views were a big part of the draw, plus the fact that there weren't many people around... that kind of freedom is priceless. Remote camping is also cool... no rules & regs needed.

It's funny... looking back upon some of the adventures I had, I realize that mountaineering has played a fairly large part in my life. Even those voyages to the islands off Baja incorporated mountaineering: sail out there, land & derig, gear up and head for the summit to camp and spend the night under a million stars. So much fun... and those were solo voyages, where I was the only person on the island, but I had 10,000 critters to keep me company, lol.

The best solo night of my life was spent at the summit of Isla Norte in Los Coronados... just an AMAZING night under the stars, with a meteor shower thrown in for good measure! Goes to show ya that you can have grand adventures in your own back yard, so to speak... the peaks don't have to rival K2, lol. I look back upon those voyages and I am SO GLAD that I went when I did... here's a link to the second story in my Island Trilogy, it's a record of that awesome night.

Isla Norte

 

[viking]

One of the few good things I can say about living in Seattle was the view of Mt.Rainer on my way to work.

 

[sonya123]

We were going to climb Mount Hood on a trip, but I twisted my ankle on the way there in Montana hiking at Glacier. Beautiful photo, makes me sad my climbing days are over

 

[LadyLocust]

Yep, like Backlash, I see it somewhat regularly. Hubby used to spend a lot of time skiing up there. I remember the lodge restaurant having a chocolate cake that made me waddle

 

[Wingnut]

I used to see Mt. Rainier every day when I was posted to Fort Lewis, down by Tacoma... my Army friends & I would go up there in my Olds 98, six of us at a time. Never climbed to the summit, but I've been up to Anvil Rock, which is somewhere around 11,000' elevation... views are still pretty nice from that spot. We'd also drive to the beach at Ocean City (?) in the summer... maybe it was Ocean Shores, I can't remember. What I DO remember is driving at freeway speed down the deserted beach, right on the hardpacked sand by the water, then parking near a jetty and going body surfing in the waves. If you drove down the beach that way in SoCal, you'd probably get arrested, lol. Those were fun times when the weather was sunny... we had a lot of good times in that Oldsmobile.

 

[backlash]

If you drove down the beach that way in SoCal, you'd probably get arrested, lol.

If you would have got caught you would have been arrested.
The beach is treated as a city street with a 25 MPH speed limit.

 

[Wingnut]

Good thing there was nobody in sight on the beach 40 years ago...

 

[viking]

Many years ago I rode up to the lodge area of Mt. Rainer with some friends and I remember that the snow on each side of the road was over 14', it looked the same as pictures I've seen of Tahoe and Big Bear. 1961 through 1965 I was station at McCord AFB, which was connected on the south with Fort Lewis, I could see Mt.Rainer from the barracks I lived in, later after I got our of the Air Force I hiked a lot in the cascades and on the east side of Mt. Rainer but never on the mountain, when I moved to Colorado I hiked a lot, mainly to hunt and fish, often above the 13,000' level. After I got used to hiking at those altitudes, I loved the way I felt after being up there, only one time did I ever have altitude sickness and that wasn't really all that bad and it only happened once.

 

[montanabill]

Wingnut it is called Oean Shores. I spent our family vacations across the bay at westport. My dad loved to ocean fish. We used to take dirt bikes to the beach and have a ball racing around and sliding corners like we were flat track racing.
I did basic at ft lewis in 1969 in the fall....in the rain. The word was, if you can see the mountain (Mt Raineer) carry your rain gear, if you can't see the mountain wear your raingear. Climed raineer and adams and skied on Hood. Timberline lodge on hood is a gem.

 

[backlash]

Ocean Shores is just South of Ocean City so it could have been either place.
My BIL lives in Ocean Shores and we go visit him occasionally.

 

[Wingnut]

Some of the troops would hang out at Paradise Lodge (?) on Rainier, I believe it was about halfway up the mountain at 7000' elevation. The rest of us would hike, and of course we stopped at other locations on the drive up to Paradise. I used to have a cool photo of moi standing on a fallen log (leaning against a thick broken branch) which spanned the Nisqually River (?) somewhere around 5000' or 6000' on one flank of the mountain, I'm using question marks because it has been so long and I can't remember all the details. I reckon the streams & rivers up there originate from glacial meltwater, and the water has to make its way down somewhere. IIRC, there's a Nisqually Glacier? Dang, it has been too long for me to recall the details, this whole post is a 40-year-old memory, lol. Meh, we had good times up there, and that was before I even started with technical rock climbing & mountaineering... kinda like a primer for what came later when we were better equipped and more clued into the whole scene, lol.