I have been on a couple of flights recently that took my past Mt St Helens. One was coming back home from LA and the other was departing out towards Dallas. In both cases I got a good view of the mountain covered in snow and with hints of clouds lower down. When you live in Seattle, Mt Rainier is a constant reminder of the volcanoes that surround you but Mt St Helens is the one that has reminded everyone about the power that these mountains contain. Hopefully it will be calm for a while.
The view from our hotel in Whistler towards the mountains was really pretty but never more so than when the sun was setting. A couple of evenings I thought I should get a shot but was either elsewhere or too slow. I did manage to get out there one time though, although I was still a little late. The shadows were creeping up the lower slopes of the mountains but I still had the nice color on the summits. The warm, evening light was really appealing and mountains look good at the best of times so this was a great scene to see.
Taking any of the Washington State ferries provides with some interesting scenery. Puget Sound is surrounded by large mountains so you can see something in most directions. The other ferry plying our route passed us mid-way across the journey and catching it with a mountain in the background was not tricky. The ferries seem large when you are close to them but they are quickly put in context with a volcano in the background!
The move from the Bay Area to the Seattle area involved a two day drive. The first part of the drive north is pretty flat but, as you get further north, you get into the southern end of the Cascades Range. The interstate runs around the south and west of Mount Shasta. You first see it a long time before you are anywhere near close to it. These large mountains are not easy to miss provided it is a clear day and the weather was lovely on this occasion.
We pulled off the road briefly at a viewing location. We were still some distance from the mountain and the view was not unimpeded but I guess this was a better spot than was available further up. The mountain had plenty of snow on it. As you looked closer, you could see wisps of cloud above the surface. I couldn’t tell whether they were actual clouds or snow that was being whipped up by wind as we were too far away. It took a long time to go by the mountain. We came up the west side but for a long time it just was there. Eventually, it was behind us and we continued on to our overnight stop.
If you want to go the top of the mountains, you might as well travel in style. An aerial tram (cable car for the Brits out there) runs from the center of the resort to the top of High Peak. We went in to buy our tickets only to find out that they were running a special for the last weekend of the ski season and both of us could go up for less than I was expecting to pay for one of us! Nice result.
Whenever I see these contraptions, I can’t help but think of them in the context of so many movies I saw as a kid. Invariably, someone would end up on the roof in a perilous situation. The real thing is of course a lot less dramatic. The larger these things are the smoother the run seems to be. The only disturbance is when you pass over the towers but this one was large enough that the transition was very gentle. The swing was nicely damped too so it was really a non-event.
The thing I find quite amusing is how the cables sag under the load of the car. As you get towards the steepest part of the climb, the car seems to head straight for the cliff face before it pulls up to the next tower. It is all very simple really but it still looks cool. Our trip up was pretty quiet because we were early. By the time we came down, things were quite a bit busier. I liked the display screen in the car that had all of the key parameters for the service so you could see that the loads and wind speeds were well inside limits. Just as well!
Ski resorts are great places in the summer because they have an available way to the top of the mountains to enjoy the view. Mammoth Peak was no exception and a trip in the gondola too you via a mid station to the top of the mountain at 11,000′. While people were making the trip, we were outnumbered by the mountain bikers who rode up in the gondola and down on the bikes. Seems like a good idea if you want to focus on the fun part rather than the lung busting part – particularly at that altitude.
There was a bit of haze in the air but it was pretty clear so I could see a decent distance in all directions. I imagine the mountains look great when covered in snow but it was still a lovely place to be for a while.
Having trekked along the trails on one side of Mt Diablo, we decided to finish the day off by heading to the summit. This time we took a more motorized form of transportation and drove up there. We passed many cyclists heading the same way how all made me feel a bit guilty. I had just finished a hike, though, so didn’t feel quite so bad about my lazy route to the top.
The summit has a tower and lookout station which we took a look around. The views were very good, even if the haze was a bit of a problem further away. We aren’t terribly familiar with all of the area yet so we spent some time trying to work out exactly where we were in relation to the places we do know. It is a long drive to the top but worth doing. Soon the Amgen Tour of California will be making the climb too. I suspect they will head up there at a fair old pace!
These pictures will never be anywhere other than my blog. However, as we rode the train from Tokyo to Toyohashi, we went along the coastline that takes you south around Mt Fuji. Possibly Japan’s most famous landmark, it really is a bit mountain. Even from the train, I was quite taken with how big it was. It was a hazy day so not the best for taking pictures and taking them from a moving train (a very fast moving train) didn’t help. Neither did the various poles and cables alongside the tracks but I still had to get a shot or two as mementos. This is it!
One thing I don’t seem to give up on is the hope of getting a good shot out of the window of an airliner. My experience has been that it is hard to do. The quality of the windows is not great and the distance is sufficiently far that haze and other issues can result in something that just looks a bit washed out. Post processing to try and overcome that has limited results. Translating what you see into an image on the screen is rather tricky.
However, I don’t give up. Even if the shots are not the greatest, they do show a view that you don’t normally get and are worth having just for that recollection. Snowy mountains, however, do seem to translate better. Maybe it is because you are slightly closer to the peaks or maybe it is because they are almost a gray-scale anyway that color shifts are not a problem but they seem to reproduce better. I was flying across the Cascades recently and grabbed these shots as we went.
