Tag Archives: cascades

Morning Tahoma

An early morning flight was needed for a trip that I needed to take for work, and it was taking me south. The departure time was before the sun was due up, but I hoped that I might get a view of Mt Rainier (also known as Tahoma) as we headed south so I had selected a seat on the left side of the plane. The plan was a good one even if the quality of the window of the jet was not. I have not seen such a scruffy window on an airliner in ages! Some random repositioning of the lens to try different parts of the window resulted in some reasonable shots. Nothing special but nice to get when you have to be up early anyway.

Diablo Dam

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The dams along the Skagit River coming down from the Cascades are all pretty interesting but Diablo Dam is the easiest one to access so, when mum was visiting, we made the side trip to go across it. I actually missed the turning for it when we were heading into the mountains but I made sure to remember where it was when we headed back down. Driving across the top of the dam is pretty cool but it is a little narrow if you meet traffic coming the other way. There was a good flow of water coming through one of the spillways while we were there and that looks impressive compared to when everything is calm.

The Mountain Colors Are So Good They Look Fake

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Driving up the North Cascades highway towards Washington Pass, the scenery looked great. I realized that there was a good spot to pull over as we headed up and figured I would stop on the way back. When we returned, I pulled off to take some shots and there were lots of other people doing likewise. The sun was out and shining on the peaks around us but there was plenty of color in the mountains. As I looked at it, I felt like it was somehow a creation of some movie maker rather than something I was looking at. The colors looked amazing. The shots conveyed the color pretty well but I fear that I was going to be assumed to have gone to town on the saturation slider. This is exactly how it looked!

Coming Home Over The Mountains

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My return journey from Chelan brought me over Stevens Pass on a sunny day. I had a schedule to get back for another meeting so wasn’t able to loiter too much but I still managed to take a few minutes out to stop and grab a couple of shots. There aren’t many places to stop going over Stevens Pass but, coming down from the summit heading west, there is a pull out and so I made my first use of that. I also stopped coming in to Index to grab a snack from the coffee hut there which has a nice view of Mount Index.

Cascades In The Clouds

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Snowy Cascades shots are pretty but I was shooting from an airliner on my way for a work trip and the mountains were sitting amongst the clouds. Getting a good shot from a plane of a white subject when contrast is not going to be great is a risk but this came out better than I expected. It won’t be too long before the snow is melted and we shall have to wait for half a year to get something like this again.

Color Along the Wenatchee River

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We made a trip across the Cascades in October to see what sort of colors there were in the trees. Choosing when to go is tricky because the timing of the color in the mountains isn’t the same as it is near us. Things were very pretty as we headed across Steven’s Pass. One the run down to Leavenworth, the road is tucked up against the banks of the Wenatchee River. There are a few places on the otherwise narrow road where you can pull off. The colors were pretty intense in parts providing a focus for the eye of the viewer of the photos.

Trains Through Steilacoom

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Another post for the rail fans out there. My visit to Steilacoom has yielded posts about the ferry and McNeil Island but it would be remiss to not discuss the rail line that runs along the waterfront. The weekend day I was there, there seemed to be a lot of traffic. This is the BNSF line along the coast but it is also currently used by Amtrak services. That was due to have stopped a while back with the Point Defiance Bypass having opened but, with an accident on the opening run, trains have continued to use the old route. That will transition at some point this year, though.

A bunch of trains came through while I was there. Most of these were freight services but one was an Amtrak Cascades train. It was being operated with a Talgo Series 8 train owned by Oregon DOT and on which I have done a bunch of work over recent years. Since only one train is running per day in each direction as a result of the pandemic, it was a lucky coincidence that I was there when it came through. I did get a nice wave from the engineer.

Mt Adams in the Distance

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The Cascades range has a few volcanos. One of the less frequently discussed is Mt Adams. I know of it as a result of something work related but have never thought much about it or where it was. However, from Mt St Helens, you have a good view of Mt Adams off to the east. I wasn’t planning on heading that way but it was hard to miss it from up there.

Views of Mt Rainier On My Way Home

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The drive to Mt St. Helens takes you south passed Mt Rainier. The weather was pretty crummy as I headed south so I didn’t get any views of the mountain as a drove. However, the weather had improved markedly by the time I headed home and the sun angle had come around to illuminate my side of the mountain. Consequently, I stopped a couple of times on my way back north to take some pictures. I want to do some hiking on Mt Rainier at some point but this was as close as I have got – at least on the ground.

Spirit Lake

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Sitting beneath Mt St Helens is Spirit Lake. It was there before the blast but not exactly where it is now. The debris that rushed off the mountain and the side of the volcano collapsed pushed down to the lake and actually raised it up a couple of hundred feet. The water also rushed up the surrounding hills. These had been covered in trees which, as the blast expanded outwards, got snapped off at their bases. These stripped tree trunks got picked up by the water and washed back in to the lake as the water retreated. The result is that there are now thousands of tree trunks floating on the surface of the lake making a raft. This moves with the wind so its location on the lake surface changes all the time but it always covers a substantial portion of the lake.

The lake also covers the previous location of a lodge that used to serve visitors. The owner of the lodge died in the explosion and the raised level of the lake now puts it above the lodge’s original location. The owner had been advised to leave but he had lived there all his life and he wasn’t interested in going. He was one of the many people to die that day.