Alpine Asylum

My friends Will and Karina have a baby daughter who is just a little over the age of 1.  They also have another baby who is due to be born soon.  Needless to say Will doesn’t get out much.  Being childless myself, it’s kind of hard to fathom how that hinders a persons activities.  But I have enough friends with kids to know that I’d better get as much stuff done now as possible because once we have kids my life will change radically.

A couple of weeks ago the weather forecast was calling for perfect weekend weather.  In Seattle when the weatherman says Saturday is going to be sunny you can’t mess around so Will and I started talking about a hike.  Of course there was the problem of the baby and the pregnant wife to be worked around.  What could we do?  I had a plan.  We would leave my house at 5:00 am and do a short hike.  When I mentioned to a few other people that we were leaving the city at 5:00 to hike to the Kendall Katwalk I got the same response everytime: “you know it’s not that far, right?”.

Of course I knew that it is only 10.5 miles roundtrip but the hike reinforced something else that I already knew: “the early bird gets the worm”.  I’m not saying that the other hikers that day didn’t have a good time but we had the trail all to ourselves and that made the alpine start worth every minute of lost sleep.

Naima, the reason for the early start.  I guess I can understand why Will wanted to get home early.

Ollie didn’t mind leaving town early

The fog in the Valley was impressive.

Will pondering the inevitable.

Mt. Rainier in the distance.

Since June 13th, when this blog officially went live, I have nearly one post per week.  There were a total of 3 weeks that managed to slip by without a post.  Some posts were trivial at best.  That doesn’t matter to me.  I’m in a new year’s resolution sort of mood.  From this point forward I will strive to have at least one post a week.  I’ve made it public, let’s see if I can stick to it.

Now, about other goals.  I’d like to get out and do something this weekend.  The meteorolgists at the National Weather Service have a fairly promising forecast for Saturday.  Mostly sunny with a high of 57 in Seattle.  I can work with that.  Maybe a ski on Rainier or a hike to get the legs tuned up for the immenent ski season?  Anyone out there interested?

The weather in Seattle has been really great over the last week and a half.  It is the kind of weather that is sunny but not hazy, warm but not hot, cool in the evening but not cold.  It may rain a lot in Seattle but the rain makes one appreciate the perfect late summer days that much more.  I’ve never met a person who cherishes good weather the way that a Seattlite does.  Because the skies have been clear I’ve noticed the sunsets over the Olympic Mountains and everynight I promise that, “tomorrow I’m going to photograph that”.  Tonight I followed through.  Here are a couple of simple panoramas of the sunset from my neighborhood.

The NWS has issued a special weather statement in effect for western Washington right now. It looks quite promising. The snow level is dropping. For those willing to go high, there is the chance of fresh snow in the Cascades and Olympics later in the week.

The important parts of the weather statment:

IN ADDITION TO THE SIGNIFICANT RAINFALL…THIS STORM SYSTEM WILL BRING GUSTY WINDS AND USHER IN A COLDER AIR MASS WEDNESDAY NIGHT. BY EARLY THURSDAY…THE SNOW LEVELS ARE EXPECTED TO BE MAINLY IN THE 6000 TO 6500 FOOT RANGE.

Keep your fingers crossed.