Not Today...

Island In the Sky! North Cascades, WA.

Sunday morning, and our day was set. Follow so many others to the garden store, stock up on plants, get everything we need to start pressure washing the house, cleaning the deck, and removing moss from, well… just about every surface here in the Pacific Northwest. And jumping into spring cleaning and the seemingly never-ending home maintenance.

Shuksan Glacier! North Cascades, WA.

All of that was rudely (and thankfully) short-circuited when my wife took our dog up the road for her morning walk. She came back, totally charged, and declared that it was just too beautiful to do housework.

North Cascades 2! WA.

We decided today was our day to go to the mountains. We had been bummed that we didn’t get up to Mt. Baker even once this winter to ski. And while skiing wasn’t in the cards right now, we could still enjoy the drive up the river, the multitude of small waterfalls, and the sun. You really don’t want to waste these too rare sunny days, and the trees and the moss backlit by the light is just incredible.

North Cascades Pika! WA.

In our youth, a free day like today often meant a hard hike at elevation and dragging ourselves back home late, worn, weary, and happy. And we did comment on past hikes as we drove among the Cascades and the entrance to the Mt. Baker Wilderness. Goat Mountain, Yellow Aster Butte, Damfino Lakes and Excelsior Pass, Skyline and Cougar Divide, all brought back memories of past adventures (bugs, waterfalls, wildflowers, majestic scenery, and mountain huckleberries).

Tumbling Home! North Cascades, WA.

But not today! No prep and a last-minute decision to get out for a drive meant a lighter agenda. To spend time together in the woods, and to get some easy and frequent workouts with small hikes here and there. Stopping for coffee before we got out of town, and again in Glacier for scones. No adrenalin, no sore feet, just a gorgeous time together.

Tumbling Home 2! North Cascades, WA.

And it was incredibly beautiful, all the way up and back. We drove up the Nooksack River and started to head up to Heather Meadows and Artist Point. And then we remembered that, up there, the road was still snowed in and closed. It would still be a wonderful scenic drive, but we decided that, today, we would take a different path. So we drove up the Hannagan Pass Road, with Ruth Mountain and Mount Shuksan on our right and Copper Ridge before us (a five-day backpack with over 11,000 feet of elevation gain and another 10,000 feet of descent). At times, we could just glimpse the peak of Mount Baker in the far distance, hidden by the other mountains. There was only one cloud in the sky, hovering over Mt. Baker, a lenticular cloud that forms when air flows over this 10,786-foot peak, cooling and condensing into a perfect lens-shape.

Mt. Baker from Lummi Flats! WA.

We spent late morning and early afternoon at the confluence of  the Nooksack and Ruth Creek, where the hike to the Nooksack Cirque begins. We still want to do that one, but again, not today.

North Cascades Hoary Marmot! WA.

We watched hikers returning from their adventures, and others just camped out along the river. We saw two just sunning themselves on the sand at rivers’ edge. It looked like a great idea and a wonderful place to nap, just not on this day. We turned around at the end of Hannagan Pass Road and headed home.

On the way back, we stopped at the garden store and picked up all that we needed to start working on the house and yard… tomorrow

That gives us the evening, and a good night’s sleep to figure out how to play hooky again tomorrow. What would that take? Maybe just another sunny, wonderful morning!

Endnotes:

In my stories, I often comment on wonderful places and landscapes around the Pacific Northwest. But Whatcom County, where I live, and home to the City of Bellingham and a good portion of the North Cascade Mountains, is no slouch when it comes to beauty and great photography. Especially if you are looking to get great mountainscape images. One reason for that is because Washington State is the second most glaciated state in the U.S. (after Alaska and containing roughly 65% of the total glacier area in the lower US), and Mt. Baker is the second most heavily glaciated volcano in the Pacific Northwest, behind Mount Rainier.

Just a few days after writing this posting, the road to Artist Point was opened and I was able to spend a morning in the mountains with my camera and along with marmots, pikas, and tons of snow!

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”

Ernst Haas, Photographer