This was the 2nd hike I did while in Oregon visiting my Brother. This time it was just him and I. We drove for quite a while to get to where we started and then started our hike. The landscape on this hike was like none other I have ever encountered. It was like we were hiking on the moon because there is no vegetation for almost the entire hike. It is also eerie to have little rocks trickling down the sides of shale slopes as there is still a fair amount of seismic activity on the mountain. There was also steam coming from the crater above us for most of the day. I guess only so many people can actually climb this mountain per year, so the route we took to get to the crater is actually free for anybody because you can't actually reach the summit via this north side. It was still a remarkable day we saw many other cascade mountains in the distance like Adams, Rainier and Hood. It was also a very exposed hot day as there is no shade anywhere. I got pretty sun burnt and looked like a lobster as we went to a Portland soccer game that night after the hike. I wouldn't mind actually summiting this peak one day, there are just so many other summits closer to home that I would like to attempt.
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| Steam coming from the mountain |
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| This was about all the vegetation we saw |
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| Mt. Rainier off in the distance with Spirit Lake below us, if you compare the other pictures of Spirit Lake you'll notice the logs shift around according to the wind. Those are the original logs that got blown into the lake years ago and they just float around |
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| Mt. Adams to the east |
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| This is actually snow covered in dirt |
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| Getting higher, you can see the crater dome, it is actually growing higher every year |
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| Cliff shot |
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| This is about as high as we got, we got cliffed out and couldn't continue |
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| More steam coming out of the mountain |
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| Another shot of the dome on the left covered in snow |
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| Another shot of Rainier notice the logs in the lake have moved |
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| My shot with Rainier |
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| A look at the terrain below us |
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| Close up of the steam on the summit ridge |
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| So we hiked down and then west a bit to this water fall. Vegetation sure makes things prettier |
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| Logs moving again |
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| Another shot of that waterfall with the mountain behind it |
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| Close up of Adams |
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| Me and Adams |
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| Almost back to the start, it would have been quite a site to see this blow years ago, I would have just turned two on that fateful day in May of 1980 |
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| We could just see Mt. Hood to the south |
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| As we drove out I took a few shots of the dead trees all facing one direction from the blast |
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| More blown trees but nice to see the new ones coming |
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| Last shot of the dead trees, some of these are standing as they were sheltered from the blast from a ridge |
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| Approximate track of path we took that day, I made the landscape bigger just to show you how far we actually were from our intended objective and the true summit |
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At the soccer game that night, check out the sunburn!
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