It’s easy to love John Muir, or at least the idea of him. That’s the appeal of idealists. Soaring rhetoric and a righteous cause in the proper hands can bring a groundswell of change that compounds like an avalanche. But it is a rare idealist who is able to effect change in the world. John Muir was certainly one of them.
Search Results for: glacier
Triple Lava Loop
11,249 feet. Not ninety minutes ago, it had basked in the first rays of morning light before anywhere else, the sun spilling down from Mount Hood’s summit until it wakened the glaciers and, eventually, the forests below. Towering some 6,000 feet into the dizzyingly empty space above our heads, it’s a height difference that human minds aren’t fully equipped to understand. Judging with only your eyes, it might as well be 60,000 feet.
Ghosts of the Columbia
Close your eyes and picture the Pacific Northwest. Tell me what you see. Gray skies? An unshakeable mist? Maybe bright green sword ferns, super-sized trees, and fountains of Starbucks coffee on every Seattle street corner?
The Shining
Fifty miles east of Portland, Oregon, a snow-capped cathedral of glacier and stone holds a blue sky atop its broad shoulders. Even on a sunny day in August, ski lifts spin skiers to the only place in North America where turns can be had all 12 months of the year. But even that may not be Mount Hood’s most well known feature. That honor belongs to a place that has haunted people’s dreams for 42 years.
The Second Time Around
As with most evenings on this trail, I am cozy in my hammock before 8:00pm. Sweet Pea would be proud. This is the second time I’m doing this hike (the first time was in 2015). And with each passing mile, I can’t help but think how little has changed and how much has changed, all at the same time.
A Banner Day
From our perch on a hidden bench above the trail, the same soundtrack that had lulled us to sleep was now the first to greet us. There’s something a little comforting about it. That while you’ve been asleep, the gears of nature have kept turning, almost completely unchanged. That everything is, by all appearances, exactly the way you’d left it the day before.
The Other Side of Yosemite
The Sierra must be seen to be fully believed. And Yosemite is the beating heart of that Sierra. Of the more than 4 million annual visitors to Yosemite National Park, the vast majority never leave Yosemite Valley, however. With highlights known the world over—El Capitan, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, Glacier Point—you can hardly blame them.
Rocky Mountain Wall Art
The Rocky Mountains. Perhaps no mountain range better resembles the image of the American west. Soaring spires of granite, vast alpine landscapes of lush greenery, and hidden lakes that serve as reminders of their glacial origin. The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) affords a front row seat to it all. From the snowy San Juans of...
The Residentially Challenged Life
Ever since June 2020, when Mountain Man and I embarked on our hike of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) we have been what some may call “location independent,” “nomadic”, “wanderers”, or even “homeless.”
We prefer to call ourselves “residentially challenged.”
Trails of a Different Kind
Skiing isn’t an inherently sensible thing to do. Think about it. From the time we realize, as infants, that standing up seems like a cool thing to do, we spend nearly every moment from that day forward trying to avoid the pitfall of that decision. Namely, we try not to fall flat on our faces. Gravity, it turns out, is an effective teacher.
Land of Mystery
The southwest is a land of mystery. Of wide open space and eerie desolation. The kind that you can easily fill with all of your fears—the setting of the drama becoming a character all its own.
Starting Line
Since I’d first heard of it in 2016, the Arizona Trail has captured my imagination. Completed only five years earlier in 2011, it stretches nearly 800 miles north-to-south down the length of the state, from Utah all the way to Mexico. Along the way, the vast and often unsung diversity of Arizona is on display
Denouement
When we had gone to bed, the sun still dominated the sky with only a handful of brave clouds fending for space amid its rays. When we had woken up, everything had changed. What first began with the lightest of drizzles morphed slowly into droplets that sounded a bit more like sleet. By morning, the snow that dusted the ground and our tents told the rest of the night’s story.
Border Eve
Truth be told, I’m running out of superlatives. Another day, another pass, another dazzling display of mountain pornography that almost defies description. Before we even began any of the hard work of climbing our way back into the high country, I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing accurately the massive shape nestled in the grass 50 yards off the trail.
Garden Wall
Mace said it best when we had reached the crest of Piegan Pass, some 3,000 feet higher than where we’d left our camp this morning, saying: “This is why I do this. It’s places like this that get burned into your mind.” He couldn’t have been more right.
John Muir Would Be Proud
Six weeks ago, as part of a talk titled In the Land of Dust and Fire: Hiking the American West, I mentioned this quote by John Muir which he gave when asked what he thought of hiking: “I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains – not hike!”
Triple Divide
Well, this is awkward, and frankly, it was bound to happen. Especially here. Just as in places like the Wind River Range, there’s hardly anything I can say about the experience of the scenery found in Glacier National Park that photos can’t already tell you. Under a sky swept clean of yesterday’s gray clouds, a deep blue backdrop conveniently arrived to make those photos all the more stunning.
Hidden Masterpiece
A person could get used to this, even in spite of the weather. The familiar pitter-patter on the roof of our tent at 4am sounded hesitant, almost apologetic, as though it knew that the clouds it brought with it would obscure nature’s masterpiece. The masterpiece we’d so looked forward to seeing.
Reunion
It feels like a long time since we’ve had a hiking day like this, absent a place to be and a schedule to keep. In truth, we did have somewhere to be but with only 11 miles of sweet, sweet National Park trail between there and here, it felt about as leisurely as things ever get out here.
Unfinished
Last year was a weird year. How’s that for understatement? A world away from a world that was tumbling down a spiral it had not seen in a century, we had the good fortune to be strolling through some of the country’s most spectacular scenery as we followed the length of the Continental Divide Trail. Right up until we reached Glacier National Park, at least.
Stone and Sky News & Updates - July 2021
Normalcy. Remember what that felt like? I’d very nearly forgotten myself. The 4th of July has come and gone and the heart of summer is finally here. But it’s not just any summer. Here in the U.S., it feels like we’re slowly tiptoeing our way out into the light, emerging from a state of pseudo-hibernation....
Triple Crown
One final night came and went, and the stars that had thrust aside the evening clouds dissolved into the gray light of morning. I rolled over and lit the stove for coffee before closing my eyes for a few more minutes thinking how, in spite of this being our last day on trail, it felt no different than any of the others.
Cirque
How could it end like this? A day of jaw-dropping scenery reduced to a twilight scramble over a nearly impassable jungle gym of blowdown. But in the interest of not burying the lead let's rewind and get to the good part first.
Stone and Smoke
Of all the mountains I've spent time in, two have held a particularly special place: the High Sierra are in my heart, but the Adirondacks of my home are in my blood. What we'd see today had me wondering how much room I would need to make on that list for the Wind River Range.
Full Circle
Here we go again. After all of the trials and tribulations, we’re back at the beginning. Just shy of 3 months ago, we left the highway at Targhee Pass and headed north into an uncertain future. Returning late this morning to that same pass outside the town of West Yellowstone and under the same signs we've now taken pictures with on three separate occasions…
Rookie Perspective #4: Marias Pass, the WetzWalds and Mt. Man’s Trailside Chat
We did it. We finished the Montana miles we set out to having arrived at Marias Pass on 9/4 (the same day as Mt. Man’s birthday). Quick aside: Can you believe it? He’s finally 40! It’s about time.
Thimbleberry Lane
Late yesterday afternoon while traversing the never-ending burn zone that is northern Montana, a bright sign appeared beside a trail junction. Dated one day before we'd left our last town stop in Lincoln, it detailed the location of a new forest fire burning in the wilderness only a couple of miles due west of the CDT.
The Bob
The trail beyond Benchmark Wilderness Ranch is not what you'd expect. As the Divide becomes sharper and more picturesque, the CDT opts not for its usual lofty place where it typically follows the physical contour of the Divide itself, but instead it descends and follows the course of rivers far below. Not that it's a bad thing as far as walking is concerned…
Observation
Question: What's the best kind of hitch? Answer: The kind where you get one before you even start trying. After almost two full days of resting our feet, we walked along the wide paved shoulder of the one street that runs through the town of Lincoln, Montana.
The Legacy of Water
Its fingerprints are all around us. The lingering patches of snow that still cling to the coolest of high alpine corners. The lifeblood of the thick carpet of tundra-thriving grasses, bold enough to color such a forbidding landscape with their flowering blooms. Even the glaciers that long ago sculpted the waves of stone we've called home for these past 6 weeks.
Rookie Perspective #2: The CDT Back Flip, with a Twist
As I said in my previous guest post, I’m a rookie. What do I know? However, as we began planning for the CDT I quickly learned that conditions must be perfect (said to the tune of Flight of the Conchords, of course) in order to hike this big ass trail continuously and without performing any mental, logistical or geographical gymnastics.
Lewis and Clark
While walking for hours on end each day, something I often think about is how much harder this would be if the trail didn't exist at all. You can get a small taste for this during the occasional bushwhack or stretch where the trail essentially goes cross country with little to no markings. But I'm thinking bigger than that even…
The Silence and the Fury
The same chorus of white noise from the brook not 10 feet from our tent that had played us a lullaby last night played us back into consciousness this morning. Leaving our campsite deep within the forest, it was time to make our way up onto a vast plateau and the blast zone that constitutes the entire northern half of the mountain.
The Great Range
I wasn’t always this soft. Age and a career in front of a computer has a way of doing that, slowly obscuring who we really are underneath. Some people go to church to be renewed. I come here.
Wonderland
“This is the part I hate.” I can still hear him saying it. The smile on his face minutes later, waving goodbye from the front door, is the truly indelible part. The sweeter half of an otherwise bittersweet memory, as Emily and I pulled down the street heading home to Vermont from our Thanksgiving visit. It was the last time I saw him alive.
Permanence
I was getting tired of the view anyway. I mean, how much mountain porn can a person take? Although today was absent the high visual drama of the last three, the lowered ceiling of clouds we walked through for much of the day created a unique atmosphere of curiosity—if the clouds lifted at any moment, what new jaw-dropping view might they reveal?
Persistence of Memory
Up the stairs to the fifth floor, a collection of Impressionism, surrealism, and cubism masterpieces adorns the starkly white walls of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Nestled among Monet’s famous Water Lilies triptych and Pollock’s massive drip painting canvases hangs a work of a very different kind, scarcely larger than a piece of paper.
Reflection
The scattered rain drops landing on my face as I slept came as somewhat of a surprise. The thought of rain was a fairly distant one in the forecast, but nonetheless there they were, falling through not only the netting of my hammock but the nearly 100 feet of cedar fronds directly above me courtesy of the two 3-foot diameter trees I was hanging between.
Just Another Volcano
Sometimes out of the darkness, sometimes out of the clouds, it appears. Dominating a skyline of steel and glass from nearly 60 miles away, the icy icon that is Mount Rainier is a fixture of Seattle summers before vanishing behind a cloud veil of mystery for the remaining 9 months of the year.
The American Alps
The clear skies that we'd fallen asleep to were the same ones we woke to, but somewhere in between we had yet another dose of overnight rain. Fortunately, it was the last we would see of the wet stuff for the rest of the day. Under the newfound sun, steam was quietly rising off of the damp understory like smoke from a smoldering fire…