Mt. Adams Attempt

Ryan and I made an attempt on Mt. Adams throughout the day on July 24. We drove out of Seattle the day before, sat in way too much traffic, and finally made it to the trailhead parking lot around 11:30pm. After 3 hours of sleep, we began to get ready and finally set out at just before 3:30 at around 5600'. The trail was easy-going for the first mile, and we both felt pretty good. The moon was a beautiful bright amber and hovered just above the horizon. By 4:30 we had reached snow at just above 6500', and decided to put on the crampons at just above 7000'. The sun came up and cast Adams' shadow across the skyline, which was impressive, and stayed out for the entire day. It felt like the temperatures never dropped below 80 degrees! Just above 10,000' I started to feel the onset of altitude-related issues, and once we topped out on Piker's Peak at 11,600' at around 9:45, I decided to turn myself around due to nausea, dizziness, and general altitude problems. Just wasn't my day, and I'm more comfortable knowing it wasn't a physical issue but something that no matter how hard you try sometimes it just happens. I'll be back, but probably not until next year!

Chinatown Seafair Parade

With a last-minute decision, Feras and I decided to visit the Chinatown Seafair Parade on July 25 after we had heard that there would be a small contingent of costumed characters (more to come in a later post) participating in said parade. We anticipated a somewhat 'small' grouping of people and were quite surprised to see all of the different types of groups that would soon be in the parade. Pirates, clowns, musical groups, costumed characters, floats, everything. Since we arrived well before the start of the parade, we were able to mingle with the crowds and get some more candid shots. The following images are from one of the groups carrying one of the Chinese dragons through the streets. I set the white balance off of a teal color near the scene, as I wanted the shots to have a red hue to them. All of the images below were also taken with the Sigma 10-20 lens @ 100 ISO.

Mt. Townsend

8 of us decided to ascend Mt. Townsend in the Olympic mountain range over the Fourth of July weekend for a couple nights of camping. Our initial idea was to hike in to Silver Lake, camp, then head up to the ridge and camp another night. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't so great on Saturday so we decided to go all the way up to the ridge after hearing reports of sun up there. The trail itself is of a medium grade, not too steep but not too shallow either, with small patches of snow that we had to pass through around 5500'. After a few hours we made it to the ridge and set up camp, where we had a few snowball fights and did some exploring. At around 8pm the clouds finally sank, revealing a fantastic sunset over the Western Olympics. We woke the next morning to gusting winds and low clouds once again, so we packed up and headed back out to Seattle for the fireworks. Mt. Townsend is always a great hike with some stunning scenery!