Great Blue Weekend

Great Blue Weekend

Rain, rain, rain. Must be the Pacific Northwest.

So when you get a merely “partly cloudy” day, and the temperature spikes to 65, it is time to go kayaking. With all of the rain the rivers are way up. So I called an emergency Action Adventure
Team outing to paddle through the trees in the extra spring sized Scappoose bay.

I stole this from Chip. He was using GPS......

One of the things I like to do is to go back to a place over and over again so I can see it at different times of the year. Scappoose has different seasons. This time of year, for instance, it is a little chilly and rainy, but the Columbia is at high water so the bay extends into the trees of the nearby islands and you can paddle right through the forests. It is pretty cool. Just be careful of submerged branches and irrate beavers (at night) and head off through the woods in your boat.

 

Chip and my Partner both have compasses on their boats. A pretty good thing when you are in a big flat area covered with trees and all of the obvious paths or river courses hidden from view. Chip had also brought a hammock. We spent some time scouting out likely clumps of trees and discussing the in's and out's (literally) of doing some hammock camping in these conditions. We didn't actually set up the hammock, we just talked about it. Much less complicated. How DO you get out of your kayak and into your hammock without taking a swim? Inquiring minds want to know. And I want to film the attempt.

Lots of people out in the woods in their kayaks. Sort of funny, we were running into little groups every 10 minutes or so. Just people out paddling through the forest. Perhaps they didn't have compasses. We were not seeing much of any other kind of animal life, however. I think the Eagles were hiding and the Ospreys haven't shown up yet for the season. A few Great Blue Herons nesting in a tree. That was a little exciting but they flew off when we got close. There is supposed to be a Rookery around here someplace. We decided to go in search of it.

Canada Geese

We crossed out of the trees and headed south up into the bay. Just sort of paddling. In the summer you can't paddle in this section because it is a 6 foot high mud bank. Today it was a 2 foot deep lake. And there across the new lake and scrub bushes, was couple of large oak trees just chock FULL of huge nests. And even Huger birds.

Timberline Lodge Snowshoe Adventure

Timberline Lodge Snowshoe Adventure

So this is what you do. On Tuesdays and Thursdays every week skip that Starbucks(R) Grande Soy Latte and once a month put the resultant saved $40 in a jar. Then, once a year, take the $480 and buy yourself and your lover a romantic adventure weekend (or week night) at Timberline lodge. You will love the experience and you will look great in the ultra luxurious shower in your Fireplace King Bedroom missing that extra 10 pounds I just saved you by forgoing the lattes.

Here is why I think this is a good idea:

We got started a little later than we originally planned, but it was my birthday and we were determined not to rush. We rolled out of Portland on Sunday early afternoon just around 11:00. There had not been much snow up on Mt. Hood this year, but we had a storm go through in the last couple of weeks with additional fresh snow last night. So I was hoping that there would be good ground cover for some snowshoeing. The weather report was a little mixed. Some saying sun. Some saying rain. Dang weather guys. 50% chance of them giving you a weather report that has meaning. Like, what is the difference between partly cloudy and partly sunny? Is it just your attitude?

Anyway, I think we had missed all of the traffic going up the mountain, but there sure were a lot of people up there when we arrived. Timberline snowpark was full (big electric signs assured us) and the parking lots for Snow Bunny and Trillium lake appeared to be full. But we were going to a little less traveled trail. We were headed for where the Pacific Crest Trail crosses the Barlow trail. You probably know all about the Pacific Crest Trail, it has received a lot of publicity lately. I believe there is a movie in the making, but perhaps you don't know about Barlow. The Barlow Trail is part of the old Oregon Trail that was used by settlers coming over in Conestoga wagons. I am betting they didn't come over this time of year. Or if they did, their bones are still there someplace, under the snow. This particular part of the Oregon Trail was designed specifically to get around the blockage caused by Mt. Hood on the one hand, and the Gorge falls and rapids on the other. Seems like once you got your wagon and oxen team to The Dalles you had the choice of either building a raft and floating down the Columbia through the gorge (with a 2 mil portage around Ciello falls) or paying your 50 cents a wagon and pulling everything due south and west around the mountain through the pass where now sits Government Camp. The Barlow pass was slightly safer. You and your live stock would end up in Oregon City all ready for a successful run at the free farm lands of the Willamette. Kind of makes you nostalgic to go play the computer game again, huh?

So, we arrive at the Trailhead. The parking is pretty limited when the snow is deep. They plow out a section, but the road ends pretty abruptly. Today the entire parking area was essentially full, but my Partner saw a little space at the very end of the run just big enough to back in our little adventure Subaru. Good Find, Action Adventure Girl !!

We were putting on our layers and shoes and gear when I heard the first boom. A deep rolling sound somewhat reminiscent of distance thunder. What was that? A storm coming? Boooooooooom. Hmmm, no.... something else. Then it happened close by where I could see it. Booooooom. It was huge clumps of wet snow falling out of the trees. Wow. Don't want to get hit by one of those. It wouldn't kill you but it might knock you down, and you would be very wet.

We got our snowshoes on and hiked back up the road a bit to the trail head. A bunch of people were now showing up at the end of their hikes. They were all very wet and red faced. One woman said, “It is a rain forest in there”. Another “Watch out for the falling snow, I got hit in the head”. (See, I told you so).

Snow Orbs

We climbed up the 6 foot ridge out of the plowed area and shoed over to the trail head signs. Looked like hiking on the Pacific Crest trail would be fun today. We would be hiking on the trail toward Twin Lakes, but we didn't really think we would get there today. It was already 1:30 and we had reservations for a very nice room at the lodge starting at 4:00. So.... A few hours of hiking then.

The forest was a regular set of snow sculptures. The snow must have just blown in, thick and wet, in the last day or so and large orb like clusters of the stuff were setting on the west side of everything sticking up above ground level. It was lovely. We had a hard time getting started because we kept having to stop and take pictures of some new thing. And all of the time the sun was hitting the trees over our heads and melting snow was falling like a heavy rain all over and around us. And all around us was the occasional but steady booming of the snow when it finally gave up its sticky hold from the top of the trees and succumbed to its gravitic fate.

One thing that the still mostly fluffy snow and the sunshine reminded me of is the cool ice blue color effect you get when sun shines through snow. Anyplace there is a good footprint or other foot deep hole and the sun hits just right you get this marvelous penetrating blue color. I tried for a picture. It doesn't give the same sunny blue effect but you can see it some. Blue snow. Better than yellow snow.

The Blue in the Snow

 

The pre-lunch part of our hike was pretty much all up hill. We have not been doing our hiking this winter. We were feeling the steps. And you use a slightly different sort of muscles when you snowshoe and those muscles were quickly warning us about how much we were going to need a hot tub later.

At this part of the Pacific Crest Trail we really were near a local crest. We were mainly in the tress (pine and such) but we got occasional glimpses of snow capped ridges off to the east. We met maybe 20 other people on the trail. Many just out on the shorty snow shoes (good for groomed trails, but probably not so good for going off track) and also a few cross country skiers (going really fast, the bastards. Though they were going down hill. I wonder how they did going the other way?).

At around the 90 minute mark we reached a local maximum in altitude and decided to go off trail a bit and set up for lunch. We tramped an area down flat and spread out a tarp. When I am in the snow, I like to carry a good emergency tarp and one of those self-inflating sleeping pads. My partner and I could sit on the sleeping pad and it would insulate us from the snow. Otherwise, even on the tarp, it would be very chilly sitting down. Since we were no longer moving, I put on another layer. You cool down quickly when you quit walking. I started some water to boil, adding some snow to fill up my little coffee pot. We were planning on having turkey sandwiches and some hot soup (and tea). We had been sitting for about 10 minutes, and the water was just starting to steam, when my partner looked up hill and said “Oh”. I looked up expecting a polar bear or an avalanche or something else I would have to kill, but what I saw was wind sweeping through the trees. The sun was gone. The wind had started blowing. The temperature dropped 5 degrees. And just like that it was a different deal. Things were not looking so pretty. Things were getting cold.

 

We both decided to pack up and head back to the car.

It was snowing a little by the time we hit the trail again and the clouds had dropped down into the trees. Luckily the way back was downhill. You can go a lot faster downhill than uphill. We pretty much just coasted back to the car. We even had enough energy to do a little bit of off trail stuff, just for fun. When we got back to our car, the parking lot was pretty much empty. We saw a few more very wet people. I think most people were dressed in warm cotton and such. We were wearing rain gear and we were fine and dry underneath. So we climbed back into our trusty Subaru and got back on the main road.

Just in time to hit a very strange traffic jam that lasted all of the way back up the hill to the turn off to Timberline lodge. Very strange. We were guessing that there was either a car wreck someplace or this was just the congestion of everyone leaving the various snow parks and ski resorts and heading back to the city. Everyone else had to go to work tomorrow.

We were spending the night on the mountain in a glorious room in Timberline Lodge.

Why?

Because it was my birthday.

I really like the idea of staying in historic lodges and Timberline is a real treat. My partner and I have stayed there in the summer before (insert link) but this is our first trip up in the winter. This was set up as a special celebration so we were taking one of the nicer rooms in the establishment. Our room was big and rustic. It had a king size bed, two chairs around a table, a couch in front of a little table, an absolutely gorgeous old wood burning fireplace and a large bathroom with a walk-in all tile shower. It was such a great room. Everything is done either in actual historic items (like the bed frame and the fire poker) or in modern but historically reminiscent manner (like the push button telephone and the couches).

Timberline lodge was built in 1936 using WPA workers and funds. President Roosevelt dedicated it in 1938 with a speech that said (in part):

“This Timberline Lodge marks a venture that was made possible by W.P.A., emergency relief work, in order that we may test the workability of recreational facilities installed by the Government itself and operated under its complete control.”

Now doesn't that seem like a strange thing for an American President to say?

Of course, with all of this history comes a few problems. For instance, even an old Eagle Scout may never have run into the a situation where the east blowing wind makes the chimneys not draft correctly and so when you put a match to the pre-laid kindling, instead of getting a nicely drawing fire, you get a rapidly growing out-pouring of smoke which quickly fills your room, sets off the smoke detectors, and has you calling the front desk begging for rescue.

Evidently this sort of things happens all of the time, because the young bellman was there in an instant, told us to close the windows, open the doors, and he appeared with a big fan which he used to empty the smoke while he got the fire going and the flu sucking. Later he came back and lit another fire for us and this time he demonstrated the method of getting the flu to draft. You hold a burning piece of newspaper up high in the chimney until enough of a suction is created to pull the paper up into the chimney. Then you quickly light your tinder and away goes your fire. At that point, the chimney is drawing so efficiently that when you close the glass doors to the fireplace you get a forced air stoked fire.

Note the Snow out the window

Fire Bunny

Just a Little Smoke Damage

Such excitement.

And we had dinner reservations for 7:00.

Time to change. One of the things I like to do is to get all gussied up and go have a nice dining experience. As luck would have it, my partner also likes good food and charming atmosphere, so we put on our suit and dress and headed over to the Cascade Dining Room to see what the chef had going for the evening.

 

 

Now I have eaten at the Cascade on a few other occasions and it has always impressed. Tonight was no exception. When you go there, go all out. Don't chintz on the appetizers or anything like that. We had a half salad half scallop and salmon roe creation that was very yummy. And then while you are waiting for your main course, they bring you other little things. Some great fresh bread, of course, but also some little sample of something they are trying out. Tonight is was a little taste of salmon and prosciutto mixed with some fun sauce. Small but tasty. To “clear our palette” they brought us a little egg cup full of raspberry sorbet. Very palette cleansing. For our entre I had lamb cheeks and my partner had tenderloin. Both came with black mushrooms and butternut squash and a number of other fun little things. For desert we had coffee and a chocolate almond cake. Did we get wine? No. My partner didn't care for any and I didn't want a bottle by myself. I did have a couple of very find pints of a local IPA.

After dinner we went and sat by our newly rejuvenated fire for a bit to let our dinner digest, and then we put on our lodge supplied spa robes and headed down the hall to the outdoor pool and hot tub. That is right. Out doors. Even in the middle of the winter and even though surrounded by snow, there is a wonderful large and HOT (maybe 103?) hot tub. No chairs though, cause they were all covered in snow. We wallowed in the tub for a while. A good chance to stretch our legs out after the snowshoe. We did not go into the pool for a swim. True it was heated, but the cold wet wind blowing around was NOT. 

Luckily the moon was out. From my seat in the hot tub I could just see the rays of the full moon as it shown over the roof of the historic old lodge sending crystal moon beams down the...

"That isn't the moon"

"What?"

"The light, that isn't the moon. Look, the light is too close. That is a flood on the front of the building"

Dammit.

I stole this from Wikipedia. But I give them money.

Anyway, there was light and you could see stuff.

The next morning we had planned on doing another snowshoe, but it was raining. So we decided to laze around, have a huge brunch and then do some blogging in the main lounge.  The main lounge of the lodge is this big circular room that runs 4 floors up with a circular stone fireplace in the middle. On the ground floor is a sort of area for wet and cold skiers to hang out. They have their own part of the fireplace, but I have never seen a fire lit there. On the second floor is the main sitting area. Lots of couches and mini seating areas surrounding the fireplace. Big wrought iron everything everywhere. And Fires going. Lots of guests reading, using computers (yes, Virginia, there is wifi) and playing board games. The next floor up is a balcony around the edge of the room with more sitting a bar and light eats place in the evening.

We had a seat up in the bar area (not open yet) because that was where the nice seats were. You also had to be up that high to be above the snow level and able to see out onto the mountain. Strange to have the snow piled up over the windows on everything except the top floor. 

But, oh, the pretty blue color.

The Action Adventure Team goes Spelunking

The Action Adventure Team suited up last weekend and headed out for one of our yearly events, the descent into and exploration of Lake Cave.

NO MAP FOR THIS ADVENTURE

I have taken you into Lake Cave before link,  but this is the first time that my kayak partner has come along. She is very excited. Or perhaps freaked out. I should probably inquire as to which. But first, lets get on the road and drive up to the cave.

Usually at this time of year the area up on Mt Saint Helens where we are bound is under a few feet of snow. In fact, this is close to the week for the annual June Lake Snow Shoe trip. But even when we were down in the wet lowlands it was apparent that this was a hot dry year up on the mountain. When we got up there, no snow. None. Zilch. It wasn't even particularly damp. And the temperature was a ways above freezing. Is this really the winter in Washington?

Then entrance is a collapsed ceiling

Now Lake Cave isn't your usual cavern. It is a lava tube created by one of the many past eruptions of St. Helens. It forms when a flow of lava (a river really) is running down the hillside and the outside of the flow hardens. You get this tube of hard rock with molten rock still in the middle. Then the lava stops, or gets diverted, and the molten lava runs out of the tube leaving a nice long straight round hole in the ground. Eventually a part of the tube collapses make an entrance to the surface, and that is what the Action Adventure Team is going to climb down through. Usually we would use our pitons and climbing ropes for such a treacherous descent. But today we have decided to use the handy ladder that someone put there a few decades ago.

Lake Cave is one of many lava tube caves up on Mt. Saint Helens. The big, famous and public complex is called Ape Caves. That tube runs for a couple of miles and has a Ranger shack out front and probably a couple of thousand people a day climbing around in it during the summer. Now, at this time of the year, they close the road and you have to hike a mile to the entrance. Or perhaps snowshoe. So it isn't crowded. But still we had about 6 car loads of young people pulling up and parking at the lot that we were using for staging for our adventure. They had on jackets. We had on climbing helmets and such. They looked at us askance. We smiled.

See, Lake Cave is sort of a secret. It is legal to go out to it and all, and it is really pretty easy to find. It even has signs in it warning about bringing in white nose disease and killing the bats. But it isn't on the maps anymore. It is being allowed to disappear into obscurity by the rangers and such. Perhaps because of budget cuts. Perhaps to prevent tagging.

Water Droplets on Lichen. Look like silver

Glazed Rock or Molten Silver. Take your pick

That glazed stuff covered with red dirt.

On this trip I want to mention some of the new things that we saw. Yes, new things. We go every year and nothing changes and yet we still see new things. Well, one thing changes, the weather. What? Weather inside a cave? Yes. The temperature is pretty much the same year round inside (around 45 to 50) but the moisture is very different. It is always pretty damp in there, but when there is a lot of snow up topside, there is a lot of water dripping off the walls and ceiling and then running down the middle of the tube. Last year the river down the center was maybe an inch deep and then the last 50 feet of the tunnel was blocked by the lake of Lake Cave. This year was realitvely dry. No river down the center, no lake at the end. Still some drips and drops from the ceiling, but not the kind of “gee I wish I had a raincoat” kind of dripping.

So the other new things that we saw were things that have been there for thousands of years and I was just now seeing them. Most of it has to do with molten rock. Since this is a lava tube, there is a lot of evidence of molten rock. Lots of places where there were drips of lava that have hardened. The funny thing is that even those these things are thousands of years old, they still have a very recent look about them. They look like molasses or something gooey hardened overnight. Not a thousand years ago.

Here are pictures of some of the things I saw:

I especially like this one. See that hunk of rock there? It has fallen off that place above it and is not stuck in the molten layer beneath it. But that even happened when this area was molten. That was thousands of years ago. I checked the internets and they say that Ape Cave was formed around the year 80. Since I think that Lake Cave is a lower part of Ape Cave, I think that they were formed at the same time. So like 2 thousand years.  That rock has been sitting there like that for 2 thousand years. I should have taken it. I mean, the next guy won't appreciate it as much as I do. Especially if the next guy doesn't come along for another 10 thousand years.

About a mile down the tube (Not a mile underground, just a mile walk from the entrance) there is a little place where there is an intersection with another smaller tube. This side tube is harder to climb through and a bit more claustrophobic. But I have never been up it, so I pulled myself up on the side ledge and my partner and I headed in to see what was what. This side tunnel was around 5 to 6 foot high and about 2 to 3 feet wide. At just about head level it was bigger. Maybe 6 foot wide. And there was evidence of..... campers? What the hell? There was what must have been a campfire 'cause there was old burned wood. And also all around there were little round holes going straight up. Hey, these are tree casts. You can see the texture of the bark in the rock. This was ground level and when the lava came through it surrounded and covered the trees and left these castings. Up on the surface there is a place you can crawl through these old castings made from long gone trees. But these castings are way underground. And hey, that is where the burned wood is coming from. I found a log, must have been laying on the ground when the lava came. It was mostly covered in rock, but it had been exposed somewhat and now there was a round clump of charcoal that was coming out of the rock. How cool is that?

Looking Straight Up. See the castings of the tree bark?

Tree Casting. This one is horizontal

Looking down the tight side channel

Charcoal embedded in the rock

We were all getting a bit cold and tired at this point so we decided to take a rest and eat our lunches. I had a sandwhich (my partner makes the best sandwhiches) and then I pulled out my old carbide lamp helmet rig. This is an authentic antique carbide lamp like one that might have been used 60 years ago by spelunkers or miners of that time. Back then the batteries just were not good enough to provide for light for any good length of time. I remember my old boyscout flashlight back in the 60s. With 2 C batteries you could get 1 to 2 hours of light out of them. Not good enough for a many hour cave exploration. So people would use Carbide.

According to Wikipedia: Calcium Carbide is produced industrially in a electric arc furnace from a mixture of lime and coke at approximately 2000C. This method has not changed since its invention in 1888.

CaO + 3C goes to CaC2 + CO

Then, acceding to me, when you add water to it (very carefully) you get: CaC2+H20 makes C2H2 + Ca(OH)2. Which is acetylene gas and something with calcium in it. Perhaps Calcium Hydroxide.
So this is how you use Calcium Carbide. It comes in little rocks (about the size of cheerios) and you put it into the bottom of a special brass lamp container.

Carbide Rocks

Rocks in the bottom. Water in the top.

The top of the container you fill with water. I use tap water, but you could use bottled if you really want to. I might avoid Perrier. Anyway, you screw the top into the bottom. Now, there is a clever adjustment device on the top that lets the water drip ever so slowly into the bottom. So water ( H2O) will mix (in a hopefully controlled fashion) with the Calcium Carbide ( CaC2 ) and out will come the Acetylene (C2H2 ) gas and smelly stuff. The gas rises up through the top of the container (which we will henceforth refer to as a lamp) and is directed out this little pin hole in the front of the lamp and can there be lit and generate light. The jet of gas is very fine and cute and can shoot out around half an inch (much more than that and the entire thing gets too hot).

If you set everything up properly a single filling of the lamp can generate light for about 2 hours. Then you have to dump out the sludge and reload. Not sure how you are supposed to dump out the sludge and reload if you are assuming that you don't have any other light mechanism. The other part of this lamp is a little flint and steal wheel on the reflector mirror. This is to allow you to light the lamp without the use of other fire. I don't find that the wheel works all that great.

I made this one using just Carbide light (60 second exposure)

Long exposure of the gang working down the tunnel

Just to take you one more aside down my own personal software stack tunnel. What do you think happens if there is a fire in a Calcium Carbide warehouse and you haven't told anyone what you store there and the Fire Department shows up and sprays thousands of gallons of water onto everything?

THIS

The point of all of this was to try out my lamp and hardhat combination in the darkness of a cave. The experiment went pretty well. I walked down the passage and could see OK. The beam of the lamp was not as bright, or at least more diffused, than my electric head lamp, but the light was also an interesting yellowish color. The main problem I had was that the filled brass lamp is pretty heavy and mounting to the plastic hardhat I got at the store produced a front weighted hat that didn't want to stay on very well. It kept sliding down over my eyes. And you don't want to be reaching up into the flame to adjust it. Need a neck strap. (note to future self).

And so we ended our little jaunt. A few hours underground, a few new tidbits of knowledge. Hey, and I still haven't told you where the cave is ….......

The Action Adventure Team: Underground Squad