tread_tramp

Yep; that's Fred and a bunch of other pub club geezers.

I've left the car at least five times to climb Chimney Rock and still haven't summitted. Been as far as the glacier four times. Last time I was up there I almost got to the key ledge before I fell and busted my feet..Doh!!

THE AMERICAN CENTURY Blackbirds whistle over the young Willow leaves,pale celadon green, In the cleft of the emerald hills. My daughter is twenty-one months old. Already she knows the names of Many birds and flowers and all The animals of barnyard and zoo. She paddles in the stream, chasing Tiny bright green frogs. She wants To catch them and kiss them. Now she Runs to me with a tuft of rose Gray owls clover."What's that? Oh! What's that?" She hoots like an owl and caresses The flower when I tell her it's name. Overhead in the deep sky Of May Day jet bombers cut long White slashes of smoke. The blackbird Sings and the baby laughs, midway In the century of horror. ...KR 1956

Here is a pic of Gamma Hot Springs taken Sep-Oct 1994 http://www.cascadeclimbers.com/plab/showgallery.php?cat=3012

...another from Rexroth: THE HEART OF HERAKLES Lying under the stars, In the summer night, Late, while the autumn Constellations climb the sky, As the cluster of Hercules Falls down the west I put the telescope by And watch Deneb Move towards the zenith. My body is asleep. Only My eyes and brain are awake. the stars stand around me Like gold eyes. I can no longer Tell where I begin and leave off. The faint breeze in the dark pines, And the invisible grass, The tipping earth, the swarming stars Have the eye that sees itself.

Mt. Saint Helens 1969 Few easy things in mid 70's But mostly since 1986

I believe the Sloop IN BALLARD has taco specials on Tuesdays.

Check this thread in the south cascades forum: here

You also like sheep. tup ewe

time to

Look again chirp; the longhaired dude in the grey shirt at center of 2nd pic.

....

Yeah; Kerouac wrote about his stay at the fire lookout on Desolation Peak at the beginning of the novel Desolation Angles . He went stir crazy up there and couldn't wait to get back to the scene in SanFrancisco.

Kenneth Rexroth.... TOWARD AN ORGANIC PHILOSOPHY 1 Spring Coast Range The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder's tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm by this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglass fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stoney and incoherant, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poisin oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fence posts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo croutches on the hills. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossom is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. 2 Spring, Sierra Nevada Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brains of Archemedes. I have seen its lights over the sea, And the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stay late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stones, ice and stars is systematic and enduring; Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The Snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered over in snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled and sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it dissappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow. 3 Fall, Sierra Nevada This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast, His place was taken by a family of chickadees; At noon a flock of hummingbirds passed south, Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane Of the Sierra crest south to Guatamalla. All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain, The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them Over the face of the glacier. At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpian, The Great Bear kneels on the mountain. Ten degrees below the moon Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley. Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall. Now there is distant thunder on the east wind. The east face of the mountain above me Is lit with far off lightenings and the sky Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora. It is storming in the White Mountains, On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot-peaks; Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada. Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud, Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal, Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope. Frost, the color and quality of the cloud, Lies over all the marsh below my campsite. The wiry clumps of dwarfed whitebark pines Are smokey and indistinct in the moonlight, Only their shadows are really visible. The lake is immobile and holds the stars And the peaks deep in itself without a quiver. In the shallows the geometrical tendrils of ice Spread their wonderful mathematics in the silence. All night the eyes of deers shine fore an instant As they cross the radius of my firelight. In the morning the trail will look like a sheep driveway. All the tracks will point downward toward the lower canyon. "Thus," says Tyndal, "the concerns of this little place Are changed and fashioned by the obliquity of the earth's axis, The chain of dependence which runs through creation, And links the roll of a planet alike with the interests Of marmots and of men."

ahh grasshopper

When I busted my feet on Chimney Rock we had no choice but to go down. And a good thing too. The Ledge I spent the night on was at 7,000, which is the limit at which they like to do rescues with the Huey, which is what they came in with to help me.

Good article. I had a similar experience a couple summers ago. This sort of shit sure gets your attention.

SEF Has done this; and not by the easiest routes. A notable accomplishment.

Kenneth Rexroth... A Living Pearl At sixteen I came west, riding Freights on the Chicogo, Milwaukie And St Paul, the Great Northern, The Northern Pacific. I got A job as helper to a man Who gathered wild horses in the Mass drives in the Okanogan And Horse Heaven country. The Best We culled out as part profit from The drive. The rest went for chicken and dog feed. We took thirty head Up the Methow, up the Twisp, Across the headwaters of Lake Chelan, down the Skagit to The Puget Sound country. I Did the cooking and camp work. In a couple of weeks I Could handle the stock pretty well. Every day we saddled and rode A new horse. Next day we put a Packsaddle on him. By the Time we reached Marblemount We considered them broken. The scissorbills who bought them Considered them untamed mustangs Of the desert. In a few weeks They were peacefully pulling Milk wagons in Sedro-Wooley. We made three trips a season And did well enough for the Postwar depression. Tonight, Thirty years later, I walk Out of the deserted minor's Cabin in Mono Pass, under The full moon and the few large stars. The sidehills are piebald with snow. The midnight air is suffused With moonlight. As Dante says, "It is as though a cloud enclosed Me, lucid, dense, solid, polished, Like a diamond forged by the sun. We entered the eternal pearl, Which took us as water takes A ray of light, itself uncleft." Fifteen years ago, in this place, I wrote a poem called "Toward An Organic Philosophy." Everything is still th same, And it differs very little From the first mountain pass I Crossed so long ago with the Pintos and zebra duns and Gunmetal roans and buckskins And splattered lallapaloosas, The stocky wild ponies whose Ancesters came with Coronado. There are no horsebells tonight, Only the singing of frogs In the snow wet meadows, the shrill Single bark of mountain Fox, high in the rocks where the Wild sheep move silently through the Crystal Moonlight. The same feelings Come back. Once more all the awe Of a boy from the prairies where Lanterns move through the comfortable Dark, along a fence, through a field, Home; all the thrill of youth Suddenly come from the flat Geometrical streets of Chicogo, into the illimitable And inhuman waste places Of the Far West, where the mind finds Again the forms Pythagoras Sought, the organic relations Of stone and cloud and flower And moving planet and falling Water. Marthe and Mary sleep In their down bags, cocoons of Mutual love. Half my life has Been passed in the West, much of it On the ground beside lonely fires Under the summer stars, and in Cabins where the snow drifted through The pines and over the roof. I will not camp here as often As I have before. Thirty years Will never come for me again. "Our campfire dies out in the Lonely mountains. The transparent Moonlight stretches a thousand miles. The clear peace is without end. "My daughter's deep blue eyes sleep In the moon shadow. Next week She will be one year old.

Clouds From Both Sides is another great book that was written by one of those first five women you mentioned, Julie Tullis.