Tyrannosaurus Fir

Ah, nothing here. Just another nondescript view from a”hike” (or stroll as it were according to the hardoutdoorsmen-and-women of the Pacific Northwest) up Tyler Peak. One of the few demoralizing things about living in the Pacific Northwest is you can nearly kill yourself from exertion and steepness on a hike that half of the population merely sniffs at.

A slight exaggeration, of course. The unofficial “trail” heading up toward Tyler Peak was supposedly carved out by sportsmen to pack game out by horseback, but after you’ve jammed your toes into the front of your boots for 3,000 feet straight down you’ll grumble and make a mad face like one of the kids on Little Rascals.

Tyler Peak is in the northeast part of the Olympic Mountain range. You won’t believe this, but I’m excited about coming back and grinding off a few more lobes of cartilage from my knees. Cartilage? Who needs it! Remember the Mt. Baldy fiasco from last summer (of course you don’t)? It’s connected to Tyler Peak by an easy ridge. That ridge is pretty snowy right now and my freezer is stocked with ice cream, otherwise I would have gone for it. My plan is to return in either a few weeks or in autumn and run the ridge to Baldy and then Gray Wolf. Could there be anything better than hiking up a mountain called Gray Wolf and exulting in the glorious beauty of the Olympic Mountain range? I can’t wait for that day. Tyler Peak was an amazing prelude, the Dungeness Valley lays below to the southwest and is staggeringly unreal-looking in its perfection. Is it the way the immense folds of rumpled velvet are capped by an icy fortress of stone? The shattered, needle-like rock crunching under my feet? The left-over hail in shady rock crevices, a reminder of last night’s weather?

I had butterflies this afternoon in anticipation of my first true solo voyage in my own boat: No help getting the kayak loaded and into the water. No help getting into or out of the boat!  The ability to get in and out of your kayak on your own would seem like a prerequisite for buying one, but we don’t always proceed logically in Tinytown. My legs felt rubbery as I strapped my kayak onto the roof of our car. Moving the boat around won’t be as big an issue as I feared, I’ve figured out that by shouldering it with the cockpit I don’t have to pretend I’m the Russian Bear.  Still, it’s hefty. I chose to launch down at Montlake, on the edge of a grassy field next to the western opening of “the Cut” (the Montlake Cut), the narrow channel of the Ship Canal that connects Portage Bay to Lake Washington. I can’t remember the name of the park. For years I’ve observed kayakers using the shore there as a resting area and envied them for having enough guts to get out and then relaunch. The park is five minutes from our house, which clearly is a big bonus. From Portage Bay, I can paddle through the Cut to Marsh Island or Lake Washington. In the other direction, I can make my way west through the Ship Canal to Lake Union, Fremont, Ballard and out the Ballard Locks to Elliott Bay and Puget Sound.

Your choice of a launch here is a hundred feet of waterfront with two short concrete steps into the water. The lower step shelves nearly level into the water. The only wrinkle is the lower step is very narrow, so using your paddle as an outrigger during your entry is mildly awkward because while one end is attached to your hand and the coaming on your cockpit, the other is pointing up at a 30 degree angle on the edge of the upper concrete step. I know I must sound like a complete joke, but when you weigh more than 200 pounds, every mistake getting into a kayak is magnified in spectacularity. Getting into my kayak is like a cow trying to get inside a phone booth, but I did succeed without dunking myself. Diana and Adam stood on the bank above me holding my camera as a precautionary measure, hahaha! They handed my personal affects to me and waved goodbye and I was on my way.

It was sunny all day long, until evening when thick clouds moved over the city so my test paddle was a gloomy gray one. On the bright side, the Ship Canal was quieter than usual. I hung out in Portage Bay for awhile because I had issues with my feet falling asleep. This has been a recurrent problem lately when I’m in a single kayak (but never when I’m in the tandem with Adam). Last month I found myself in the middle of Lake Union with no sensation below the knees, that was a rough excursion, hahaha! I’m doing my best to stretch daily, and in the meantime I’ll continue to fart around with the ergonomics of my seat. My boat is comfortable, but something is getting pinched or squeezed someplace because I’m such a lard-butt and I have to figure out how to keep the blood supply and nervous system working properly.

After practically hanging out of my boat like it was a Lazy Boy chair, I finally got sensation back in my feet. I was feeling gutsy and decided to mosey down the Montlake Cut. My passage coincided with several large vessels which caused so much bouncing and swirly-whirly upsy-downsy, I thought I was a goner for sure if my feet went back to sleep. I headed to Marsh Island, where I rested against one of the floating docks to improve circulation. I watched someone in their sailboat get cited by the harbor police for boating while boozing. I thought in the interest of safety I should get away from their boat so I headed across the water to the UW Waterfront Activities Center. That’s where I took the pictures below. My picture taking session doubled as time-to-get-pressure-off-one-butt-cheek-and-restore-circulation. That’s the UW Shellhouse in the background. UW is perennially one of the top intercollegiate rowing teams in the nation.

This family had minor issues getting their boat to the dock, the dad smashed his fingers between the boat and the dock and the mother was too afraid to get out of the canoe. I took these pictures while I was floating by the edge of my dock in my kayak. The UW Waterfront Activities Center is pretty close to the east opening of the Montlake Cut, so swells tend to make their way over here and splash the dock. So yes, timing was very key to shooting here, hahaha! A few times I thought I’d be lifted onto the dock. A cool thing about the dock here: When the swells are big enough from the Cut, the water underneath shoots up between the slats of the boards like a bunch of mini-geysers!

It wasn’t a spectacular first outing in my kayak, but it was a quiet night on the Ship Canal and I managed to do a little shutterbugging, so I’m satisfied. My feet fell asleep again, but it was a moral victory that I managed to stay in the water and restore blood flow (i aim high). I mainly wanted to prove to myself that I really could get in and out of my own boat without falling in the water, and by that measure the evening was a success.

On Saturday I hiked most of the way up Storm King Mountain (most historians insist on referring to it as Mt. Storm King, which to me sounds awkward and unnatural but worst of all takes a bit of the rawness out of the fierce-sounding name). Storm King’s name is derived from a Native legend, but it is also positioned above huge Lake Crescent in such a way that it collects bad weather. Arguably-speaking, Storm King was the setting for a day-of-infamy of sorts for Olympic National Park nearly a hundred years ago: Non-native mountain goats (from Canada) were released here. They’re fascinating, very photogenic creatures: But they’ve proved destructive to many areas of subalpine meadow in the Olympic range. And they’re a nuisance: They’re so voracious about salt, they have no compunction about walking up to you for a tasty treat while you’re still doing your business.

In order for the day to even start, I had to catch the 6:10 AM ferry to Bainbridge Island. My receipt from the ticket booth reads 6:08. I was the last car on! The white-and-red striped gate practically clipped my bumper. It was fun taking pictures on the mostly-empty boat. At 7:15 AM, I met my friends Kelsie and Ken in Poulsbo where we consolidated ourselves and gear into Kelsie’s station wagon for the rest of the trip.

It was an easygoing adventure. The trail on Storm King is very steep but easy. Toward the top of the maintained trail, the sunny-day views of Lake Crescent are sensational! Unfortunately, the official hiker trail ends just when the views start to grow in eye-popping earnestness. To reach the actual top of Storm King requires traveling over exposed, rough terrain which will cause many people of weaker constitution to poop their breeches. The psychological start of the scramble up Storm King starts at the first of three sets of anchored rope: It’s not horribly exposed on this first rope section, but what exposure exists is complicated by extremely loose gravel on the upper half. I went ahead by myself, out of curiosity, to see what all the hullabaloo was about these set ropes. Turns out, I could have willed myself safely upward. I stopped halfway to crouch down and take pictures of the lake below. The proper motivation to continue was not there, though, because I knew in the back of my mind it simply wasn’t a day for reaching the top. Ken and Kelsie were resting below and both had made it pretty clear the lower part of the mountain was plenty satisfying for them this day. And it was for me, too. I’m looking forward to returning someday to challenge myself with an ascent up Storm King: Whether or not I have the courage to reach the top is unknown!

This is a view looking northwest from Storm King. Pyramid Mountain is visible on the far right, I hiked up there last summer.

Lake Crescent is located entirely within Olympic National Park. It’s the second deepest lake in Washington state. Viewed from above, the blue waters of the lake remind me a lot of Crater Lake.

Adam and I took a boat out for a couple hours this morning and explored the south end of Lake Union. Don’t be fooled by the picture of the bridge tender sign, it’s actually something I took last night while we were waiting for the Montlake Bridge to go down. But I paired these two pictures because in my mind I liked how they’re such different parts of Seattle’s nautical gestalt: One is a bridge that mainly goes up and down to let pleasure boats pass through as they make their way to or from Lake Washington. The other was taken by a dry dock in Lake Union, a temporary home to hulking steel ships surrounded by sparks and paint vapors.

Now the picture below is actually from south Lake Union (it’s the dry dock on the south east side of the lake). The pilothouse of the ship with the black hull is boarded shut, I have a feeling it has been sitting there for awhile.

We were only on the lake for a couple hours, but we bobbed around in place a lot admiring this and that. I let Adam get out of the boat twice: Once at South Lake Union Park, and again at a public dock by one of the restaurants east of MOHAI. We watched someone do the dishes in her green barge houseboat. She pushed her window out, I think to get our attention because she smiled at us. We waited for a float plane to taxi back to its dock. By Lake Union Dry Dock, we listened to someone play a song on what I can only describe as a steam pipe organ on the top deck of a sternwheeler. We were on the other side of a couple rusty freighters while we listened in and for awhile I was charmed by the idea of a blue collar musical savant on break fooling around. Some of the charm wore off when we rounded Tremont and discovered the sternwheeler tourist boat getting warmed up and waitstaff moving this way and that way in preparation for it’s first cruise of the day, but it was still fun listening to the songs as we approached.

Past Lake Union Dry Dock, I decided we’d head back to Julie’s Landing. It was the first time I’ve ever crossed the lake at it’s widest point. It helped that it was a Monday in the morning, but I still kept an eagle eye out for float plane landings and distracted boaters. We got to the middle of the lake when it dawned on me: We had more personal physical space at that moment than anyone else in the entire city. There was literally no one within thousands of cubic feet on any side of us, nothing but the occasional projectile-Canadian Goose flapping wildly low and fast over the lake….and a cool breeze. I was filled with a rush of peace and satisfaction. Once I get my own boat (next week!!!!) I’m sure my opinion of paddling in the city will change a little as I gradually explore quieter places. But I don’t think it will change that much: There’s a lot of room on the water, I love being surrounded by the city but having it at a long arm’s length.

What in the world is this? Is it some type of plumose anemone, with it’s bad hair day folded neatly away inside? Based on everything I know, I say it isn’t. But I can’t find anything else in my field guides that resembles this. I’ve seen them before, but not on a regular basis.

We found it in Elliott Bay last weekend, during the minus tide. That sure was a great walk!