the FIVE-STAR PROJECT [4].

# 4 | High Camp, North Cascades, Washington [2012]

Canon 7D, 1/40th sec, f/9.0, ISO 400, 60mm (96mm @ 35mm equivalent)

Ansel Adams spoke at length about his idea of, what he called, visualization. So much, in fact, he dedicated the first chapter of his book The Camera to this idea, and revisited the concept in the following two books in his series. He always returned to it, this idea of visualization, what he considered to be 'the entire emotional-mental process of creating a photograph.' A process that starts with the camera-lens-shutter (in the case of digital, the camera component also includes the sensor, whereas, in Adams' time, the film was a piece of visualization he spoke of separately) and how that system 'sees' in a way the same, but in a way, different, than our eyes. Then, and I'll touch on this in a latter photograph in this series, there is the development of the photograph, and how that contributes to the characteristics of the final image.

This photograph represents that first part of visualization, through the choice of the camera and, primarily, in this case, the lens.

I 'saw' this image, in my mind, before I made it. And, in doing so, I was prepared with the camera and lens I knew I needed. I had been to this spot before, so I knew the geography and had a vision of what I wanted to capture. Here, the tent in the foreground, and the vast sea of mountains behind, trailing off to the horizon, infinite. On our return from the summit, I let Damon and Katie continue back to camp while I fiddled about with my camera and searched for the right spot to encompass, in the viewfinder, what I envisioned. It required a long (telephoto) lens, to compress the scene in just the right way, so that infinite sea of mountains was rendered finite, approachable, yet still vast, wild, incomprehensible (in fact, this image ended up weighing into my decision about which prime lens focal lengths to get when I made the switch from zooms to only primes: I selected the Canon 100mm f/2.0 because this image would have been possible with that lens). I didn't direct the two to stand, but rather patiently waited, waited, for the right moment. They scrounged around camp for awhile, digging in the tents until, at last, both stood up and just, stared. I took the shot.

And there, in this image, was exactly what I visualized.

Admittedly, it rarely works this way, and my example of the trip to Yosemite where I also had visualized all of the images I ultimately came to despise is proof of that. But, where there I was not relying on any spontaneity or magic, this image only is what it is because of that little bit of magic, of Damon and Katie realizing, on their own, where they were, and stopping for a moment to absorb this place, surrounded by mountains. Without them, the image would just be another shot of mountains from a high camp. With them, and how I visualized the scene, it is this.

Five stars.

the FIVE-STAR PROJECT [2].

# 2 | Eldorado Peak, North Cascades National Park, Washington [2010]

Canon 20D, 1/160th sec, f11, ISO 100, 163mm (260mm @ 35mm equivalent)

This is one of those photographs that made me re-think my approach to making images. Matthew and I were climbing to our high camp on the shoulder of Sahale Peak, attempting the north face of Mount Buckner, when I glanced over from high on Sahale Arm at this scene unfolding around Eldorado. It was late in the afternoon, so the shadows cast from the ridgeline above the upper Eldorado glacier were long, angled, perfect. The cumulus clouds piling together above and behind the peak, immense. There was motion happening, and emotion, something ominous, but peaceful, mysterious.

My camera was in the Clik chest bag I always carried, so easily accessible. I grabbed it and the little kit 55-250mm Canon lens, swapped it from the 18-55mm kit, zoomed to what seemed right, and snapped the photograph. Shoved the camera back in the bag and continued climbing, intent on reaching camp before dark. So now, I look at the photograph, remember the hurried process, and wish I had spent more time. More time composing, so I would have allowed into the frame the bottom of that ridgeline at the lower edge, which would have removed more of the cloudless sky out of the upper edge. Balance.

So when I was considering changing my camera system to an older, full-frame body, and discarding my collection of zoom lenses for a new collection of a few particular primes, I thought of this photograph. How, if I had been forced to shoot through a prime, had to move and zoom with my feet, in other words, it would have made me pause, slow down. Because sometimes slowing down is necessary, needed, in order to make better photographs. And in doing so, maybe I would have caught that lower edge of the frame and re-composed.

Still, I tend to be hard on myself, overly-critical. And this image is one of only a handful that capture, for me, in the way I envision, the silence of the North Cascades. I can hear the shadows moving like whispers across the glacier. I can hear the clouds building, rolling, folding, effortlessly overhead. Looking at it, I am made aware, reminded, of the quiet found only in the mountains.

Five stars.

the silence of the north cascades [plate i].

P L A T E   I

Skagit River Valley, Washington

[ Canon 7D / 18-55mm IS / circular polarizer ]

This image was made in late afternoon from the summit of Sourdough Mountain in North Cascades National Park, looking west down the winding Skagit River Valley towards Puget Sound, and beyond, while shafts of sunbeams filtered through the multitude of creek valleys all feeding the mighty Skagit.


It is the first of ten plates to be collected for this portfolio and journal project I am putting together – ultimately to be printed and made available as either a handbound book or individual, fine art fiber prints – and titling The Silence of the North Cascades. It is a multi-year, ongoing project from which I hope to capture – in my own words and photographs – the silence found in the high places of the North Cascades, and I will periodically write about my progress.


Please check back for the next plate to be posted in the coming month or so… 

to specialize in something.

t o   S P E C I A L I Z E   i n   S O M E T H I N G .

'There is more information of a higher order of sophistication and complexity stored in a few square yards of forest than there is in all of the libraries of mankind.'

~ Gary Snyder

Big Beaver Valley, North Cascades National Park, Washington

© 2013 All Rights Reserved Half | Light Photography

I had the chance to meet him once. Patrick Goldsworthy. This past January at my first board meeting of the North Cascades Conservation Council actually (the conservation group he helped form with a few others back in the sixties as he witnessed the valleys and trees of the North Cascades disappearing… falling). This is the guy we all have to thank for there being a North Cascades National Park. A Pasayten Wilderness. A Glacier Peak Wilderness.

A Big Beaver Valley.

Earlier this summer I walked the valley again en route to climb Luna Peak. Ten miles in. Along the way invisible in the photograph above lost in the scale is one of the finest stands of Western Red Cedar on the planet. Trees fifteen feet in diameter towering nearly two hundred feet. A thousand years old. My climbing partner Keith stood next to one staring up while I steadied to take a photograph of him in the shadow of its sheer immensity. Awesome.

Pat knew this. Buried in all of his efforts is the bit how he had helped prevent the now little-known-but-not-entirely-dead project referred to as 'High Ross Dam.'

After a hike with Harvey Manning and others shortly after the park was established in 1968 he wrote how 'We went up Little Beaver Valley and down Big Beaver Valley [and] came through tremendous forests of great cedar trees.' Of the many oddities and bizarre outcomes of the struggled creation of North Cascades National Park is the designation of Ross Lake National Recreation Area (wherein which about a five-mile portion of Big Beaver Valley lies). Had this area been included in the national park Seattle City Light would not have been able to dam the Skagit.

The trouble was… they already had.

Upper Skagit River Valley before the dam…

Once upon a not-so-long-time ago the Skagit River inked a squiggly line on the map in the rugged northeastern corner of what would eventually become North Cascades National Park. Then - in 1937 - Ross Dam was built and by 1940 reached a height of thirteen-hundred-and-eighty feet above the sea. Named after the first and now-long dead superintendent for Seattle City Light J.D. Ross - though an appreciable man still one whose grand design favored flooding over flowers - it soared to a whopping sixteen-hundred-and-fifteen feet above sea level by 1949 (its present-day height).

And so the valley in the photo above through which the Skagit once wildly coursed on its way to the ocean was erased.

It was the Hetch Hetchy of the Pacific Northwest. A whole valley gone. Vast. Lost. In a blog report from the North Cascades Institute published a couple of years ago about an annual educational trip up-lake aboard the Ross Lake Mule the author mentions her keen awareness of how 'our class floats over what was once a pristine forest' now gone. The upper Skagit Valley looked no different then - before the dam - than the Big Beaver does now. But since the dams had been built and the valley destroyed it could not be included in a national park. Hence why a map of North Cascades National Park looks more like a puzzle missing more than a few important pieces than a whole wilderness rescued.

But Seattle City Light was not finished with its grand design.

They intended to raise the already-five-hundred-forty-foot dam an additional one-hundred-twenty-two feet (to an elevation of seventeen hundred twenty-five feet above sea level) in a fourth and final stage of its construction. This addition would flood a large portion of Big Beaver Valley (and almost five thousand acres of Canadian wilderness to the north). The millennial-old cedars would vanish from memory.

After a confrontation between the city of Seattle, Goldworthy's North Cascades Conservation Council, and a similar group in British Columbia that stretched out stalemate after stalemate for nearly fifteen years… a settlement was finally reached in 1984. Seattle would pay the Canadians twenty-some million dollars a year for thirty-five years. Each of those years the Canadians would return the favor by giving the city about forty megawatts of electricity. The dollar amount was equal to what the High Dam construction would have cost while the energy output added up to what it would have provided in power.

Not entirely dead though the High Dam as the agreement states… halted assuredly only for a period of eighty years (through 2066 in order to see out the terms of a previous agreement lasting ninety-nine years reached back in 1967 just before the national park was created). The shortsightedness of building dams trumped the foresight of Goldsworthy and others to protect these trees. Valleys. Ecosystems. And so they remain vulnerable.

Pat had said simply… 'When [we] went through the cedar forests [of Big Beaver Valley] and saw what was going to happen there it was devastating.' Devastating.

But fast-forward…

Big Beaver remains… for now. And the stately trees. And the wilderness in which they call home. We can still walk past them gawking upwardly in silence and awe not quite able to see their crowns lost in the mess of branches and sky and wonder. Let us hope that in forty years there is another Pat. Another someone who can fight for trees that lack a voice some fail to respect or cannot hear.

"I began to realize that you can't get involved in everything, though there are a lot of things that need involvement," he once said. "I developed the philosophy that the way to do this is to specialize in something… specialize. So I decided fairly early when I came to Seattle... the Cascades just fascinated me."

As they do me.

Thank you Patrick. Thank you for saving this most special and wild of places for all of us who have followed your wisdom and footsteps into these mountains.

Patrick Donovan Goldsworthy

1919 - 2013

S O U R C E S

Defending Wild Washington: A Citizen's Action Guide, edited by Edward Whitesell, published 2004

Reflections on the Upper Skagit: Ross Lake by Boat and Boot, Christen Kiser, 2011

The Skagit-High Ross Controversy: Negotiation and Settlement, Jackie Krolopp Kern and Marion E. Marts

History of the High Ross Controversy (excerpt from A Citizen's Guide to the Skagit Valley), 1981

petty things slip away in the silent high places.

Given the time frame in which the following was written (it was first published in April of 1918 - the North Cascades National Park would not be created for another half century) ... I found it grandly profound. Even without that frame I found her writing - all of it - quite profound. Hilarious at times. Poetic. She flips from storytelling to sentiment - wit to wisdom - in a sentence. She talks about snow and ice and silence being everywhere. About it always being good to do a difficult thing. About the impossible becoming possible. About how - without expecting it - they happened on adventure.



And here - near the end of it all - she writes of their experience going up and over Cascade Pass ...

The pass is too wonderful not to be visited. Some day, when this magnificent region becomes a National Park, and there is something more than a dollar a mile to be spent on trails, a thousand dollars or so invested in trail-work will put this roof of the world within reach of any one. And those who go there will be the better for the going. Petty things slip away in the silent high places. It is easy to believe in God there. And the stars and heaven seem very close.

~ Mary Roberts Rinehart
From Tenting To-night: A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the Cascade Mountains

the impossible challenge.

T H E   I M P O S S I B L E   C H A L L E N G E .

I had sent a photograph to K. Posted it in the mail to her earlier in the summer. It was random black and white of the Picket range in the North Cascades to share with her a moment captured of mountains she needs but cannot envision. The shadows and light. Her response to me later was simple. Profound. In a half-question she wrote back -

'Maybe what you photograph best is silence.'

And that stopped me in my tracks.

For that in a sentence so concise - so clear - defined in an instant what I must now do with this old wooden view camera and the whole vastness and solitude of the North Cascades. But in an instant later begged the question for me: how does one go about photographing silence?

After a moment of thought the only possible answer I could come up with frightening was a single word … unintentionally.

And I realized it seemed as if this project - limitless in its scale and just as frightening as my answer in its scope - is like the ultimate lesson David Helfgott received from his piano professor when attempting the similarly musically-limitless interpretation of the third piano concerto of Sergei Rachmaninov in D minor -

'You must learn the notes David … so that you can forget all about them.'

Learn so that we can forget.

But it made perfect and absolute sense. Discover our purpose. All that we intend to do. Then - and this I know will be the hard part … forget it all. Let the future - everything that it may be … just be. Knowing without knowing. Just doing.

I have no idea if I can photograph silence. I may very well fail. But I know for certain I will never know without trying ... an old wooden view camera and some beautiful lenses and a rickety tripod stuffed in my pack up over mountains and passes high across glaciers and down through valleys all there unfolding before me.

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first;
        nature is rude and incomprehensible at first;
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

~ Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road' (from the larger work Leaves of Grass)
Excerpted from These We Inherit the Parklands of America by Ansel Adams

this we inherit.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

~ Theodore Roethke

Excerpted from the Sierra Club Exhibit-Format Series book The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Parkland 

snowpack.

So this is a little alarming for all of the Western mountains except basically the northern Cascades ...

And ... pretty dramatic compared to last year where J and I found ice on Hungry Packer Lake the end of July ...

I guess we won't have to worry about too much snow for this year's Sierra trek - although the entire southwest US may be a bit concerned ...

give a mile. or four. or five.

The scene was sort of sad. Sort of picturesque. Quiet.

Moss-covered logs once vehicle curbs. Sword fern and huckleberry where once cars parked. Pavement cracked and covered seemingly ancient. The sound of the river off in the distance nearby. J clambering up on a lichen-covered rock at the head of the Sulphur Mountain trail. Making goofy faces. K down wandering silently off somewhere. The Suiattle #784 trail sign almost eerily unupdated a tattered map of the Glacier Peak Wilderness stapled front and center. Laminated hiding under plastic. No cars though today. No one actually. Just us.

A mile or two back we had met one guy coming down on bicycle (we too were on bikes). Climber. Had an ice ax strapped to his pack so we just assumed. Seemed out of it. Told us he had been twelve miles deep earlier that day. Not sure from where but we bid him safe journey as he took off downroad. We hung around for a bit. Planned to be back to head up Miners Ridge. Image Lake. Or Sulphur Mountain.

Weather moving in from the west. Time to go.



-----



A couple hours earlier I found myself sun fighting through the approaching cloud layer chumming with a group of men all old enough to be my dad slumped in the grass of Green Mountain Pasture. A light breeze. Them lamenting on the good ol' days all with stories to tell but not enough time to get to them all. Of the Ptarmigan Traverse namely since only a few miles east Downey Creek empties into the Suiattle where most climbers plunge out of alder thickets to wrap it up crazy-exhausted relieved ecstatic.

Listening to them meander about days gone by made me wonder though were they all just grumpy and griping about why things couldn't just be the same? Should I have told them to get over it? Things change. Ethics change. Rivers change. Sandstone and granite. The ebb and flow of it all.

But then it hit me. Pretty hard actually and something clicked.

Isn't more or less the essence of the Wilderness Act (we were sitting smackdab in the middle of Glacier Peak Wilderness after all) to—well—prevent things from changing? Cos if this sort of stuff always changed—roads and boundaries and use and such—from one generation to the next then—well—just a few down the line and what will be left? How much will have changed?



A mile here. A mile there. Who's counting anyway?



So taking off from the meadow the three of us up towards the bridge over Downey I thought to myself it seems these candid and kindhearted old men of which whose company I had to remind myself I had been in and for what we should be thanking them might just be on to something. 'I'm old school wilderness' one of them had huffed to me with a partial twinkle in his eye as he prefaced a reply to my question of why not just pave the last four miles of the road? I rather like a river walk he spoke without answering hinting at a gesture to shush and listen to the quiet still air surrounding us.

Admittedly though despite my age I suppose so am I.

There are plenty of unwild places left it seems. Not enough wilderness. Some may argue that but hardly radical. And the debate has heated up through quick searches of the interwebs as the deadline for public comments draws to a close the end of this week. Alt B or C? Fix the whole road all twenty-three miles back up to the Sulphur Mountain trailhead and campground next to the creek or leave the last four or five miles from Green Mountain Road for foot and bikes and packs? What's four or five more miles anyway?



A mile here. A mile there. Who's counting anyway?



-----



The ride uproad was enjoyable. A barely-perceptible up. The last four or five miles from Green Mountain to Sulphur Mountain maybe four hundred feet or so. Quiet. The cedars dripping with moss. A grove of birch near the riverbed. Leaves shuttering. Had to stop my bike even to really appreciate it the sound of knobby tires on rocky roadbed half overgrown drowning out the essence of the river and silence of forest and air. A good sort of eerie.

It didn't necessarily or really make sense to me why at that point in between reality and sublime all the rage all the fuss all the back and forth over four or five miles? Why must we feel I guess that 'access' can only mean vehicle access? Why must we drive so much? Always be in such a hurry? It seems when all the arguments are made for or against B or C or this or that what it all everything comes down to is something simple ... that essence of dew clinging to a fern not coated with dust from a road or fumes.

Of course it would be easier to drive the road to its end. Park. Stretch some before heading off down the Suiattle River trail. It's not like I don't take advantage of roads. Hennegan Pass. Cascade Pass. The cross-state North Cascades highway-turned-eyesore. So for me then I guess I could stand to walk four or five extra miles if I wanted. A couple hours on foot. Quicker on bicycle. Maybe the campground at Sulphur Creek would be more special. Maybe a little tougher to get to than all the others sprawled beside or tucked off pavements. Maybe I just sound like an old curmudgeon.



-----



We get back to the truck parked off the road just outside the gate at milepost twelve. I walk past a pile of garbage spilling cascading down the hillside toward the river. Ugh. Close my eyes for a second to forget that. Go back to the lichen and the moss and the ferns and cedars at the end of the disintegrating road the quiet pristine. Still the sound of the Suiattle. Try to picture all of this not now not today but when it's finished and the debates have died down and the construction dust has settled. Fifty years from now. A hundred. More.

Which is the better scene?












To send in a comment to the USFS use this address ... wfl.suiattleriverroad@dot.gov

eldorado.

So I was going through an old box heaping with music stuff to research writing the complete story of No. 8056 mostly filling in the gaps coming across invoices for piano movers and clippings from newspapers of pianos I have sold to get to the Bechstein and in the heaps found a printout a few pages dated August 2003 from a no-doubt-now-defunct website called peakspeak.net (maybe has since morphed into summitpost.org) on climbing Eldorado that apparently I wanted to climb even way back then and it included the poem of the same name by Edgar Allen Poe that I - well - quite liked.

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old -

This knight so bold -

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow -

'Shadow,' said he,

'Where can it be -

This land of Eldorado?'

'Over the mountains

of the moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldy ride,'

The shade replied -

'If you seek for Eldorado!'

the loneliest mountain.

Luna Peak in the distance from the summit of Black Peak

We were sitting at Vivace on Yale sipping white velvets (at least I was ... I think ... it might have been caramel) and I was reading some article in Backpacker magazine about extremes - the tallest tree, place with the most snow, quietest spot and such - and among the list it mentioned what the writer considered to be the loneliest mountain ...


Luna Peak.


I liked the idea. The sense it conveyed. Buried higher and deeper in the Picket Range of the North Cascades than any other peak, the article stated ~

You’ll need determination and navigation savvy to reach 8,311-foot Luna Peak, the rarely visited highpoint of the remote Picket Range. From Big Beaver Landing, it’s a 16.5-mile bushwhack that ends with a class 4 scramble.

I wholly intend to climb it next year for a view like no other - one direction to the southern Pickets the other to the northern part of the range. Fury. Terror. Challenger. Whatcom. Triumph. Despair. All the incredibleness of the most rugged slice of mountains in the lower forty-eight.

whether or not to just listen.

A late start. A wrong turn just after Hennegan Pass. Back track. Two and a half hours to here. Two hours without the wrong turn. A tight timeline. Fourteen hundred feet from the summit staring up at it from this high alpine ridge the North Cascades in every direction. The northern Pickets. Mount Redoubt. Whatcom Peak. Mount Challenger. I stop finally to pause and am startled by the silence. How quiet it is. A slight breeze warm in the sun crests over where I stand. A bug or two fly past my ear. Rockfall far in the distance. I just stand still for the first time in hours and listen. Look up at the summit from here. I could make it. I would have to haul but I have crampons and ax to get me to the top. The glacier is not opened up much and I spot a seemingly-obvious route. Mount Shuksan and Baker glisten in the autumn afternoon sun. Beckoning. Or. Or I could stop here. Pull out the sit pad acting as pack frame of sorts and plop down on a rock. Eat the fixings I brought with me. Soak up and absorb the silence. Not a soul in this valley. Probably not in the next. Or the next. This mountain vista is mine temporarily and I could own it for the next hour or so until the setting sun urged me to get moving back down shadows growing longer and higher up the valley walls. It is warm enough to be sitting here in shirt sleeves. I cannot describe the views or the silence. They must be earned. Experienced. Or. Or I could rush up to tag the summit quick. To see the north face of Shuksan though washed out at this hour. I could no doubt see more. More than I could from where I stood despite the already insatiable view. See. And then it hit me: but not hear. Cos all I would hear would be the crunch of my crampons on the ice of the glacier heading up. My own breathing. I could see from the summit for a few minutes before having to race back down. Or. Or I could save it. Save it for another day when Shuksan's north face was not blinded in shadow. I could let the sun wash over me. Enjoy this moment tucked away in these mountains for which I feel such a deep connection. I feel remote but then stare over at Whatcom and Challenger and sense their even more remoteness two valleys over from where I now sit here on this rock in the alpenglow. On the east ridge of Ruth there is this enormous cirque carved by glaciers scraped bare and smooth down to rock thousands of years ago itself falling thousands of feet down into the Chilliwack River valley where the Brush Creek Trail winds its way to the nearly-impenetrable Whatcom Pass. And beyond that lie the peaks of the northern Pickets. Whatcom. Challenger. Fury. Luna. I do want to see them. This is certainly a special and extraordinary place. There is the ice of glaciers. Granatic rock. Vine maples on fire middle of October. Firs. Cascades of creeks and rivers Ruth and Copper and Chilliwack from those same glaciers offering the intrepid climber the ability to see. I know I will be disappointed if even slightly for having chosen not to rush up to the summit. But it is so peaceful here. Time flies. Shadows lengthen. Light falls. I want to stay but know I must leave. The Ruth Creek valley is filling with darkness while high up on this ridge I bask in alpenglows and I could stay here indefinitely as I would like to think. But I gather my things. Take a last few photographs to remember the light and the shadows and race down.


-----


And all the while. All the while back down thinking to myself of the difference between seeing and listening. I have always wanted to see. To see from the summits of these peaks. To more and more peaks. Oceans of them. Above cloud-filled valleys glistening with emerald green dews and soaked from Pacific rains. To see from ice and rock. Always a race to the top. Then back down. Eldorado in a day. Sahale. Others. Seeing from the summits to distant peaks. But unlike today suddenly so sudden as if to catch me quite literally by surprise I discovered that leaves no time to just listen. Listen to the silence of these mountain vistas. Instead of racing to the summit just taking a moment to sit down and listen. I was amazed. My breath was taken away. Maybe more so than had I reached the summit out of breath no time to pause. No time to hear. What did it mean to just sit on a mountain ridge beneath the summit of an icy peak with views north to Redoubt and beyond and south to Cascade Pass and the majestic Glacier Peak rather than stand on the summit itself? Watching the light change. Clouds move. Disappear.

It sounded amazing.

"We poked along the high trails, wandered through the grasslands, let the mountain wind blow away flat-land cares."

~ Theodore Roethke, excerpted from The Wild Cascades Forgotten Parkland

the wild cascades.

I love the smell of old books. And the feel of them, wrinkled and torn and soft around the edges. I can't remember now how I came across this book – The Wild Cascades Forgotten Parkland – but did somehow so in an instant ordered it from a bookseller in town and just found it stuffed in my mailbox today. It was published by the Sierra Club back in 1965, written by an eccentric character named Harvey Manning (who wrote countless guidebooks for the Cascades) who is a Cascades explorer, writer and editor and has – as the Sierra Club's David Brower writes in the acknowledgments – "the Cascade River flowing through the arteries on his right side and the Stehekin on his left." The purpose was to convince a public that the North Cascades needed saving. Saving from the bulldozers and the logging trucks. As justice William O. Douglas writes from Goose Prairie, Washington in the Foreword ~

If we do not preserve the remaining samples of primitive America, we will sacrifice traditional American values, the values of frontier America. Not every citizen goes to the wilderness – and they did not even 300 years ago. But so long as there is the presence of wilderness and the option of going to see it, a certain number of citizens do go there and bring back a message for their fellows. As long as that continues we will retain a historic connection with the past of our nation – and our race.

Upon first inspection, it is a beautiful book. I've now been introduced to the simple photography of the late Philip Hyde, who apparently studied alongside Ansel Adams. His black and white photographs from the Cascade Pass region (coincidentally, where I'm headed back again on Saturday) are simply spectacular, and in an instant convinced me to lug a Hasselblad and a couple of lenses up to the pass because that area is as rugged and as beautiful as one can hardly imagine.

I have, upon first setting foot on rock and ice here, felt a certain connection with the North Cascades. They are like no other mountain range on earth, and certainly unlike any range I have visited. They have been called a masterpiece. They have a quality – a ruggedness, pristineness, softness and stillness – about them that I just cannot do justice. Photographs cannot do justice. But a walk through the damp cedar and fir forests clinging to the western slopes, a climb high above the valleys and the clouds crampons crunching on solid glacial ice, a moment standing still in the crisp air of views unimaginable – those can. It is a new adventure – a new experience – every time I find myself there. They are a home to me, a place I can go to find an almost unbearable amount of reflection.

I've hiked through the ranges of the Sierras and the Rockies and the Winds, but none of them call me back the same way as these jagged, impressive peaks with their inspiring glaciers and massive struts of elevation from valley floors lined with fir and fog. Each time I return, I'm only more inspired to go back.

Throughout the book, the poetry of Theodore Roethke weaves in and out of the the pages of Manning's eloquent prose. Interspersed and molding with the spectacular photography of Philip Hyde (as mentioned), David Simons, Bob and Ira Spring, Ansel Adams and others. The images of the Chilliwack Range; of Glacier and Dome and Forbidden Peaks; of the South Cascade Glacier; of Image Lake, floating ice in Doubtful Lake, a lake in the White Chuck Basin; of Bridge Creek and the head of Flat Creek – all of these stir memories of my own images, my own travels up the spines of mountain ridges, glaciers clinging far below. Of finding my way through fogs and whiteouts and blizzards and raging storms. Of standing on summits surrounded by seas of peaks.

Under a photograph by Bob and Ira Spring of Forbidden Peak at sunset (a view I've soaked up on my climbs up Eldorado Peak, looking across the Inspiration Glacier to the north face and the Forbidden Glacier that tumbles in a beautiful mess to the deep turquoise waters of Moraine Lake far, far below) Roethke writes without assumption most fittingly (and most excerpts are labeled as just that – untitled extractions of a larger work) ~

And I acknowledge my foolishness with God,

My desire for the peaks, the black ravines, the rolling mists

Changing with every twist of wind,

The unsinging fields where no lungs breathe,

Where light is stone.

Clearly, the book's efforts paid off and the North Cascades National Park (created by Congress in 1968, three years after publication) was established and protects these wild lands and incredible wilderness for me and all others beckoned and inspired to explore. I'm grateful for the foresight of those that put this together, this incredible collection of poetry, prose and photography – all of a place that is and will always be to me home.

vesper.

Matthew and I headed out to the Monte Cristo peaks in the North Cascades this weekend to climb Vesper Peak since neither of us have ever spent much time out there. Apparently, they're notorious for bad weather – which we found out firsthand. But from the beginning, or just a beginning ....

I finished up at work early on Friday and bailed to pick him up at the Fauntleroy ferry terminal and we headed north to Everett before turning east on Highway 2 towards the town of Granite Falls, where we wound up at Omega pizza for some beer and pizza before our climb. The waiter had to return my beer cos the keg was bad and the pizza wasn't anything worthy of mentioning, so I won't go on. We then headed east on the Mountain Loop Highway that connects the towns of Granite Falls and Darrington in search of a campsite for the night.

After confessing my obsession with camping next to rivers, we decided to look for a spot along the south fork of the Stillaguamish (I used to make fun of the name, but after seeing it up close I'm not sure I've ever seen a river with as crystal clear water as this). We pulled Oliver (um, my car) over and climbed down to the river to find a good spot out in the middle of a rocky bar. Satisfied it would do nicely, we scampered back up to the car, loaded up a bunch of gear (me in my big cotton Marmot sleeping bag sack and Matthew in his pack) and climbed back down to our little spot out in the middle of the river. I built a little fortress in a pool of the river to toss our Simply Orange and my water bottle in to keep them cold for the night, assuring us of cold OJ the next morning.

The night was wonderful – perfectly comfortable and I slept well, lulled no doubt by the sound of the river. The stars weren't out except far to the west, an ominous sign of things to come the next day.

After waking up, enjoying our refreshing juice and breaking camp – we headed back up to the car. After eyeing me with my big cotton bag crammed full of stuff and wearing all black, Matthew made the remark I looked like I had just robbed someone's house. I cracked I just needed a stick to play the part of a vagabond trying to hop boxcars. And Oliver was glad to see us and get moving on up to the trailhead.

The turnoff wasn't signed heading east, but I noticed a sign on the other side of the highway and zipped around to realize we had just passed it, so on up we went. After getting to the trailhead, we quickly changed, sorted our gear (Matthew took the rope, I took the rack) and headed off into the forest under fairly miserable, gloomy skies (it was 7:28 in the morning). It was a decent trail for a bit, then turned into an overgrown mess with a couple of stream crossings before getting quite steep. The going was great though, despite the completely limited visibility, and we made good time as we headed up and up towards Headlee Pass which was supposedly 2.0 miles from the trailhead. Taking into account the 2800' of elevation gain, we made it up all the switchbacks and to the pass in an hour and a half – just as I estimated. The view was crap, or should I say non-existent.

We traversed across the talus field under the east face of Sperry Peak and on up to the outlet of Elan Lake, crossed over the creek and began the steep ascent up Vesper's east ridge towards a notch where we would intend to drop down onto the Vesper Glacier and head over for a 5.6-ish climb up the granite walls and smooth slabs that make up Vesper's north face. When we reached 5500' – the elevation of the notch – we debated whether or not to give the north face a go. We were literally in a rather dark cloud that limited our visibility to under 50' and covering us in a light mist that off-an-on would kick it up a notch to what we termed a light rain.

The granite was slick. We decided to pass on the face route, and instead scrambled up slippery rocks along the edge of the north face towards the summit, which we then reached at 10:45. We couldn't see anything. Literally. It's as if we were blind to no doubt all the beauty that surrounded us, or so we'd read. One description mentioned lying down in the heather fields along the way past Elan Lake that we had climbed through, now sopping wet and drenched with mist, for wonderful views to all the peaks of the Monte Cristo range. Or playing Name That Peak from the summit, gazing across the North Cascades at the sea of summits. But nothing for us.

I scrambled down a bit from the summit on the west to go find the top of the north face, where I sat down with my legs dangling over the edge of the smooth granite, waiting for just one opening in the clouds so I could get a sense of where we were. After about fifteen minutes, I was miraculously obliged and the clouds parted enough that I could see all the way down the face to the Vesper Glacier and Copper Lake far below. It was a great sight, then the clouds closed back up, leaving us without a view again. Despite not being able to see, the temperature on the summit was quite comfortable and I could have just lied down on a wet granite rock to take a nap in an effort to wait out the clouds and hope for a view. But after about an hour, we decided to head back down.

It was a pretty uneventful descent. We passed by far more people than we would have ever expected given the lousy weather and the brutality of the approach up to Headlee Pass. We were a bit peeved at having brought the rack and the rope all the way up to just below the summit where we cached it after foregoing the north face, which brought up the topic of one of the hiking rules I'd come across ~

When returning from a trip, go through your pack and anything you didn't use, don't pack again.

I then threw out there we should take that literally, regardless of any outstanding circumstances (for example, last time on Daniel we took my 30-meter 8-mil glacier rope but we never used it, so – despite the fact we were intending on a rock climb up the north face – we shouldn't have taken a rope). We then surmised that, after X number of trips, we wouldn't be taking anything at all. So, by this new rule, on the next trip I won't be taking ~

• sunglasses
• sunscreen
• down sweater
• map
• compass
• rope
• harness
• helmet
• climbing pro

I actually hadn't packed much, but this will make my next trip interesting. And quite lightweight.

In addition to that little bit of fun, we also discussed at great length the exploits of John Muir (we've both read his first book, The Mountains of California) and we shared how we both found it somewhat entertaining how Muir writes so poetically about what would – beyond his prose – seem to be rather dire circumstances, and how he can fashion a bed in the wilderness out of a few boulders and pine needles. Matthew picked up a stick on the way down, having left his trekking pole at home, and this sparked more Muir discussion about how – on our next climb (which, regardless of the mountain or the route, we apparently won't be bringing a rope or any pro) we plan on bringing only a large wool blanket which will serve many uses (including – when wet – a rather heavy, useless lump of fabric).

We made it back to the car by 3:30 after a rather un-characteristic leisurely stroll (we had been hoping to see some views as the day went on before we returned to the car but alas – no real luck). After changing into cotton and flip-flops, the sun proceeded to come out in all its glory and we admired the view back up. The irony wasn't lost on either of us.

But regardless, we made the decision to stop at the Big Four Mountain picnic area a few miles down the highway from Vesper to get an unobstructed view of this immense peak (the north face rises a paltry, nearly-vertical 4,500' from the Stillaguamish to the summit – on par with the infamous north face of Switzerland's Eiger) and Matthew and I stared a while at the only view we were really afforded all day. It really is an amazing peak, and quite intimidating. I couldn't imagine a route, other than a direct ascent up the same path a waterfall was coming down for what was nearly 4,000' – melted snow from the glacier hanging below the summit. Wow.

In the end, we enjoyed the climb a great deal, as well as a burger at Red Mill, and as always had a fantastic time in the mountains despite the fact we bailed on the north face and couldn't see anything until we were back at the car. Another adventure awaits - with very little gear and a wool blanket.