Hiking as a Catharsis

I received an email today from Chris in Vancouver, BC. He wished me and my family well and expressed hope that I would get up hiking again soon. I thanked him and noted that I had gotten a few hike in but that I just had no desire or energy to post about them in the blog.

Then I stopped and re-read just what I had written . . . flashing back to re-experience those hikes in my mind. What did they do for me? Was there anything special about them? And yes, there was. I hiked because I needed the release from pent-up stress.

Having a family member in a terminal cancer condition tears you apart. There are a lot of emotional issues to deal with besides the financial ones; the disruption of life. My brother-in-law is very important to me but the wear and tear-toll subtlely worms it way into my body and spirit as well.

I’ve done two hikes since the last posting . . . both of them to Scenic Hot Springs at the behest of the owner. They weren’t exactly recreational hikes in that he’d asked me to check out conditions of the record snowpack. So both of them started out with a sour mood . . . heck, I really din’t feel like trudging through all that four-foot deep snow just to see if the springs are still running. Too much like work! And what if . . . ? Cell phones worked only sporatically out there. So the trek up began with certain feelings of guilt about being away.

Snow has such a cleansing purity about it. I’m out of shape, without showshoes, and postholing frequently in three to four feet of untrampled snow on the steep slopes. But there is the magical quality that comes with the second wind and a beautiful sunny day at a cleared section of the BPA road halfway up. I really have this entire mountain to myself.

I sit down of a cold granite boulder the size of a car and take it all in. The quiet, the cleanliness, the spiritual bright of sunlight on virgin snow. I slowly undress and stuff all the inconsequential clothing into my backpack . . . from waterproof rainpants and jacket to thermal underwear. My skin screams for sunlight and absoulutely sucks it into every pore as I stand there naked and exposed in only my hiking boots and floppy blue hat. It feels so freeing. The pack is reslung and clipped . . . survival lies back there if this is a stupid idea. I have no idea how much snow lies ahead on the trail but I’m willing to find out. The trailhead entrance is beckoning me in like the Sirens of Lorelei.

Negotiating a path above Rock Alley

The snow is much deeper on the actual trail off the BPA road, but beautifully carved into mini Grand Canyons to bare warmed hardpan where the hot spring creeks cross the trail. I encounter my first major obstacle about halfway up in a place we affectionatly call ‘Rock Alley’ a narrow stretch of trail deeply and severely etched by years of runoff and lined with hundreds of granitic boulders. In the narrow vee of Rock Alley all I can see is a smoothed and even eight-foot deep plug of white with a hard-won trail bravely forced through by some other intrepid hot spring seeker.

It is more than I can accomplish today. I have no desire to climb naked up those eight foot drifts of unstable snow. My body is warm and comfortable. I am content just to explore around the base and enjoy the solitude. Eventually I head back down to the thawed area near Meadows Springs and set the coat from inside the pack down on a large piece of bedrock to sit, eat the sandwich I brought along and quietly sip coffee from the thermos. It is some time before I start the slow hike back down hill; reluctant and delaying the moment I must unsling the pack once again and seek ‘civilization’ inside. I wait until I am at the gate . . . almost in view of busy Highway 2 before I redress for the trek down the highway to where I parked.

My second hike came but a few days after the first . . . again a snow conditions check. This time I make it past the plug at Rock Alley, enduring the shower of loose snow as I scramble naked atop and on up. A smile? Yes. I’d feared the snow earlier because of it’s depth. Now I was above it and trudging on up toward the main springs.

Enjoying the view on a knoll high on the second bypass trail

Remarkably, the pool is a toasty 100F and the springs running at 111F and 105F, respectiuvely. I had expected cooler but I have the place to myself and a wonderful soak to relax myself.

The hike back down the mountain was a slow amble to enjoy the rest of the sunny afternoon. Back at the car I change out of the clothes I’d pulled on for the quarter-mile side-of-the-highway section. The heater gives warmth and laziness. I sit there feeling good wearing nothing but a long teeshirt. It wasn’t until I stopped at the QFC parking lot 70 miles later in Seattle that I realized that I had driven all that way naked from the waist down. That’s how relaxed I’d been feeling. Fortunately, little would have been seen since the teeshirt was a longish affair. But it did bring a rare smile to my face as I pulled on some shorts to do some dinner shopping. A day of smiles is good for the soul.

Tags: Snow, Hot Springs, Naturism, Nudism

Hiking as a Catharsis

I received an email today from Chris in Vancouver, BC. He wished me and my family well and expressed hope that I would get up hiking again soon. I thanked him and noted that I had gotten a few hike in but that I just had no desire or energy to post about them in the blog.

Then I stopped and re-read just what I had written . . . flashing back to re-experience those hikes in my mind. What did they do for me? Was there anything special about them? And yes, there was. I hiked because I needed the release from pent-up stress.

Having a family member in a terminal cancer condition tears you apart. There are a lot of emotional issues to deal with besides the financial ones; the disruption of life. My brother-in-law is very important to me but the wear and tear-toll subtlely worms it way into my body and spirit as well.

I’ve done two hikes since the last posting . . . both of them to Scenic Hot Springs at the behest of the owner. They weren’t exactly recreational hikes in that he’d asked me to check out conditions of the record snowpack. So both of them started out with a sour mood . . . heck, I really din’t feel like trudging through all that four-foot deep snow just to see if the springs are still running. Too much like work! And what if . . . ? Cell phones worked only sporatically out there. So the trek up began with certain feelings of guilt about being away.

Snow has such a cleansing purity about it. I’m out of shape, without showshoes, and postholing frequently in three to four feet of untrampled snow on the steep slopes. But there is the magical quality that comes with the second wind and a beautiful sunny day at a cleared section of the BPA road halfway up. I really have this entire mountain to myself.

I sit down of a cold granite boulder the size of a car and take it all in. The quiet, the cleanliness, the spiritual bright of sunlight on virgin snow. I slowly undress and stuff all the inconsequential clothing into my backpack . . . from waterproof rainpants and jacket to thermal underwear. My skin screams for sunlight and absoulutely sucks it into every pore as I stand there naked and exposed in only my hiking boots and floppy blue hat. It feels so freeing. The pack is reslung and clipped . . . survival lies back there if this is a stupid idea. I have no idea how much snow lies ahead on the trail but I’m willing to find out. The trailhead entrance is beckoning me in like the Sirens of Lorelei.

Negotiating a path above Rock Alley

The snow is much deeper on the actual trail off the BPA road, but beautifully carved into mini Grand Canyons to bare warmed hardpan where the hot spring creeks cross the trail. I encounter my first major obstacle about halfway up in a place we affectionatly call ‘Rock Alley’ a narrow stretch of trail deeply and severely etched by years of runoff and lined with hundreds of granitic boulders. In the narrow vee of Rock Alley all I can see is a smoothed and even eight-foot deep plug of white with a hard-won trail bravely forced through by some other intrepid hot spring seeker.

It is more than I can accomplish today. I have no desire to climb naked up those eight foot drifts of unstable snow. My body is warm and comfortable. I am content just to explore around the base and enjoy the solitude. Eventually I head back down to the thawed area near Meadows Springs and set the coat from inside the pack down on a large piece of bedrock to sit, eat the sandwich I brought along and quietly sip coffee from the thermos. It is some time before I start the slow hike back down hill; reluctant and delaying the moment I must unsling the pack once again and seek ‘civilization’ inside. I wait until I am at the gate . . . almost in view of busy Highway 2 before I redress for the trek down the highway to where I parked.

My second hike came but a few days after the first . . . again a snow conditions check. This time I make it past the plug at Rock Alley, enduring the shower of loose snow as I scramble naked atop and on up. A smile? Yes. I’d feared the snow earlier because of it’s depth. Now I was above it and trudging on up toward the main springs.

Enjoying the view on a knoll high on the second bypass trail

Remarkably, the pool is a toasty 100F and the springs running at 111F and 105F, respectiuvely. I had expected cooler but I have the place to myself and a wonderful soak to relax myself.

The hike back down the mountain was a slow amble to enjoy the rest of the sunny afternoon. Back at the car I change out of the clothes I’d pulled on for the quarter-mile side-of-the-highway section. The heater gives warmth and laziness. I sit there feeling good wearing nothing but a long teeshirt. It wasn’t until I stopped at the QFC parking lot 70 miles later in Seattle that I realized that I had driven all that way naked from the waist down. That’s how relaxed I’d been feeling. Fortunately, little would have been seen since the teeshirt was a longish affair. But it did bring a rare smile to my face as I pulled on some shorts to do some dinner shopping. A day of smiles is good for the soul.

Tags: Snow, Hot Springs, Naturism, Nudism

Snow Conditions at Scenic

There is still a lot of snow up at Scenic but this warm weather is melting it rapidly. I took a lot of photo’s for Mike (109 to be exact) so I won’t post them all here but you can peruse them at Flickr.

The springs are still running hot (Lobster at 111F and Bear Den at 100F). The pool was in terrible condition with a lot of dirt and green algae growth. I ran into seven young men soaking in the pool (in long baggy shorts, no less). These same men had parked rather dangerously on the access to the Forest Service road and I gave them the standard no-no warnings and then asked them to go about scrubbing out the pool and then siphoning it. They were nice enough about it that I let the trespassing thing pass after cluing them in on the status. Besides, they also had a trash bag to pick up stuff.

Snow averages 2-3 feet in most places with a few bare patches, most noticibly near creeks and springs. Better than last week but we still need warm weather to hasten this melt. In any case, enjoy the photos. Click on the title link to go to them.

Rick

Time for an update and a few observations

Pretty as the snow is, this is some treacherous stuff to walk through. I went up this past Sunday . . . not to soak . . . there were enough people up there already. I was on an inspection walk about to see how the BPA road was faring and also to get an idea of the snow conditions still remaining up at Scenic despite it being April already.

The ice berm is still firmly in place across the entrance of the forest service road. It’s hard to tell but that’s a good four feet of compacted and refrozen snow and ice . . . and it extends a good part of the way up the road.

Obviously, it will be some time before anyone parks here. I had toyed with the idea of getting some volunteers together to dismantle the berm but on second thought, that’s a lot of ice and snow.

The only safe parking is in the sno-park area down the highway. On this particular Sunday afternoon, I also noticed several cars parked in the chainup area just east. I met the two couples coming out and after chastising them about hiking about in jeans and sneakers, wished them luck that a State Patrol officer hadn’t come by and given them tickets . . . or had them towed (it’s illegal to park your car in a chainup area for more than fifteen minutes).

The snow and ice is four feet deep at the entrance. It is not much less on the forest service road, itself. The gate horizontal sits three and a half feet off the road surface and the snow almost reaches it. Why go around when you can simply step right over the gate.

Fortunately, the snowshoers (prolly Kimba and company) have compacted a trail over this mess. Stay in it or you’re going to find yourself ‘postholing’ right up to your crotch!

Stay in the tracks, obviously!

Here’s the traps Mother Nature has laid for us. Erosion channels pepper the roads . . . some as much as two feet deep. But with two to three feet of evened out snow covering everything, you can’t see these weakened spots on the snowpack (unless they’ve already collapsed like the one above.) As water (from new melt or the springs) weakens from beneath you have a mini-crevasse bridge just waiting to give way. They are no fun to fall into, besides getting soaking wet. I fell into one eight feet deep up in the Tunnel Creek area a couple of years ago. Thankfully I had a full change of clothing and nothing was broken or bruised except my aura on invincibility.

There are four major cuts on the upper BPA road (a running stream near the first tower, Main Creek, Meadows Creek and Honeymoon Creek). There are a number of minor ones as well so it is best to stick with the established track and probe ahead with a stick for soft spots and hidden mini-creavasses. I didn’t take the trail on up to the springs (running out of time and daylight) but Bob informs me that the creeks are doing the same thing on the trail . . . and in some cases, running down the trail instead of across as we’d like. Bob and myself are going to attempt to redirect a few sometime this week.

Main Hot Spring Creek near the BPA road . . . which is what I went up there to check. Seems to fare fine. Honeymoon seems to be okay on the BPA segment as well but springs thaw will be the catcher on that.

Some observations: The springs are only a degree or two off but that doesn’t surprise me as we haven’t had any real snowmelt yet, and the cycle is usually around two weeks before melt is reflected in a drop in temperature.

The pool is in good condition thanks to Bob who keeps and eye on it. Someone has been messing with the sources again and if I catch whomever . . . well you catch the drift. The source connectors for Bear Den Springs are cracked and disconnected. They need replacement.

I was surprised at the number of people braving the deep snow to get up there. Some of you do not belong . . . not that I begrudge the attempt or desire. You simply are not dressed and prepared. Cotton Kills! Try to get that through your heads.

Finally, it seems the Ukranian Gang is back up to their tricks at the springs . . . taking over, bossing people around. I catch you guys up there and you can be guaranteed a visit from the sheriff! There have been too many compliants and I will not put up with any group attempting to usurp the owner and his guests from enjoying the place. Stay out!

Rick