The Moment I Realized Where Things Are On Mount Hood

4090

The distance from the turnoff from US 26 at the east end of Government Camp to the parking lot at Timberline Lodge is about six miles. 

This is another thing I learned that day.

I've obsessed on the appearance of my favorite volcano for years, as I've made a a big public exhibition via blog and FB about such. And I've loved what I've done and am proud of it, but never when right up to it during all this time and figured I had enough of an idea of perspective and size to make it real.

The larkout to Mount Hood restored a lot of respect and knowledge and grasp of perspective and distance and space that I didn't have before and thought I did. And it settles through and percolates down through my psyche and gives me little frissons constantly, and I love it. I feel more connected to the land that is my home now.

This POV, taken through the windshield most of the way up the Timberline Lodge Road, revealed detail I didn't know existed until then:

I didn't know at the time but learned subsequently that the chairlift that is visible (and the combed surface immediately to the right) are the Palmer Chairlift and the top of the Palmer Glacier. Just near the low point of that chairlift is the historic building called Silcox Hut. These were just names I knew before now, despite all my smug pride about knowing where is what in Oregon, I didn't really have a grasp on this before then. 

Now that I do, my world seems quite a bit bigger. 

Today We Go Place Part 3: Timberline Lodge

4085

This was our ultimate goal, but we did not know this starting out. It just kind of happened.

Timberline Lodge is not only a popular tourist destination, it's part of history; it was one of the many projects that happened during the post-Great Depression rebuilding of America. It was constructed betwen 1936 and 1938 at the 6000-foot level of Mount Hood ... the timber line. It stands large in the awareness of a large percent of the population of Oregon regardless of how much history you do know. 

We didn't stay ... it was a drive-by visit. But since we were out for pictures, it was far from a failure. Really, quite the opposite.

Because now, amongst other photos in my stock, I have a number that resemble this:

It's amazing how close it seems. The summit is about three lineal miles from this spot, but it's still about a mile straight up. So many things, though, seem so close you can just reach out and grab them. From here you can see Silcox Hut, the Palmer chair lift, and the groomed slope around it. As used to looking at Wy'east as I am, I never new how far up the mountain those chairlifts were.

Gorgeous and accessible. The best volcano in the world, and yes, I'll fight you on this one. 

Today We Go Place, Part 2: Wy'east from Hwy 26

4084

On our way out to Jonsrud there were multiple opportunities to find Oregon's Greatest Mountain in pulchritudinous array. West of Sandy, on the portion of Hwy 26 that exists between Gresham and Sandy, Wy'east is very prominent through gaps in the trees.

From miles away, and at this point we're between thirty-five and forty, the mountain dominates.

You get unexpectedly awe-inspiring glimpses when you're east of Sandy, though. They happen unexpectedly.

Wy'east has what topographers call a high degree of prominence ... in plainer terms, the peak really stands out. It's a well-defined mountain surrounded by lower mountains and there's a great deal of difference between the altitude at the visual base and its summit. Ever notice that when you're travelling toward mountains, individual mountains you may have been visually tracking become lost in the general mountain-ness when you get close?

This doesn't happen with Wy'east. This view is east of a place called Zigzag, and by then one is not terribly far from the mountain anymore. Yet it still has an intimidating presence.

Today We Go Place: Jonsrud Viewpoint

4083

There are certain places that any Oregon photographer, be they amateur or professional, must have in their portfolio, I think. Place like South Falls in Silver Falls State Park, or the wreck of the Peter Iredale, or the State Capitol Building, or Willamette Falls ... the list goes on.

One of those places I think is Jonsrud Viewpoint. Found just north of Hwy 26 along SE Bluff Road on the edge of Sandy, this is a lookout that stands about 500 feet over the Sandy River bottom directly below. This affords an unobstructed view up the Sandy River drainage at Mount Hood, whose summit is about 30 lineal miles distant.

We went on safari and I took several shots today. Here's one ...

This was an adventure in picture-taking on more than one level. Despite the fair weather, the light just wasn't working with me, so I explored a bushel or more of camera settings to compensate. The issue was when I tried to include a great deal of the valley floor at my feet, the light compensation would completely wash out the mountain. 

So I don't completely comprehend ISO and shutter speed, but I found out when I set ISO to around 100 and made the shutter speed quick, I got images I could work with.

They started to look this way. 

Not Ray Atkeson level, no, but I'm working on it.

Another bit of fiddling with the settings, color saturation, and temperature got me this:

Which got a lot of nifty color in, and depth, with the Heritage Trail sign adding a bit more interest, compositionally speaking.

This is another of the best ... Sometimes you just have to let the peak be the star.

My change in employment has limited my opportunities to get pictures of Wy'east. So you know we have to go out of our way to make 'em grand. 

Mission accomplished? Yes ... and no. We accidentally kicked it up to the next level. For that, read into the next entry or two.

Wy'east from Tabor, In September Mode

4053

Happy Labor Day 2022 from the north east slope of Mount Tabor, where the visage presented by Wy'east looked thusly:

The peak is sans snowcover, which reminds us of last year in August when the record-setting torrid wave swept through, deleting all remaining snow cover in one swell foop. 

Despite weather records attesting that this August was the warmest August in the history of Augusts that have been recorded hereabouts, this is more in line with the usual. About this time, September, what remains of Wy'east's snow enrobement is gone, or at least as near as makes little difference from the POV of any spot in the Rose City offering a view. 

Dramatic Clouds, October Morning

4051

Another one from the files: One October morning six years ago there were low clouds partially obscuring Wy'east from view and the sun was illuminating it dramatically.

A picture of a certain mountain during times of upheaval

4048

Not the mountain's upheval ... mine. We have been through a ton of changes, and more changes, epochal ones, to come. Unwelcome but expected.

For now, I take back to the blog after a gap of never-mind-how-long. Perhaps in the near future I'll sketch that out. For now, enjoy this photo of Wy'east I took about a year ago. 

It's a good'un. 

Don't Be A Menace To A Good Night's Sleep

4027

I was hoping for a picture of the mountain itself as I wended my way home tonight but the sun was down too low. But I did see this rendition of it on a truck parked in downtown Parkrose.

The coinage Beds In The Hood actually only intersects with the idea of Mount Hood awkwardly, at best, but it, along with the rough-and-ready rendition of Wy'east, does suggest a certain O.G.-ness when it comes to selling mattresses.

The price of entry is certainly for you, me, and everyone. They'll get you in that bad boy for just $29 down. 

This almost feels like a Tom Peterson's ad now. 

Wy'east With Freeway Ramps

3992

This is a closer look at Wy'east (Mt Hood) today over the interchange of Killingsworth with I-205, included just because I like it. Not much else to say about that. 

Wy'east With A Light Coat

3991

Just as Luuit was dusted with the white stuff over the last weekend, so was mighty Wy'east (Mt Hood), as my 122nd and NE Shaver St/Rossi Farms POV will show.

I know things can't last forever, but I adore Rossi Farms just for being there and providing this sensational window to the east, and I hope they're gonna be there for many a year more. 

And Wy'east looks good with a even just a little snow on 'im, especially after our extra-torrid summer.

Snowless Wy'East

3981

The dryness of the year is only enhanced when one looks at the state of Wy'East as it is, now. 

A few weeks back, a friend (and several others) posted up pictures of California's Shasta, utterly bereft of snow. I'm not a local to that and I imagine that late in summer, Shasta's usually down to next-to-nothing, but it was not only unsettling to see it that bare but that bare that early in the summer. That heat wave we endured took some thirty per cent off Tahoma's (Rainier) snowpack along. 

Wy'East being a more modest peak than either of those two, I had to expect no small amount of white gone. The wildfires being what they have been, I've not seen the mountain itself for a few weeks; the mantle from those east-of-the-Cascades infernos spreading westward enough to turn the eastern horizon into a visual miasma (I'll comment on that in a subsequent entry). 

Work being what it is, I come home during the afternoon now instead of the morning. And when I passed by my favorite photo spot, NE 122nd and Shaver in front of Rossi Farms, this is what I saw today:

Now, I've looked back through my historic photos and have determined that Wy'East looking this way in September is not really all that unusual (I'll post some comparisons in another subsequent post). But when seen through the lenses of this historically torrid Oregon summer and the mounting anxieties about the changing climate, it seems a little drier, a little more dessicated.

The only white left on Wy'East are its modest glaciers. Here's a close-up with the two most visible from my POV called out:

And so it, so far, goes.

Storm Tossed A Blanket over Wy'east

3937

Rain's coming this weekend, they say. Then warm and sun. But first, Oregon rain ... the real stuff.

Wy'east anticipates.

 The clouds on the right hand side give The Mountain almost a Tahoma-like chest. The thin window in the cloud deck on the left, letting a great shaft of light illuminate the north slopes, is unique and memorable.

The Sentinel Over Powell Blvd

3906

Opportunities to spot Wy'east vary all over Portland. The great peak is visible in many areas, not at all in some thanks to terrain and tree cover, and sometimes, it plays peek-a-boo.

It does the peek-a-boo act along the stretch of SE Powell Blvd just at the east end of the Ross Island Bridge. But this produces a sort of invigorating challenge; deciding on just the zoom and the parts of the tree-covered east side to use to nuance the visual impact of the mountain on what is in front of it.

As typical, the juxtaposition of the human-inflected landscape against the ancient volcanic cone produces a visual tension I just cannot resist.

Wildfire Throwback: Wy'east From Washington SR 14

3867

Here's another one from the same trip I mentioned in the previous episode. This is eastbound on Washington's SR 14, just about at Exit 8.

As impressive as Wy'east is from Portland, SR 14 in Vancouver offers some juxtapositions of trees, highway, and mountain that accentuate the size of the peak.

The nimbus across the top of the picture is the incoming wildfire umbra. 

Wy'east: Bigger From NW Gresham Than You Think

3853

Gresham is, to some degree, defined by Wy'east. The mountain's European name -- Mount Hood -- is all over everything out there; the local community college and about half (it seems) of the businesses in town call themselves Mt Hood-this-or-that.

When you go out there, it's plain to see why. At about 11,245 feet, it is Oregon's tallest mountain, and cuts quite a figure (as I relentlessly document) from just about every viewpoint. Its shape on the horizon has become iconic, in a way, for the Portland Metropolitan Area. And, as big as it seems from Portland, from Gresham, which seems just over the foothills, it looms larger.

This is a view from the upper slopes of the hill Burnside Road descends on before it intersects with Eastman Parkway, NNW of the Gresham business district, on the edge of the desolate parking lot of the still-vacant Gresham K-Mart:

If the greens of the trees in the foreground look a little dark, that's a correct observation. The Brown Eyed Girl wanted to get some views as she too had her camera with her this day, and while the day was more or less fair (with a mugginess that attenuated our energy ... but, still fair) there was a very high overcast that filtered all the sunlight and caused the great mountain to nearly fade into imperceptibility. After I loaded the picture into GIMP and played around with color levels, however, I was able to make the mountain pop out and the foreground became rather artistically abstracted, somewhat. 

Wy'East Over Morning Traffic

3839

A throwback to December 2019: Wy'east, on a chill morning, while I was still using the ten-toe express to get to and from werk, during the Time-Of-No-Olivia.

I hated not having the VW (and it was causing no small amount of stress) but the scenery was a compensation.

Anyone reading this? I've a suggestion. Live your life as though you were a tourist there. Sight-see your world even if you've seen it a billion times before. I can only speak for myself here, but in a life in which I hunger for, and am largely bereft of artistic stimulation (we proles don't need art, you see), it's gotten me a hell of a long way. 

Wy'east, Blanket of Cloud

3832

There hasn't been a 'strictly-Wy'east' post here for a while and the cloud-cover today rather demanded that I rise to meet this challenge. 

The result.

The sky rather like nacre, the summit of the volcano draped in cloud, the clounds in front of that throwing dramatic shadows on the lower slopes of the peak they shaded. 

Flawless, as usual. Is it ever anything else?

Wy'east And Rocky Butte Lamp Post

3822

... and, of course, where there's Zehnkatzen Blog Post there is eventually Yet Another Photo of Wy'east. This should surprise nobody by now as the mountain is the totemic image to me as it is to George Orr, only his dreams changed everything and mine change very little. 

The composition pretty much suggested itself. I don't think I need explain it any more than that.

There is a thing to point out though. See that little cloud cap on the summit, there? That started forming in earnest at that time ad, while it didn't go into a full lenticular cap, it did persist for the rest of that day, and was pretty amazing. 

Wy'east From Columbia Blvd Traffic

3819

A few chapters ago I promised yet another Wy'east photo, and I have them from Rocky Butte, but I wanted to share this one first.

The aspect of Wy'east, seen through (and despite) a welter of traffic signals and 'phone pole wires and stopped traffic at the intersection of NE Cully Blvd and Columbia Blvd has a certain energy to it, and it tells a story of a most patient mountain. We people have the land and do with it as we will, but Wy'east ... well, Wy'east could the Dude a thing or a million about abiding. 

The peak abides.

The Mountain And The Port

3808

The Columbia, as I've said, is a working river.

A hard working river, it must be further defined.

And it does it all beautifully, tended to with care (some enlightened, some misguided, but that's what you get with humans) by all who are deemed temporally responsible for it. It throngs with ships but doesn't seem overwhelmingly polluted; you can walk the shores and the water seems fresher and cleaner than you'd expect, and it's in the most unique setting, with one big town on each bank but majestic volcanic ranges within easy sight.

Those port facilities are on the north bank of the Columbia, a Port of Vancouver terminal in Washington. We, of course, view from the Oregon side. I don't think Wy'east has much of a care or knows what a state is; to Wy'east, it's all one and the same. It's been here before any of us came, and it'll be here long after we go.

Here's a pan-right and extreme closeup looking up river:

That most distant bridge with the two towers and the cable between is our beleaguered and imaginatively-named Interstate Bridge, that's where I-5 crosses. The truss in the middleground is the railroad mainline bridge. The Cascade crest, beyond. It's a big world, my Willamette Valley, but surprisingly narrow.