2010.9.26. Yellow Aster Butte

Yellow Aster Butte. Finally good weather for a change. Extremely rewarding for such a small effort, but such a long drive (3 hrs from Seattle). No wonder the crowd. 7 miles RT, 2000 ft gain. 3 hrs is probably enough for the hike, but allow a couple of hours to explore: take photos, and yes, pick huckleberries. Below the butte (which grants a 360° view of more fine peaks) is the Yellow Aster meadow: a patchwork of small glistening ponds and huckleberry meadow, the only camping area. What a fine site, stunning views of both Mt Baker and Mt Shuksan, perfect to explorer many surrounding small peaks, and maybe to retrace back for 2 miles and hike to Tomyhoi Lake (looks pretty big on the map). Another trail 2 miles farther drive (on worse gravel) leads to Twin Lakes. Extremely window all the way from the meadow up to the top. No yellow aster at this time. The huckleberry leaves are shining brilliantly under the sun.

Direction: From Glacier Public Service Center, follow Hwy 542 ~12 miles. Turn left on FS#3065 (Twin Lakes Road, just beyond the Department of Transportation's Shuksan maintenance facility). ~4.5 miles gravel road to the Tomyhoi Lake/Yellow Aster Butte Trailhead. Watch for mining trucks!

2010.9.24. Seattle Symphony and PNB

12pm Seattle Symphony.

Gerard Schwarz, conductor
Joseph Schwantner: The Poet’s Hour…a soliloquy for violin and strings "reflections on Thoreau"
Foote: Francesca da Rimini 
Brahms: Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor
Yefim Bronfman, piano

The beginning and end (repeat of the beginning) are quite lovely. Foote's is very nice. Brahms' 3rd movement is popular, no wonder, but the other movements are unimpressive. Bronfman's performing is powerful, albeit his stubby hands. No encore :(

7:30pm Pacific Northwest Ballet's season premier: Director's Choice.

Petite Mort (Mozart/Jiri Kylian)
Sechs Tänze (Six Dances) (Mozart/Jiri Kylian)
Jardí Tancat (Closed Garden) (Maria del Mar Bonet/Nacho Duato)
Glass Pieces (Philip Glass/Jerome Robbins)

Two Kylian's pieces are interesting, cleverly using slightly back lit lighting and group composition. The Six Dances is extremely funny, playing with powdered wig and marionette at times. Closed Garden's song is more powerful than the dance. Robbins' piece is a bit short of my expectation. Overall, a good start of a new season. Auditorium was reasonably full. 2 intermissions, which is utterly unnecessary.

2010.9.23. Don Bowie at REI

Westcomb athlete Don Bowie spoke at REI of his past expeditions. Quite down to earth. Good photos, and vivid accounts. Something interesting would be ice down sleeping bag, terrible wind speed, unreliable existing ropes, compassion, training in anaerobic fashion, weight loss, high altitude food: shot of olive oil...

2010.9.18. Sausage Festival at Redhook

Redhook Brewery's Sausage Festival (noon - 7pm). Disappointing (long wait, expensive, noisy, lousy music, muddy ground, almost no place to sit). $5 entrance fee (a long to check if you carry any liquid). Then you line up to buy tokens, then you line up in front of each booth to buy what you want to eat / drink. Only one booth sells beer ($4 a plastic cup, 6 choices, one ran out), and only one booth sells sausage (from Uli's, $2 half a sausage). Other food stands are: one hot dog (from Dantes, $4 each, a 2 hr line, because only one guy was serving), one sells Salumi's cold cut with a piece of baguette ($4 a small selection), one for crepe ($3, from Anita), one for ice cream ($3), one for sandwich ($2 a tiny wedge), one for popcorn ($1 a bag from J&D), one sells Oberto's jerky. A couple of stands ran out of food at 3pm. At least food is decent, but not enough.

2010.9.16. Spotlight at the 5th Ave Theatre

First Spotlight of the season. Surprising many people. Producer Kevin McCollum (Rent, Avenu Q, In the Heights) chatted with David Armstrong, or rather he preached creating community centric art form, and advocated 9th graders putting up a musical. Quite funny. This took half an hour. Then as usual, a selection of songs from upcoming shows were performed. Worth noting,the last number was just written 20 minutes ago by 2 very young composers.

2010.9.14. Jonathan Franzen

Seattle Arts and Lectures presents Jonathan Franzen. He read a modified script that he wrote for another talk in Germany. I actually preferred the prepared script to spontaneous speech or a short note. Much thought has gone into preparing a long talk. He answered 4 typical questions in the speech: Which writers are your influences? When and how you write? Do your characters sometime take over? Are your books autobiographical? He answered 1st and last question in more detail, especially the last one, so much so, that he related his writing years (using mostly his book The Correction) to his life events / moments (marriage, affairs, mother's last words, using something happened to his brother). He claimed that he had to be a different person in order to write a new book every time, and each time striking to reach a deeper, a broader or a new sense of some meaning. Seemed quite heart-felt.
The Q&A session was not as interesting. The presenter talked too much (over 10 minutes at the beginning and more later).

Another book talk at 6pm was by Jennifer Jordan, about her new book The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2. A fascinating story about a 1939 K2 expedition, where Dudley Wolfe and 3 Sherpas lost their lives, and the aftermath of finger pointing, including the trip leader Fritz Wiessner. It was in 2002, Jordan accidentally discovered Wolfe's body.

2010.9.11. Mt Catherine

Mt Catherine at Snoqualmie Pass. Easy (1300 ft gain, 3 miles RT) with ample rewards: 360° view. Can see Mt Stuart to the north, Kachess Lake and I-90 below, and many peaks w/o names. Mt Rainier looks very close. Some leaves have turned red already. Many huckleberry bushes, but no berries. Good weather, almost sunny.

Direction: I-90 exit 54. Hyak Rd. Head south toward Hyak Ski Area. Right onto Hyak Drive E. Head all the way through the ski area to the gravel road. Pass many vacation homes, then four miles on the gravel road until just before the Olallie Meadows. Very small roadside parking area. Trail head to the right, with a blown out sign.

2010.9.10. Mailbox Peak + Symphony

Mailbox Peak. Short yet steep. 3 miles one way, 4100 ft gain. The first half mile is on a gravel road. Mostly forested. Maybe the last 3/4 mile is more or less open. A big talus field at the top (the trail goes around it). Can hear I-90's traffic all the way. View isn't bad, both north and south. But too cloudy today. Lots of pistachio shells on the top. Only one mailbox. Someone stuck a Canadian flag on it.

Direction: I-90 to exit 34. Turn north onto 468th St and follow it to the junction with the Middle Fork Snoqualmie Road (Forest Road 56). Turn right and continue to the end of the pavement (about 3 miles from the I-90 exit). Turn right onto a gated road and park. Walk around the bar for 0.5 miles. The trail head is on the left.

Seattle Symphony's Beethoven Festival.

Gerard Schwarz, conductor
Charlie Albright, piano
Augusta Read Thomas: Of Paradise and Light for String Orchestra
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37
Beethoven: Symphony No. 8 in F major

Somehow I have no impression of the new work. The junior college kid played piano very well, albeit a little rushed. He even played a substantial piece of encore.

2010.9.8. A Doctor In Spite Of Himself - a play

Intiman Theatre's adaptation of Moliere's A Doctor In Spite Of Himself. Just 1 act, shy of 1.5 hrs. Musically tuned, hilarious, well acted, exaggerated. Creatively adapted by Christopher Bayes and Steven Epp. Costume design: Elizabeth Caitlin Ward. Sound design: Aaron Halva. The mock doctor Daniel Breaker is very good. The marionette is a wonderful touch.

2010.9.3-6. Dosewallip River - Enchanted Valley - LaCrosse Pass loop

9.3. Friday. Sunny. Drove to Staircase ranger station (~2 hrs), was told that the trail to the loop was closed due to fire. Rerouted to Dosewallips trail head. The road was in good shape, but stops ~5.5 miles (~2 hrs) to the trail head. A big landslide, probably 10 years ago, cuts the road short. A very pleasant walk, next the roaring West Fork Dosewallips River. Took too many water photos. The camp grounds at Elkhorn and Dosewallips are completely abandoned and overgrown with vegetation.
This trail is full of bridges, big and small. All nicely done. Passed a fork to Grey Wolf @1.5 mile (~1 hr), Big Timber camp (~1:15 hr), Diamond Meadows (~1:15 hr), arrived at Honeymoon Meadow (3527 ft) in another 1 hr @7pm, finally more or less out of the trees. All camp sites are to the left of the creek, without a good view of the meadow. Total ~14 miles.

9.4. Saturday. Blue sky with increasing clouds. 1.5 mile (~1 hr) reached Anderson Pass @4464 ft. A 0.9 mile side trail to the north and up a huckleberry hill leads to a blue tarn in front of Anderson Glacier. Beautiful. One tent was pitched at a smaller pond. Encountered 3 groups, 9 people.

1 hr later, reached the junction to Enchanted Valley trail (~3010 ft). From here is a 3.2 mile, ~1000 ft drop to the valley floor. Many waterfalls along the way. The valley is large and flat, grassy, many elder trees. Idyllic. The chalet is locked, except one room. Saw 2 couples. Back to the junction, headed south for ~35 minutes, camped above the White Creek meadow, good view to the northwest.

9.5. Sunday. Blue sky, with increasing clouds. My favorite day. Above tree line most of the time. Flowers covering the slopes. Saw 5 bears, one of these was a little guy scared and ran up a tree in a second. Headed over to O'Neil Pass @4950 ft, ~4 hrs. Saw a father and son below the pass.

Marmot Lake is ~1 mile east, a few camp sites with bear wire, not close enough to water. The lake itself is a bit disappointing. The area is nice: lush meadows dotted with the last summer flowers. Headed north ~0.5 mile, up ~500 ft, to the junction of Hart Lake / LaCrosse Lake. Found a very nice camp site in the lovely heather meadow close to the junction, above a tiny pond (not close enough). Good view over Mt Duckabush. Hart Lake is 0.4 miles west. Big, deep blue, very nice, good camp sites close to water. LaCrosse Lake is 0.8 miles north, not as great as Ira Spring claimed, camping available (no bear wire). By now, the clouds were rolling in in mass.

9.6. Monday. Clear sky and stars before midnight, then rained all night and all day, lightly. Every leaf turns into a picture, coated with water beads. ~3.5 miles and close to 2000 ft drop, a bad water crossing, to the junction with Skokomish river (to Staircase trail head, ~2 hrs). A difficult water ford immediately after the junction. Then it's an easy walk of 1.7 miles to the junction with Duckabush river @2600 ft (~1 hr). Now it's 3.3 miles up to LaCrosse Pass @5566 ft (~2.5 hrs). Ran closely into 2 bears just below the tree line, and another 2 north of the pass. The scenery around the pass is very nice, lots of flowers, but LaCrosse Mt is shrouded in cloud. 3.1 miles and 2000 ft later, reached junction with Dosewallips river (~2.5 hrs).
Ate dinner at Honeymoon Meadow under the rain. Not tired, but my waterproof shoes are completely wet. I was determined to end the misery today. So walked another 14 miles to the car (~5 hrs). Arrived ~11pm, completely stiff and sore. That made a Marathon: ~26 miles. The only human saw today is a couple at Diamond Meadow warming next to a fire.

Practicality: Dosewallips trail head is almost 3 hours drive from Seattle. ~20 minutes left of Hwy 101. Ferry might be faster. (Staircase trail head is 45 mins closer if driving from Olympia.) Total distance without side trips: ~51 miles. Adding all side trips (without backpack): ~63 miles. Lowest elevation ~700 ft, highest ~5566 ft.

2010.9.2. First Thursday Art Walk

First Thursday at Seattle Art Museum. Picked up my temporary membership card. A tall man made entirely of green bottles (beer?) stands by the staircase. The new exhibition of Andy Warhol and Kurt Cobain are, in my humble opinion, trash. A small exhibition of James Ensor's etching is rather fun, especially his Alimentation Doctrinaire. Due to the popularity of the Twilight saga, there's a small exhibition of Quileute tribe. Apparently, quite some research has gone into this. Some terms were even displayed in the tribal language. A hallway is dedicated to Amy Blakemore's photos. The best I could say is that everything is slightly out of focus. Subjects are of no interest. It makes one wonder the definition of art.