last one from the summit

I gotta say, the way Blogger rasterizes photos for web is terrible. These are all much more awesome than they look. The color is horrible too.

Anyway, here's the whole lot of us on the summit.

And looking back, what we had to scramble up to get to the top! You can see the tiny people along the route.

We all had a really great time climbing this mountain. For Bill and I, it was our second time, but only our first with a view. Last year was cloudy. The rest of our crew were first timers. I was proud of my parents keeping up like they did too! They really handled it. We had so much fun that we are already considering which mountain to do next year. Perhaps Adams? It looks pretty smooth, just very big and long. We will see!

St. Helens climb summit

Finally, here are the summit photos! The first one below is of the lava dome, growing in the center of the blasted out volcano. Someday this will be a new summit. It's been 29 years since the mountain last erupted, and the dome is getting pretty large. You can also see Spirit Lake in the background. My dad says this used to be a beautiful, pristine lake at which he and his family used to pick huckleberries. It's now not only in a new location, slightly to the east, but is half-filled with logs left over from the blast.

The West wall of the volcano. You can see some of the striations, as this was a composite cone.

Kind of a dramatic look at the steepness of the drop into the caldera, looking east. Mt. Adams in the distance.

Bill on top. He got here first, of course.

Looking north toward Mt. Rainier.

more!

My cute boyfriend Bill 3/4 of the way up

Jeff, not looking too enthused about what is ahead of him. A bit piqued I'd say.

St. Helens climb Part Deux

Here's a few more photos from our hike up St. Helens. These are from the top section, in scree. Or is it skree? I don't know. Anyway, after going through the boulders I posted pics of yesterday, we got to the loose ash section of the mountain. The climb is up the south side (the side which didn't explode). This side has been relatively untouched by recent volcanic activity, although the ash did seem pretty deep toward the top. It was a long hard slog up the final part of the ascent.

This next one is a terrible picture, but it's part of our group (Mom, Milli, Bill) getting ready to start the final climb.

Apparently, this past year people have been leaving rocks on top of this other rock. This wasn't here last year.

More to come, of the summit!

St. Helens climb

Here's a few pictures from the start of our climb on St. Helens this past Friday. I climbed with Bill, my parents, and friends Milli and Jeff. We made it to the top in about 4 hours. It was a tough climb, but felt really good! These pics are from the very beginning of the hike. I'll post more later.

frustration/happiness

Things around this country seem really bleak right now. The other day, I was catching up on the news while riding the bus. There were just so many depressing stories out there. I don't understand why we are incapable of having a rational discussion in this country about anything. All you see on the news is scandal and screaming. I don't even actually know what's in this health care bill (is there one even?), but I know people enjoy acting like a mob over it! I have no idea what the Republican alternative is (or if there is one), because it's not covered on TV. How am I supposed to make up my mind if I like it or not without being informed? Isn't that the job of the media? The loss of public airwaves has striped networks of their responsibility to truly inform and act as the 4th estate. As a person who has been denied health coverage in the past, I think reform is definitely needed. I just don't know if the things being proposed will work.

So then I read about this crazy thing that happened in Florida last week. A woman was gang raped in the secure parking garage of her hotel in front of her children. The hotel immediately issued a statement saying it took no responsibility because the woman didn't do what was necessary to keep herself safe! Excuse me? You can say you don't take responsibility because the hotel had nothing to do with the act, but you don't blame the victim! It's just terrible!

So after a few stories like this I decided to turn off my phone. The next stop I come to, 2 little families get on, a Latino woman and her son, and a black man and his son. Both kids were about 3 or 4, and neither spoke the other's language. They had apparently befriended each other at the bus stop over a shared love for Thomas the Tank Engine. These 2 adorable boys spent the rest of the bus ride playing together and blabbering on to each other in differing languages, seemingly having the times of their lives. Seeing this made me happy. I think kids can teach us somethings that we forget. Perhaps we could all benefit from being more child-like, and less immature. Anyway, it's trite, but true. Kids are sweet, as long as they belong to someone else. :)

Yay, I finished the floors! It took a couple days, but I've got the carpet out and the floors washed and waxed. They look great; I'm really happy with the outcome.

It's really amazing how much warmer the room looks now. Plus, as an added bonus, I can now use the front door! Or not, since I put the table in front of it. Now I guess I just need some real chairs instead of these Ikea foldable things, haha!

Fir flooring

The other day I decided to take a quick peak under the carpet and see what I could find. I found hard wood floors! Well sort of. They seem to be fir, which is an odd choice for flooring because it is on the soft side of hard. I learned this morning that I can't sand them down because they will get gouged. A regular sander won't work. I have gotten half way through ripping out my ugly carpet, and the floor is quite pretty, but could really use some TLC. Does anyone out there have any experience with this type of flooring? I'll be heading to Home Depot soon to ask them. I'm hoping that I could wax them up real nice and they will do for now, but eventually I think they'll need more love.

Also: anyone need a perfectly good, almost new piece of carpet measuring 30'x15'? It's got a real nice pad too. Just not my taste in color. It's multi colored, mainly blue. Lemme know, it will probably end up at Habitat for Humanity.

Some shots from Yellowstone

This is the first place we camped in Yellowstone. Really incredibly beautiful, but we didn't get to enjoy it much. There were grizzlies all over and a half-eaten carcass near by, so we were pretty freaked out the whole time. Didn't stay any longer than we had to.

This next shot it from the Lone Star geyser. Our second night in Yellowstone, we got rained on mercilessly. But in the morning, on our way out, we finally found the sun, and an erupting geyser in the back country. Pretty sweet.

Couple more from the weekend

Punchbowl Falls, from this past weekend.