More weekend pictures

Flowers, waterfalls, wildlife, vistas... every view picture perfect. Or it would have been for someone with better technical skills. I found it difficult to capture the vast hillsides of flowers - on the camera it mostly just registers as 'dotted' green stuff. And to try to catch the blindingly bright snow-covered mountain behind the richly colored foreground - very difficult with my equipment. But I did find that some photos had the right mix of light for either the flowers or the mountain.


You can actually see the mountain behind, in this photo (Mark in the foreground) and can get an idea of the contrast involved. This was just one of the many waterfalls we saw that were coming down the mountain from underneath the glaciers.

And this is the mountain from the bottom; from the Nisqually River, still rushing in August. The broader, rugged riverbed offers a hint of the power of the water and debris that must flow here with the spring thaw. The Nisqually Glacier is the one you can see reaching down from the mountain on this side, feeding the river.

It seemed like it was all about 'technical' stuff there. Everyone but us (literally - everyone else!) had 'gear' with them. Every single person on the trail (and there were hundreds) was equipped with ski poles and most also had packs, hiking boots, crampons, rope and their own guide group. And the snatches of conversation we heard while people were passing us (as we were stopped to catch our breath on the always-up trail) were mostly of hiking gear: what they had, what they had left at home, what they carried on their LAST hike, what they were going to carry on the next one, who had the best gear, who had the most gear... ad nauseum. Good grief people! Technology isn't everything. (Is it?)

And for all the ski pole slinging going on, there were many who were tripping over the ends of their poles or just carrying them over their shoulders, having given up on keeping them from tangling up in their, or their partners', legs. It was amazing we saw any wildlife at all, what with all the ski pole clacking going on.

We did though - see wildlife: deer, marmots, chipmonks, foxes and some stupid large bird, almost turkey-sized, who seemed not to realize that he was pretty far toward the bottom of the food chain and was just wandering around in the brush by the side of the trail, happily pecking for bugs. A grouse, maybe?