55. Cascade Range

                        Another mountain range that has a tendency to be especially wet, scraping moisture from the Pacific skies, is the Cascade Range. This range extends from northern California into southwestern British Columbia and provides the dramatic backdrop for the west coast cities of Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia. It is a volcanic range so from Mount Rainier to Mount Shasta you’ll see plenty of huge, seemingly isolated peaks and it is all part of that famous Pacific Ring of Fire. In 1980 Mount St. Helens blew her top and coated much of the Inland Northwest and northern tier states with ash.

            My personal experience with the Cascades comes more from driving trips than much hiking. I frequently drive over Snoqualmie Pass in Washington as I head from Idaho to Seattle. Both Washington and Oregon have what is known as the Cascade Curtain which divides both those states into the western rain forests to the eastern deserts of the Great Basin and Columbia Plateau. But both sides of those states also reap the benefits of the moisture the Cascades provide because of the great rivers that flow from both sides of their slopes into the mighty Columbia River. This river breaks through the Cascades forming the border between Washington and Oregon in the Columbia Gorge. It’s all incredibly dramatic in scenery and everyone should experience the drives across the Cascades from east to west or vice versa.

            The Cascades are riddled with national parks. There is Mt. Lassen National Park, Crater Lake National Park, Mt. Rainier National Park and North Cascades National Park. There are ski resorts all along the range and many of the peaks are snow covered all year with glaciers to boot. Some of my favorite places in the Cascades are in those very parks. It’s very cool to walk a forested trail with old growth trees covered in moss. These parks have preserved that. A hike at Mt. Rainier’s Ohanapecosh can be like walking in a fairy land where sometimes even the winged insects will look a bit like fairies gliding through the air pausing to land on a mossy bower. The Cascades are beautiful and I’m grateful for them.

54. The Hoodoo Mountains

I love where I live here on the northeastern edge of the Palouse where it gives way to the Hoodoo Mountains of Latah and Benewah counties in Idaho. The mountains here are the source of the Palouse and Potlatch Rivers and a northern extension of the Clearwater Mountains, the western slope of the Bitterroot Mountains. The highest peak in this range is Bald Mountain at 5,335 feet, so it’s not exactly a high elevation range but it’s beautiful and it is home. These are the mountains where I camp, hike and ski, where I pick huckleberries and mushrooms, where I get panoramic views of the Bitterroot Mountains and the rolling hills of the Palouse. I have taken my boys camping at Laird Park, driven to the top of Bald Mountain and watched the moon eclipse the sun here. While they aren’t the mountains I grew up in (they are far too wet compared to those) they are the mountains I have chosen for my home. They are easily accessible and in them you are not terribly isolated but they aren’t a haven for tourists. You can get confused about whether or not you are on public lands or Potlatch lands and that can be an annoyance, but they are beautiful and in my back yard. I am ever grateful for the Hoodoo Mountains of Idaho.

53. The Wasatch Mountains

            I know my entries have made it overly obvious that I love the mountains. I live in the mountains and I am intrigued by the mountains.  One range that I really love extends from the lower part of Utah into southeastern Idaho and is best known as the Wasatch Range. But in Idaho the same range is commonly referred to as the Bear River Range.  That’s also the part of the range with which I am more familiar, though certainly I’ve been through Utah.  And lots of people are familiar with the range if they’ve ever flown into Salt Lake City and seen the mountain backdrop. That’s it, the Wasatch Range. It’s a destination ski resort in Park City and the range hosted the Salt Lake Winter Olympic Games of 2002. 

For me it is by far the driest mountain range I have ever lived in or near (and I did live there for six years as a teacher in southeastern Idaho).  It’s still part of the great Rocky Mountain Range, and it gets the weather pattern with which I am familiar. So winter is snowy and cold and summer is hot and dry.

The valleys are all sage brush desert and part of the Great Basin.  The hillsides are covered in juniper and maple so that autumn is brilliant with color in every draw and canyon.  When you go a little higher you’ll find aspen groves (some of the largest in the world) and blue spruce, Douglas fir and white fir and pine.  I’ve never been real comfortable in desert but I loved being able to take a short drive into the hills and get into what they call the Canadian life zone and feel right at home.  I also found huckleberry patches that were pretty much all mine because no one there seemed all that familiar with them.  And the mountains there have plenty of wildlife including moose which I had always associated with more northern climes. They thrive in the little reservoirs formed by the many beaver dams.

The Wasatch/Bear River mountains are a beautiful American Gem in a dry and barren land and I am especially grateful for those mountains.

Preparing to Run Bloomsday

It’s after spring break now and officially spring. I am trying to ready myself for Bloomsday but again I know I won’t be ready because I’m starting too late. I am becoming rigid about what days I am going to run. I can’t put it off anymore, not that I was ever actually planning to put it off. I want to be able to run that 12K under an hour ten but I’ve let snow and rain disrupt my training. Because of that I have had to shift my goal to just running the entire distance with just a few walk breaks at water stations. I also don’t want to have the last mile or so be a death march. It’s never actually been a death march, but it has seemed interminably long. I think that the ship for preventing that has sailed, but I’m not going to stop trying to make it easier. And that will come from sticking to my weekly plan. But even when I stick to my plan of miles and days I will run I know individual runs will not meet the possibilities I want because my investment is more in the act of running than the success of Bloomsday. That is what I have to remember with each step. And so I will.

52. The Selkirk Moutains

As far as mountain ranges go, one of the wettest is the Selkirk Range of the Idaho Panhandle, Northeast Washington and extending way up into the interior of British Columbia.  I just spent the first three days of my spring break there.  If you want sunshine and sandy beaches for your spring break, I wouldn’t advise this area. But if you’re ok with rain and snow and beautiful stormy lakes—big lakes—you might give it a try.

            I fell in love with the Selkirk range when I was in high school working for the Youth Conservation Corps at Priest River Experimental Forest. While Priest Lake was oh so reminiscent of my own Payette Lake, I was overwhelmed by the endless mountains that weren’t necessarily that high but were covered with forests, rain forests. I still love it up there. It’s filled with wildlife that connects itself to the arctic. You still encounter woodland caribou and grizzly bears there and no reintroduction of wolves was ever necessary in this part of the world.

            Now, if you go, you really should take your passport and explore this range into Canada. I don’t know if there is any lake more beautiful than Kootenay Lake. (I know I’m writing about things I’m thankful for in America, but some of America’s parts are inextricably combined with its neighbors to the north and south and Trumpishly ignoring that will be perilous.) This lake is a southern Canadian jewel and its waters flow right back into Idaho, Montana and Washington (all part of the Columbia River drainage). In fact, all these lakes and rivers of British Columbia, Idaho Montana and Washington are from the massive amounts of water the Selkirks scrape from the sky. The second wettest place in the lower 48 is the Selkirk Mountains in Washington and Idaho. (The Olympics are first.)  The Selkirks are awe inspiring from Mt. Revelstoke to Arrow, Kootenay, Priest and Pend Oreille lakes (to name a few) to Kootenay Pass and Chimney Rock. When you hike these mountains be aware of avalanches and no matter the season wear water proof gear. These mountains are a North American gem.

Remains of Autumn Leaves

Remains of autumn leaves, a brownish gray

Scattered about the lawn now give their way

To sprouts of green that from the snow crushed grass

Begin to show. And then small purple mass

Sprouting from green and gray you peep above

The brindled mass of composted must’ves

To promise me more than that of regrets,

Away with winter’s death, no more of debt.

Your passion of blood mixed with endless blue

Now transcends how I comprehend the new.

Just little purple crocus at lawn’s edge

Remind me I’ve no need to bets to hedge.

51. The Green Mountains

Another mountain range that I am particularly fond of is back east in the state that bears their name: the Green Mountains of Vermont. In terms of size they aren’t very high, but after having been there a few times I realized that mountain height comes more from sea level perspective. So while the highest mountain in Vermont might only be the elevation of the eastern Idaho Snake River Plain, when you’re seeing Mt. Mansfield from the shores of Lake Champlain it can look every bit as high as some of the peaks of the Rockies. But having said that, the Green Mountains don’t have that rugged look. They are more comparable to the Hoodoo Mountains out my back door except even less angular than that. Something about the difference between an evergreen forest and a deciduous forest seems to change the shape of everything. So the Green Mountains have a softer look than anything out west. I won’t lie and tell you that it made me like them more. I had to spend some time in them to realize I needed to just enjoy them as they were not waste time making comparisons. And that is how I came to love them in their own right. Do you know that more rainfall comes to the Green Mountains in summer than in winter? And I spent summers there in that humidity that wasn’t usually all that bad since it doesn’t tend to get too hot.

            The summer rains can be heavy and come in wild storms that cause the rivers to swell. Out west we expect that mainly in the spring from the snow melt that in some places never completely stops until the snow falls again. In the Green Mountain summers you aren’t going to see snow capped peaks and when you climb those peaks you are going to have to climb a tree if you want to see the views. There is a totally different dimension to mountain climbing in heavily wooded deciduous mountains that I leaned to enjoy. There is something soothing and comforting in the Green Mountains, that while not the Wild West, I have come to love.