Castle Crags

After our attempt on Shasta we were tired and a bit sore so we decided to take it easy and just do a nature hike at Castle Crags. There is climbing here too, mostly big trad routes.

Shelley spotted this Northern Flicker just after we started on the trail.



We crossed creeks a few times and I indulged my love of photographing water.







When I was taking these next ones, Shelley wanted to know whether I was photographing her or the flowers. To be safe I did both :-)





I can find endless things to photograph in nature. Luckily Shelley is patient!







There were a lot of lizards. At first, we just heard things running away as we approached. Eventually we spotted what they were, but they were still very skittish. Once you could get them to stop moving and "freeze" then if you were lucky you could approach very slowly. I think they were Western fence lizards (you can see a little bit of the blue abdomen).



There were lots of these bright orange flowers providing a splash of color among the greens of the forest. I think they are Humboldt lilies.



And lots of this flower (perennial sweet pea?) in the sunnier spots.



These deer seemed more curious than fearful.



For more of these photos, see all 40 as a slideshow or overview

Climbing Shasta

Since Woodrat, where we were paragliding, is close to Mt. Shasta (14,180 ft / 4320 m) we had planned to try climbing it. The normal route (Avalanche Gulch) is on snow, but not crevassed glacier, so we didn't need a rope, but we did need to dig out our ice axes and crampons, which shamefully have not seen much action lately.



We started at the Bunny Flat Trailhead at 6940 ft. The scene at the parking lot brings back many memories. People with gear strewn over the pavement trying to get their stuff together. Even though we haven't done much alpine climbing lately, we've had lots of practice and it didn't take us long to throw our packs together. (I did forget my toothbrush, but I survived.)

Most people camp at Helen Lake at 10,440 but that's a long slog with a big pack. We chose to camp at Horse Camp (7900 ft) instead. It's only about an hour hike so we headed up about 5 pm. At Helen Lake you need to melt snow, but there's running water at Horse Camp so we didn't need to carry a stove. (A few people climb in a day from the parking lot, but I enjoyed camping at Horse Camp. And it's easier to get an early start if you're already on the mountain.)



Camping lower meant we had a longer climb the next day, but we could do it without big packs, and early in the morning when the snow was hard. It was a dark night but luckily the route is straightforward since all we could see was the circle of snow illuminated by our headlamps. Shelley went first. She claimed this was so she didn't have to "keep up with me". Instead, I had to keep up with her fast pace! We left Horse Camp about 3am and reached Helen Lake at about 5am. Two hours for 2500 ft is respectable, although there was a time when we could crank that out in an hour. We could see some lights above us on the route, but there were also people leaving Helen Lake after we passed.

Soon after Helen Lake it got light enough to put away our headlamps, and steep enough to put on our crampons and switch from hiking poles to ice axe. The route isn't especially steep, but the snow was hard and icy so you'd have a long slide if you slipped. Unfortunately, with the light we could now see that the clouds were just above us. And the higher we climbed, the windier it got.





Our first hint of things to come was a sole climber descending out of the cloud. We assumed he wasn't feeling well. Then another group descended, close enough to tell us the weather was awful up above. We continued on. There was a guided group above us and we figured they'd know which way to go and we could follow them. But as we ascended, more and more people passed us heading down. Eventually the wind, lack of visibility, cold, and frost forming on us was too much and we joined the procession headed down. We reached a high point of about 12,200 ft in roughly 4 hours, not bad for a couple of old farts. Although at that point I could start to feel the altitude slowing us down. A bit later, looking back up, we could see what looked like everyone on the route headed down.





The frustrating part was that as we descended, the clouds gradually lifted and cleared, and soon we were descending in beautiful sunny weather. Although judging by the speed of the clouds flying by it was still very windy up high.





This route on Shasta is well known for long glissades down, but the snow was hard, icy, and rough and we just walked down. It didn't take long to descend to Horse Camp, pack up our tent, and hike out to the car.

For more of these photos, see all 17 photos as a slideshow or overview

Herd Peak

Our last day of paragliding we headed to Herd Peak. The weather forecast was good, but unfortunately the wind was too strong to launch. ("blown out" in paragliding lingo) On the positive side, it was so strong that we didn't have to hum and haw over whether to fly.

We drove up to the launch anyway. There are beautiful views of Mt. Shasta and the wildflowers were wonderful. Normally I like to take close ups of flowers but with the wind so strong that was pretty much impossible.





I managed to get this close up by finding a flower inside a bush where it was sheltered from the wind.



Since we had time, we stopped in at the nearby Living Memorial Sculpture Garden.







These photos were taken with the little ZS100 since I thought we'd be flying, not photographing.

For more of these photos see all 15 as a slideshow or overview

See also Shelley's blog post

Flowers at Folie Douce

Standing in the entrance of a restaurant (Folie Douce - recommended) my eye was caught by the flowers. I didn't have a camera with me so I borrowed Shelley's iPhone (5).

Practice Makes Progress

"Practice makes perfect" always seems overly optimistic to me, like something from the sales department.



After the last week of instruction Shelley and I just got signed off on our P3 (intermediate) paragliding rating. I still feel like I have a lot to learn, but we've come a fair ways from our first shaky flights. (We actually weren't in a hurry to get our P3, we just wanted to continue to improve our skills so we could fly safer and more enjoyably.)

Paragliding hasn't come particularly "naturally" to me. It's been a while since I learned a new physical skill, and I've never really been into "flow" sports like skiing or white water kayaking. Climbing, despite its physical aspects, is more of a thinking game, and generally doesn't require fast reflexes. (Paragliding also has a big mental component, which is part of what I like) The closest for me would be mountain biking, and I was never particularly good at that!

After our Costa Rica trip, I was determined to put in the practice to get better at ground handling (aka kiting) which is key, especially to good launches. I tried to get out three times a week. Like many things, progress was slow and day to day it was hard to see much improvement. But after a while you realize that you actually are doing better than before. The winds in Saskatoon are seldom consistent and moderate - they tend to be either too calm or too fast or too gusty, or change direction every two minutes. This makes ground handling a challenge. At first we thought it was impossible! It was frustrating, but the challenging conditions are a benefit in the long run since real conditions are seldom perfect.

The last week of training has been great. We've practiced lots of skills and had good discussions of what can go wrong and how to handle it. We didn't get in a huge amount of actual flying, but that wasn't really the point. I did make it from Woodrat to the Longsword landing zone which was a minor achievement, although mostly luck in my launch timing that enabled me to catch a thermal right away and get enough height. The best part was that I could wait for Shelley in the winery tasting room :-)



One day of our training we did "maneuvers" over a lake, getting towed into the air by a boat. It was our first experience of towing, but we'd been doing lots of forward launches the last few days so that part went smoothly. The only trick was finding the right position when following the boat around turns. A bit like water skiing, you need to fly a wider turn than the boat to keep the tow rope tight.



With only three of us towing we had time to tow quite high, about 3000 ft (900m) over the lake. That gave us lots of time to do our maneuvers. We just did basic stuff like inducing asymmetric and frontal collapses. These weren't too scary since the gliders recover quickly (as they are designed to). Looking up at the wing while holding a big asymmetric was a little disconcerting since almost half your wing is just flapping loosely! We also practiced spirals - tight 360 turns where centrifugal force gets increasingly strong. I can't say I cared for this part. The speeds, forces, and angles are higher than normal flying and on top of nerves I started to feel somewhat queasy. But it was good to get a taste of it.



We had other fliers keeping us company - there were a bunch of these large (2 inches long without the antennas) insects around the lake. I'm not sure what they were.



For more of these photos see all 7 as a slideshow or overview

Ashland Lithia Park

After a session at the paraglider training hill we stopped in Ashland and went for a walk through Lithia Park. It's been very hot (37c / 98f) so the shade in the park was much appreciated. The flowering trees are past their peak, but there are still some around.



The robins were out catching worms. It amazes me how they can find them and then pull them out of the ground. And how do they manage to grab more without dropping the ones they have in their mouth?



I watched another bird hopping around in the creek picking insects out of the water, again a good trick since I couldn't even see the insects till it pulled them out. It was challenging to photograph since it never stopped for more than a few seconds. I wonder if these birds have babies to feed since they seemed to be just collecting the worms and insects, not eating them.



The bright sun and dark shade made for some good reflections, like in the duck pond.



The flowing water in the creek also made an interesting subject, both in black and white:



and in color:



The Pacific Dogwood flowers were pretty.



Even just the backlit leaves were a gorgeous shade of green.



For more of these photos, see all 20 as a slideshow or overview

Oregon Coast

Our road trip continued south down the coast from Astoria. We stopped for a walk on Cannon Beach.



It was hard to catch this tern diving for food since the dives were sudden and rapid.



A new variation for my reflection photos.



We also stopped at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. It's fairly small, but quite nice. I love the bright green color of these anemones, but black and white shows off the light and shape.



One of the Tufted Puffins was having a vigorous bath. Maybe he was trying to fix a bad hair day :-)



The sea otters are always so cute, even when they are just sleeping.



Even some of the fish seem to have character!



We camped just past Florence where I spotted this millipede as we were packing up.



I was taking photos of these flowers when a bee decided to visit.



I'm a bit behind on posting photos, but I haven't been taking as many while we're paragliding so I'm catching up.

For more of these photos, see all 22 as a slideshow or overview

Astoria

After making the long drive from Saskatoon to the coast we had hoped to stop in Chilliwack and do some paragliding. But low clouds and rainy weather blocked that so we continued south. We're not fond of the interstate highways so to avoid them around Seattle we took the ferry over to Port Townsend on the Olympic peninsula and drove down that way. (Slower, but much more scenic.) It would have been a quiet drive, except it turned out to be the Memorial Day long weekend in the US. We had hoped for a shorter day of driving, but we ended up deciding to go all the way to Astoria, hoping to stay at our favorite Cannery Pier Hotel there. But with the long weekend they were all booked up. And the next three hotels and two campgrounds were also all booked up. We ended up finding an expensive room at a mediocre hotel. Luckily that was the end of the long weekend and the next night we got into the Cannery Pier Hotel. We went for supper at the Bridgewater Bistro, a short walk from the hotel, on the water with great sunset views. We also had a good coffee at the nearby 3 Cups Coffee House.



There are lots of old pilings which made interesting photographic subjects.



Lots of birds around, both land dwellers like this friendly sparrow,



and seabirds like these cormorants.



Of course, I had to take some reflection abstracts.



The sunset wasn't spectacular, but very pleasant.



The next day we headed out to Sunset Beach in hopes of paragliding with Brad and Maren of Discover Paragliding, who we had met flying in Costa Rica. Unfortunately, the winds didn't cooperate and we weren't able to fly. But I had fun taking photos of the birds, who were having no problem flying!



The terns are elegant fliers.



And even the crows were out scrounging on the beach.



There are also lots of flowers around, but I haven't had a chance to take too many photos of them.



For more of these photos, see all 32 as a slideshow or overview