Angel's Rest

Last weekend I had a visitor at home and took him on a hike on Saturday with a group of local friends (while M. was slaving away working on our escort and table cards in Seattle with K.). I picked Angel's rest because it was one of the few short hikes I had not done in the gorges and the view from atop was supposed to be beautiful. I wasn't disappointed, the weather was amazingly sunny and warm, the trail up nice and steep and the view... amazing. Only downside: it was a bit too popular.


Great trail in the forest.


Great view.


Great Company.

The rest of the pictures can be found here.

Ian's birthday hike

After some Dim Sum brunch we headed to the gorges for a birthday hike. Luckily enough the weather was quite friendly. We started at the Latourell falls and did a small loop in the forest.



The nice fall colors are disappearing but we still had some quite nice athmosphere in the forest.


And still some pretty nice colors.


When the weather is friendly this area is gorgeous. Maybe I am getting to like Oregon ;).


Happy birthday !!!



We continued by ourselves with a small trip to the Multnomah falls and joined later M's classemates from the French Alliance for a French speaking night (as well as wine and cheese tasting).

Eagle Creek

I know my blog posts are getting totally out of order, that's the result of me posting when I have pictures ready, and as I rotate between film and digital, whatever got taken on film ends up being super delayed... So a few weekends ago, we went to help Amy move to La Center, then went strawberry picking with Ian and Janel (Melvin and Anne were late enough to arrive when we were leaving), cooked a few kilos of Jam, and the next day Ian took us for a hike to Eagle Creek in the Gorges.



It was our first long hike since Ethiopia, but despite the fast pace I survived :). Our target was Cave Falls, some 6.5 miles away from the start:

The path is actually passing in a cave behind the waterfall around the middle of the cliff, that is quite impressive. There was another nice fall right after it:


The rest of the pictures of the hike and from our Sauvie Island harvest can be found here.

4th of July at Rainier National Park

Ian organized a 3 day weekend camping trip at Rainier National Park. We car pooled with them and setup camp Friday around noon and ate some sandwiches at the campsite. I was surprised to see how nice the campsite was. Each tent spot was surrounded by a patch of forest that was isolating it from the other tents. That way it felt almost like we were camping by ourselves despite being in a rather large campsite. Each spot has a fire pit where you can cook your food as long as you buy/bring wood. There was even bathrooms with drinkable water, and even toilet paper... 5 star luxury camping if you're asking me. Only downside was probably the swarms of mosquitoes. Not that much of a problem for me as there was plenty of honeypots around ;).
From left to right: Melvin, Allen, Ian, Janel, Andy, Kevin and Michelle. Missing: Anne, Jason and myself.


We then spent the afternoon on a short hike to Comet falls. We almost missed the falls as we stopped there:


To realize that we had to walk a few steps more to get to see this one: the real Comet falls !


We had a nice evening around the fire, barbecued lots of salmon, drank a few local brews and some bourbon and went to bed. Next morning at 4:45 Ian and I were up for some sunrise photography action. We drove straight to Reflection Lake and got some very nice shots of Mount Rainier.


A few hours later we drove to Paradise, which is the starting point to climb up Mount Rainier and deserves its name: the view is gorgeous. We then climbed for like 2 hours in snow until we got tired and decided the view would not improve by going higher.

Looking up towards Mount Rainier:


Looking south, towards Oregon we can see mount Adams to the left and Mount Saint Helens to the right (Mount Hood is hidden in this picture).


Once we arrived down the place was literally packed with visitors. It was one of the most fantastic hikes I've done in term of ease of access and quality of the view. I must admit that hiking in the snow in July felt quite good.


We came back to our campsite and met Jason that had just drove up to join us. M, Andy, Kevin and Jason went on another "short" (it was a lot longer than the ranger had told us) hike for the afternoon while Janel, Ian and myself slacked at the camp. We prepared the fire for our 4th of July's dinner (Melvin's first as an American citizen). We had a fun night around the fire, playing with sparklers, eating sausages and chatting.

You can find the rest of the pictures here, or read about it with more pictures on Ian and Janel's blog.

First Hike

Last Sunday we went for our first hike since my surgery. Ian had organized 2 small hikes in the Columbia gorges so Janel and I, both recovering could restart slowly. It was a very nice sunny morning and we enjoyed the shade of the Oregon forest. I also took advantage of the hike to try out my new 56 years old film camera (a Zeiss Super Ikonta III). I didn't have a meter with me as my stuff still had not arrived from Israel so I had to trust my eyes. The camera is 6x6 so most of the square shots you'll be seeing here come from it, the color ones are made on the new ISO100 Kodak Ektar.

The Wahclella Falls:



After the hike, we took the scenic highway back and stopped to enjoy a view on the Gorges:


We realized we were near the Viewpoint Inn, a very nice Inn that had been used in the vampire movie Twilight for the prom party, it's also a place we had been considering eventually for a future event so we decided to find it and have a brunch there. This place has been opened and serving good food at a fantastic vista point since the 30's.

The Viewpoint Inn:


See how Happy, M is ?


And Yes, I know, it took me a week to put these online, but film doesn't develop as fast as digital :).