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September 14, 2005
Early Winter @ Horseshoe Lake
Last weekend I went on a 3-day hike to Horseshoe Lake. I had hoped to scramble up Mount Stuart on the second day, but crummy weather averted those plans. Here's the account of this journey:
I woke up early on Thursday Morning, did some last-minute packing, and then hopped on my bike wearing pack and hiking boots, coasted down to Pioneer Square, and parked my bike securely at the office. Caught the 7:45 AM Amtrak to Everett. A little-known factoid is that anyone with a regional transit pass can ride the Amtrak Cascades to Everett for free. I ate breakfast on the train and arrived in Everett Station about an hour after departure. 
There I boarded a Community Transit route 270 bus that departed at 9:05 AM. While waiting for this bus, I bummed some cardboard from the espresso shop and a constructed a sign "LEAVENWORTH please" for use later. The route 270 took me to Gold Bar in a little over an hour, and I napped nearly the whole way. At one point I woke up between Monroe and Sultan and was the only one on the bus; I felt like a pimp riding in the back with my chauffeur up front with orders to take me where I wanted to go.
Once in Gold Bar, end of the line, I stopped at the local food store to get some supplies, and then headed to US 2 with my sign, hoping that my decentralized ridesharing system would deliver. Within 15 minutes, a guy in a suburban picked me up. He was from Spokane and was returning home from doing some Mountain Biking in Canada. He was kind enough to drive me a few miles out of his way up the Icicle Road, and dropped me off at the foot of Eightmile road. I still had to get up this road, so I hung out and ate my lunch near the intersection. Soon I waved down a pickup truck; two women with a horse trailer let me ride in their pickup bed up to the Eightmile lake trailhead. From there I had to walk less than a mile up the road to the Stuart Lake Trailhead. At the trailhead I noticed that Horseshoe Lake lies within the regulated overnight permit area, part of the Enchantments system. This is horse-pucky, very few people get to Horseshoe Lake and it is in the permit area simply by convenience of drawing a neat border on a map. There's no way that was going back to Leavenworth to get an overnight permit. I grab two day-use permits and hit the trail at about 1:00PM.
I see lots of people on this trail; Most of them going to Colchuck Lake. After the Colchuck turnoff, the trail quiets down a bit. Lake Stuart is the official end of trail, but a path continues up the valley. 
About a mile past the lake, there is a tree with an actual horseshoe nailed to it. At this point the trail hangs a right and heads straight up the side of the valley. This is a steep fisherman's trail, but it is fairly easy to follow; it seems to be getting a lot more use from last time I was here a few years ago. The trail quickly gains about 1000' of elevation. I had remembered this being a difficult trail, but this time it seemed like nothing. By evening I reached Horseshoe Lake, which is perched on a kind of a shelf at the 6200' level. I had time to take a quick dip just before the sun disappeared below the ridge to the west. The lake was relatively warm for an alpine lake; the outlet has run dry and it doesn't have any snowmelt feeding it directly. Set up camp, ate dinner, and went to sleep.
It rained and the wind howled most of that night, and when I woke up in the morning, I noticed that my tent was beginning to droop, well that was because there was about an inch of snow on it. I poked my head out and saw snow flurries coming down, and nothing but clouds where Mt. Stuart was supposed to be. Still in my warm sleeping bag, I decided that an attempt of the summit would not be on the agenda today in these conditions, and I went back to sleep.
By late in the morning, almost noon, the snow subsided and I ventured out of my tent. It looked like a hurricane had come through my kitchen area. My cookset that I had neatly stacked the night before was scattered everywhere. The contents of my little purple camp stove stuffsack were dumped onto the ground, my lighter was soaking wet, and the stuffsack itself was nowhere to be found. I gathered what I could find, and after the lighter dried out, made breakfast. The clouds were lifting a bit, so I thought I would scramble up the mountain as far as I could.
I made it to a place I think Becky* refers to as Goat Pass, which is interesting because the route Becky describes to Goat Pass is from the Ingalls Lake area, so a though connection is likely possible. The scramble from Horseshoe Lake to Goat Pass is a little steep in spots, all rocky, but not too exposed. The key is to first head to the edge of the shelf just south of the lake, and then eyeball the route on the opposite ridge; there are a few cliffs that need to be avoided. My prior plans were to intercept the "Northwest Buttress" route up Stuart, but the fog became thick at Goat Pass and it didn't seem wise to go further, so I retraced my steps back to the lake. Returned to my campsite and made a yummy tofu stir-fry with couscous.
Saturday morning, another dumping of snow: this time even more accumulation and the flurries more furious. Got up fairly early, made breakfast, and packed up camp. It was still snowing by the time I left in the late afternoon, and the fog had descended to the lake, making it very eerie. 
I made haste down the "trail", armed with a stick for the purpose of knocking accumulated water off of the shrubbery before passing my body through it.
Once arriving at the trailhead, I looked for some unsuspecting hikers from which to bum a ride into Leavenworth. As this is a popular trailhead, and many were fleeing the inclement weather, I didn't have to wait long. Got a ride from a duo from Chelan who went fishing at Lake Colchuck and decided to head out early. I was planning to take a bus from Leavenworth to Wenatchee, Link Transit route 22, but they graciously gave me a ride all the way to Wenatchee, since it was on their way.
I hung out in Wenatchee for a while. Ate a scrumptious dinner at a Mexican joint located at Wenatchee Ave & Kittitas St. Then I headed back to Seattle and was back home by early Sunday morning. My gear is still hanging out drying.
If you like the pictures, there are more here.
* Becky, Fred. Cascade Alpine Guide; Columbia River to Stevens Pass. The Mountaineers, 1987.
September 5, 2005
Southern Apocalypse
Woah! widespread destruction in New Orleans and the Gulf coast, ensuing anarchy and chaos!
Unfortunately, the leading climatologists say that this is just a foreboding of more nasty weather to expect in the future. Hurricanes and tropical storms are expected to increase in strength and frequency, fed by the increasing ocean temperatures due to the greenhouse effect.
An ironic twist is that the latest storm, Katrina, shut down a sizable chunk of U.S. petroleum refining and distribution facilities, raising gas prices around the country, particularly those parts of the country that are the most auto-dependent. A local gas station nearby on Broadway currently has a price of $2.99 for regular. I laughed as I rode by this on my favorite bio-fueled vehicle.
This Labor-Day weekend I have spent doing some chores around the house and running some errands. In response to the high gas prices, I did most of my shopping on my bike, patronizing local neighborhood small businesses. I could have probably obtained all of my desired consumer goods at big-box chain stores for cheaper, and maybe all in one place, but I don't mind paying a little more to support smaller businesses run by people that really like what they do. Besides, I would have had to drive a long ways to get to a big box store.
August 23, 2005
Back into the Groove
Yes it has been a while, over a month since the last report; that's because summer weather takes me away from the computer. Last week, I returned from my two-week journey to Chicago, Glacier Park and points in-between. It was a grand multi-modal trip. It would take too long to describe the whole trek in words, but I will refer you to my pictures.
While in Chicago I rode its famous 'El' System and one day commandeered my grandma's bike for a ride into the city, taking Lake Street into downtown. Lake Street runs underneath the Green Line branch of the El. I took note of three qualities that the El exhibits: It is 1) deafeningly loud, 2) quite imposing onto to the street below, and 3) it smells. Despite these "negative" qualities, people love the El and it works remarkably well at doing its job. I reflected on my hometown of Seattle and all of the griping that seems to go on about the impacts of the proposed monorail, light rail, and the viaduct. These are transportation systems, they're not supposed to be pretty (except when federal pork is invloved); Chicago knows this and seems to actually embrace it. Then again, maybe Seattlelites don't live in Chicago for a reason.
In other news, I have added a few items to my sounds page: One new mix and a few fractal tunes. Check them out if you please.
July 15, 2005
Google Earth
This is the coolest thing ever:
http://earth.google.com/
With this program you can fly around the earth and look at aerial photos superimposed onto a 3-D elevation profile. You can even plop yourself onto the top of a peak, tilt the perspective into the horizon, and enjoy the view. Here is the view from Chiwaukum Ridge, which I scrambled up during my four-day trip on independence day weekend. This is the view I would have enjoyed, had it not been foggy when I was up there.
I have been spending the last hour looking at some interesting traffic engineering in Iraq. Check out these interchanges in Baghdad:
Download it, the free version seems to do most of the cool stuff. Having the whole Earth available at your fingertips really puts it into perspective.
July 7, 2005
Ouch!
Yesterday I was cruising on my bike down Delmar Drive, going to my friend Ian's house, when my front wheel got caught between two uneven concrete pavement slabs. My bike fell to one side and I went skidding across the pavement. I scraped my arm and shoulder, partially ripped out a thumbnail, but worst of all pulled something in my back. It's very sore so I have to take it easy for a while.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to The OK Betterment Foundation, where I will spend the proceeds on beer.
June 21, 2005
Happy Summer Solstice!
Summer is here in full force! I need to get out and do more hiking and scrambling this year. Last year I had a broken foot and couldn't do much in the mountains. But this year I am going to make up for it, and will take full advantage of the low snowpack. The weekend of July 4th I have a 4-day weekend. Time to peruse the maps...
June 12, 2005
Sounds for All
I finally put some of my mixes online for all to enjoy. Check out this new branch of my website:
http://www.kehoe.org/owen/soundz/
This page will evolve as I find time to record and post more stuff. Thanks to Shepherd Grei for letting be borrow his 1/2 of 2 CDJ's and his sexy Allen & Heath Xone mixer, which I used for the most recent mix.
June 7, 2005
Putting a Face on the Heartless Bureaucracy
Yesterday, I spent my workday helping people on the street adjust to new changes in Metro Bus service. This is called "Street Teaming," something that Metro does to help bus customers when there is a major change in bus service. The big change this time is that the good old route 7 has been split into two routes. The route 7 now just goes from Downtown Seattle to Rainier Beach, and the new route 49 replaces the old route 7 that served Capitol Hill and the U-district. The lowly route 9 gets the shaft with reduced service, termination at Capitol Hill (no more U-District), and dieselization (no more trolleys). The reason for all this? to improve on-time performance; the old route 7 was too long and so it always ran late. With the split, outbound buses will begin their route in downtown and should arrive at the downtown stops right on time. In my opinion, the biggest drawback will be the fact that the new route 49 will not go south of Pike St, so you will have to transfer to get to areas such as Pioneer Square. Except for after 7PM on weekdays and Saturdays and all day Sundays, when the 49 is through-routed with the 7. Yes this is confusing, and that is what I had to convey to people waiting at the affected bus stops yesterday, some of whom did not speak much English. This was an interesting and entertaining break from the office.
More info on the recent service change:
http://transit.metrokc.gov/up/archives/may05/ra-062005.html
There were other changes in Metro Bus service that also took effect, but they were mostly in the suburbs and therefore, irrelevant.
Also, you will notice that I started a new blog page. The old entries can be found in the archives, the most recent being: [2005.1].
© 2005 Owen Kehoe
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There I boarded a Community Transit route 270 bus that departed at 9:05 AM. While waiting for this bus, I bummed some cardboard from the espresso shop and a constructed a sign "LEAVENWORTH please" for use later. The route 270 took me to Gold Bar in a little over an hour, and I napped nearly the whole way. At one point I woke up between Monroe and Sultan and was the only one on the bus; I felt like a pimp riding in the back with my chauffeur up front with orders to take me where I wanted to go.
About a mile past the lake, there is a tree with an actual horseshoe nailed to it. At this point the trail hangs a right and heads straight up the side of the valley. This is a steep fisherman's trail, but it is fairly easy to follow; it seems to be getting a lot more use from last time I was here a few years ago. The trail quickly gains about 1000' of elevation. I had remembered this being a difficult trail, but this time it seemed like nothing. By evening I reached Horseshoe Lake, which is perched on a kind of a shelf at the 6200' level. I had time to take a quick dip just before the sun disappeared below the ridge to the west. The lake was relatively warm for an alpine lake; the outlet has run dry and it doesn't have any snowmelt feeding it directly. Set up camp, ate dinner, and went to sleep.
It rained and the wind howled most of that night, and when I woke up in the morning, I noticed that my tent was beginning to droop, well that was because there was about an inch of snow on it. I poked my head out and saw snow flurries coming down, and nothing but clouds where Mt. Stuart was supposed to be. Still in my warm sleeping bag, I decided that an attempt of the summit would not be on the agenda today in these conditions, and I went back to sleep.
By late in the morning, almost noon, the snow subsided and I ventured out of my tent. It looked like a hurricane had come through my kitchen area. My cookset that I had neatly stacked the night before was scattered everywhere. The contents of my little purple camp stove stuffsack were dumped onto the ground, my lighter was soaking wet, and the stuffsack itself was nowhere to be found. I gathered what I could find, and after the lighter dried out, made breakfast. The clouds were lifting a bit, so I thought I would scramble up the mountain as far as I could.
I made haste down the "trail", armed with a stick for the purpose of knocking accumulated water off of the shrubbery before passing my body through it.
