Hang on!


Hang on!
Originally uploaded by cmcnulty2000.
Summer's coming, and though I'm laid up this week, about time to get back to a hiking/climbing post. This is from a few years ago, while hiking on Wachusett Mountain. My daughter Devin was about six inches from the ground for this....

Wachusett used to be one of my favorite "introductory" hike for Bostonians who wanted to get beyond the Blue Hills (which I love, btw). Anyway, for a while the mountain road was closed ad it was a nice starter climb. Unfortuately, now since the road has reopened you'r eas likely as not to run into the "Mt. Washington" prbalme at the summit -- dozens of idling cars, truck and motorcycles seem to take away from any natural mountaintop ambience.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What no one else is reading at my gym

Image
I’m finding myself in a particularly creative mood these days. 2025 has started out energized, optimistic, and hopeful, like never before. One rule I want to remember in the month of resolutions is that creators engage other creations. Writers read. Artists are viewers. Netflix currently has a biography in the works for release this year about Bruce Springsteen and the making of his Nebraska album . If you’re not familiar with it, it began as homemade demos on a four track tape recorder in his New Jersey bedroom in 1981. The songs are spare, dark, and hauntingly, beautiful. Jeremy Allen White is slated to star as Bruce Springsteen. As demos, on a four track tape recorder, he was limited to guitar, harmonica, and vocals. And somewhere, as he began sharing this material with his band for a full album, he came to realize that that cassette tape was the whole album. Which was a journey itself. "Nebraska" by Bruce Springsteen on Amazon Music. Why am I sharing this? Well, I was c...
Read more

Bluebird hiking in the North Cascades

Image
This blog was originally created to log some of my hikes, so let’s do that. I’m staying at a cabin in the Cascades this weekend to spend time with family - reading, writing, playing cards and guitar. We’re right on the South Fork of the Skykomish in Index, Washington. I know it’s midwinter, and there was some consideration for a day trip over Stevens Pass to the faux Bavarian snowy mountain town of Leavenworth. But it was stunningly windless, cloudless and only in the low 40s. A sun-drenched Cascades bluebird day. (And we hadn’t brought skis.) So we headed up the Heybrook Lookout trail. It’s about 2.5 miles and 1000 feet vertical to reach an open fire tower with panoramic mountain views. With the weather, it wasn’t a surprise that th trail was crowded with lots of families and dogs. But honestly, cloudless and windless, and it could’ve been June as far as I’m concerned. No bugs, and even the mud was not bad; a little bit toward the bottom and a bit 2/3 of the way up. The only wind was ...
Read more

Aurora

Image
I’ve been tracking the likelihood of auroras and geomagnetic storms on and off ever since I moved to the Pacific Northwest. This year and next, are times of peak solar activity. But all too often, Sun and Earth weather never lineup. When there is a chance of seeing Aurora, it seems to come on a cold, foggy cloudy, rainy night. Or I miss an alert and find out about it after the fact from online posts by semi-professional aurora chasers. These are the ones I check most often:  Aurora Forecast | Geophysical Institute Aurora Viewline for Tonight and Tomorrow Night (Experimental) | NOAA / NWS Space Weather Prediction Center And still have never seen one. Until now. The early May weather last night was clear and cloudless, combined with a KP9+ activity level. (I’m told that’s very high.) I debated where to go; I considered going out past Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascades. Often, eastern Washington has different weather and has a better shot. But this time, I decided to head to different da...
Read more