Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Watching: waterfallsa nd glaciers and a canyon and a pika and some rain

Moving: hiked ~10 miles

5 September 2002: Cascade Canyon

In the morning, the campground host made his usual rounds. RDC had grilled breakfast for our 10-mile hike--bacon, hash browns, and tomatoes, plus an egg for him since he does not understand about them being poison--and the host, after passing the time of day, noticed what was on our plates. Or RDC's, since I eat so repellently discourteously and unhealthily quickly. "That's a thing of beauty!" he exclaimed.

A 10-, not a 14-mile, hike: this time we took the boat across Jenny Lake. Hidden Falls, Inspiration Point, and up. We and a family of two parents and three children had passed each other a couple times as they paused for short legs and we paused for photographs. We had just overtaken them again when I triangulated the shrill of a pika. I spun to the lead shorty, an 8ish girl with a splash of large freckles and two braids that, sadly, were not red enough to make her quite the spitting image of Pippi Longstocking. I scared her, whirling and crouching to whisper, "Do you want to see a pika? It's a relative of a rabbit." That got the kids' attention. I pointed and gestured to illustrate the angle of the rock it was on. The mother spotted it, thank goodness, and I left her to the thankless task of guiding the children's eyes to it.

I like water. Have I made that clear? I loved the creek's speed and noise, fast and loud or slow and quiet. I loved it plummeting over small rocks and trickling over boulders. The forests grew thick and friendly, with raspberries in any open spot. Here it reminded me of the Ausable River near Lake Placid, where we sat on a boulder in the middle of the stream eating cookies and RDC birthed the patentable idea of the Fig Newton Dispenser (along the lines of a Pez Dispenser).

Sometimes, the creek slowed enough to form a lake. After the initial climb, it really leveled out, slow in plenty of places to grow enough vegetation to support moose. Not that we saw any.

The north side of the canyon featured raspberry bushes, sage-covered slopes, and scree fields from rock slides. Scree fields mean pikas (the jokes about their being related to elites are very old, both way overused and excessively dated). Someone must have spilled Gatorade or something more interesting than water--maybe sweat from a wrung out a bandana, if pikas like salt--because this little one did not leave its puddle as we passed.

The south side was the horse of a different color you've heard tell about. Glacier after glacier--or maybe just snowpack after snowpack--melting into narrow waterfalls dripping down the steep hillsides.

I loved these slopes. It is one of the most spectacular hikes I have ever taken. Constant waterfalls, snow above those, peaks atop those, and flashing sunlight.

These are two pictures of the same slope, but its type repeated and repeated all the way up.

No moose and no bears, but I forgot about the top of the north slope: it was like the Valley of Kings (with which I personally am familiar, you understand). It was much lower and more arid than the south, and in the pinnacles and spires of ridgeline I saw a crouching lioness, a sphinx, and a bighorn sheep.

At the fork in the trail, we stopped and ate and drank. We didn't continue to Lake Solitude let alone pass behind Rockchuck Peak and descend through another canyon. Next time.

The flashing sunlight resolved itself into a short squall, which proved to be foreshadowing.