As Long As There Are Mountains......

Mountain pictures will be ever renewed.

We came from here: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1023449/

Here is moonrise over Mt Shasta this evening, to start us out.



This message was edited Sep 2, 2009 7:02 PM

OOO I like that one! Nice Kyla.
I haven't downloaded my picts on my new computer so I have only new ones from my camera.
This is McDonald Lake in Glacier Park.

Gorgeous.

Wow, nice shot, Kyla. Looks like the moon is very happy to be seen in the company of Shasta.

well I was sure happy to see the two together.

good timing, moon showing up just when we needed a new thread, too.

Beautiful mountain pictures!

Cruising in McDonald lake. With mountains all around

Fabulous moon picture, Kyla.

this morning

Just a few shots from E. Washington near Tonasket.

Just a little refraction in front of Cayuse Mt.

Not of a mountain but from a mountain. Cold front hitting the mountain at sunset.

It looks like I painted this one.

And sunset time.

Reminds me of why I chose to live in the Rockies. Thanks for the pictures.

Reminds me of why I'm glad I get to be part of the RM Forum! Stunningly beautiful, Kyla and Soferdig!

Very beautiful! Sofer, that last one sure does look like an oil painting. The first one also looks very painterly to me. I hope to be able to get up in the mountains more when our roofing is going on and I'll need to be out of here during the day. Kyla your mountain is lookin' good! Snow on the mountains here, too.

"My" mountain is going to be presenting a very different face to me when I move....... so, that will be interesting to watch. This face here I am able to observe go through such changes of costume! In the other place I don't know how that will be, but the clouds are always doing some dance or other.

I will be seeing the actual Shasta side with the Shastina side I now face next to it. I like that and look forward to living at that angle to this huge creature!

Kind of like the next paragraph in a very slow conversation. ;-)

Mountains are so interesting, with all their faces. Yes, Mt. Shasta is your mountain. The Sangre de Cristos are my mountains. Actually the southern end of the Sangres. Dave has the Sandias. Betty is Pajarito. Sofer has all the Alaskan mountains! I grew up with the Superstition Mountains. Aren't we lucky?

And I have the San Juan mountains... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_Mountains

We are lucky, indeed!

Very much so, roybird.

A veritable feast of Mountains!

I remember my first view of the Rockies from pre interstate Wyoming. I told my parents that I would always live there. I grew up in Midwest and it was beautiful in Michigan but it had nothing to aspire an adventure in something drawing me up and away like the distant mountain. Since my arrival in Seattle I have climbed almost every trail into the Olympics, Mt Rainier, Cascades, St Helens (before eruption), Glacier Peak, North Cascades, Glacier Park, ......and each step was a moment in anticipation of what lie ahead, what is over that rise, where is the lake. True adventure to the few who have followed the early mountain men. The mystic native American who had their "quest" at the top of many of our same mountains. Maybe we inherit their same purpose to see the distant, the unreachable, the unknown, and all of the mystical events encompassed in each Mountain. This is a picture of the storm that formed over a mountain that carried me into one of my most valuable quests in life. The sinking of my sailboat and my conversations with God.

What a stunning photo, Soferdig.

Absolutely beautiful photo! In many traditions mountains are powerful spiritual places. You can see why!

Sofer, you rode that storm in the drink, refusing to live in fear.
I love the photo.

I had fun and faced my fears and it turned out to be joy. The picture is the second storm that came as I was being hauled out about this time. Taken by a friend who sent it to me for a reminder.

Wow.

Great photos! Wow.

I see wonderful as a state of being in these latest. Thanks. We are all so blessed to experience the diversity of mountains. Mountains have ever changing faces and they can never be tamed.

Sofer,
Great photos, and I love what you say about mountains. I always feel unplugged when I am away from the Rockies, they keep me going.

Joy is always underneath the fear if you can dig deep enough. Not a process for the faint of heart though.

I totally believe that. I was out in remote Montana on a cross country ski event with 10 friends. I got restless on a full moon night and skiied down hill about a mile to a river in untracked powder. I sat at the river after taking my skiis off and smoked a couple of cigs and just looked into the sky over the glacier park mountains. The moon filled me with the joy of being by embracing the time alone and in the wild. When I got up after being there about an hour I went to put on my skiis behind me and saw cougar tracks over where I had laid my skiis. My heart was pumping knowing that the cat had followed me down from the woods I now had to walk up with my skins on. That slow walk waiting to be taken out by the cougar was the 2nd most wonderful rush of chemicals I ever experienced and when I saw the cabin lights I yelled with joy of "getting back" to the safety of friends and the warmth of the cabin. I told my story and no body believed me until the morning we took off to ski. Then all I heard was you are a very lucky person. I felt more than lucky to spend the whole night awake and looking for a glimpse of my favorite predator.

I had a similar experience without snow. I was camping in Arizona with friends, also on a full moon night. I took a walk in the wee hours of the morning when everyone else was asleep. I went up a wash quite a long ways, and when I turned around to retrace my steps, there were these great big kitty prints in the sand along with mine. Unnerving.

I used to hike at night a lot in the Goldfield Mountains in Arizona, without a light and not necessarily moonlight either. I got to know the route across the wilderness so well I could do it in pitch darkness. I would hike over to a power line which had a four wheel drive dirt track under it, then follow that to the dirt road to the radar station at the top of this little mountain. It had caves on top, grand for watching monsoons roar across the valley in the summer in daytime, or looking at everything by moonlight. They still use the path I wore to the power line for a horseback trail now.

The neighbors all thought I was crazy because of all the cactus and rattlesnakes. But I only went when I felt it was all right and never had trouble with either. I noticed my neighbors got bitten by rattlesnakes in their own yards though.

One night I had gotten to the power line in pitch darkness and suddenly felt like I was being followed. I was giving myself the "didn't you get over being afraid of the dark when you were 9?" lecture when I heard the coyotes. I was smack in the middle of a hunting pack and I could hear them in the dark all around me.

Apparently I startled them as much as they startled me because I did not hear them again until they were a couple of miles away.

I really loved those nighttime hikes. A great way to have insomnia and not think it was a problem!

Any fear inducing event brings excitement (or death) to the one who steps into that moment.

The spirit of adventure! I can certainly appreciate. I've come within feet of a bear and encountered sudden obstacles that pushed the limits of my abilities while riding a mountain bike in the mountains. Panic would have meant death or severe bodily harm, but I kept my focus and did what I needed to do to go through it. Its about living and putting youself out there into something bigger than you are, and trusting ... Its certainly not about recklessness.

Right now I'm adventuring with my daughter. She is 18 and is just learning to step out into life - and has some fear. So we are rock climbing together and are just transitioning into going to various locations about the state to go climbing. We were up at El Rito last weekend, climbing 40 to 60 foot rock faces. For her she is stepping out just to go out there to go climbing. For me being 50 feet off the ground with a thin rope being held by a teenager as my lifeline is unnerving. My fear of heights is invoked and I have to work past it or I'll lock up and render myself immobile on the rock face, basically guaranteeing I'll be hanging from the rope soon. The climbing is a fun challenge; overcoming the fear not so much, but it has a different reward.

I like some of Tolkein's comments on adventures.

I had the chance to do some rock climbing a few years ago. A young man who was capable and safety conscious took a bunch of us on a climbing day. I had previously trashed my ankles quite badly and was really unsure they would be up to it, so it was exhilarating when I found I could pick my way up the cliff face and make it to the top without my ankles giving out. He was a great coach.

I would love to do more of that, but the young man moved to Colorado and I don't know anyone else around here who climbs that way. I sure would not want to team up with someone who is not as safety conscious as Zac.

It was quite fun to see the rest of the group work through their fears and resistance as well.

Very wondrous stories, Sofer & Mulch & Dave-who-is.

I never came to any harm in the backcountry, and spent literally years of my life there. Since I'm an absurdly light sleeper, I always wore earplugs. I can't count the number of times a tentmate said "What is THAT?" and I took out the earplugs long enough to decide "Goat" or "Moose" or "Wind" or "something small".

Then there's the exciting realization when on the trail: "These tracks weren't here when we hiked in." And they're the biggest darn griz tracks I've ever seen. THEY are all around us. THEY have seen me many more times than I've seen them.

I've been missing the high country so badly. Am going to have to find a way to get out there despite foot pain and exercise intolerance.

I had a gun pulled on me in a bar once. This was in the days of my mis-spent youth. I was a bar tender in a state with tough DWI laws and I refused to serve a man who was already obviously drunk. So, he pulled a gun on me. I ducked behind the bar while another man grabbed the guy from behind, pinning his arms. Police were called, etc. I remember feeling rather dazed afterward. We did have a gun behind the bar, too, but I'm glad no one thought to pull it. Guns tend to escalate a conflict, I think. My outdoor adventures have all been benign in comparison. Scorpions, rattle snakes, bears....much better behaved than people.

woo hoo, Roybird, an excellent misspent youth you must have had! I feel everyone should have one, actually. Though I am glad mine did not include a gun. I think my "innocence" -- read mondo extreme naivete! -- actually protected me for quite a while.

Meanwhile, here is a mountain, just to feed the thread its dinner:

And here is one with a moon also: