North Cascades Mountain valleys

One of the most beautiful North Cascades Mountain valleys is the Methow Valley that begins high in the mountains and was carved -- chiefly by the Methow River and ancient glaciers -- through the eastern North Cascades foothills to end at the edge of the Columbia River miles below. Deer and cougars, black bear and a few grizzlies, too, in the border country of USA and Canada thrive in the forests and a few mesas. This pond is manmade and helps to support resident deer that seldom leave this mountain resident's property. During winter storms the deer often gather in the holes around trees made by drifting snow. Deer are browsers more than grazing animals, so trees and brush are preferred foods. In these remote valleys the few settlers live each day side by side with the creatures, mostly in harmony.  Pet cats and small dogs, though, must be careful  to avoid becoming a wild animal's choice meal.

Along its 1243-mile length in Canada and Washington State the river mostly is forested except for parts of eastern Washington with its drier climate. Certain river waterfalls always were prime fishing spots for native Americans who used self-made baskets on poles to simply put into the falling water to catch unfortunate salmon within.

The river drains thousands of square miles of both countries, including water in tributary rivers as far east as the Rocky Mountains. What a thrilling waterway that has also carried explorers of the continent and later new settlers on its challenging, swift waters. Not a few people tell me that they have read my book, The Columbia River, and plan to travel its waters (taking their canoes or boats out and back in below dams) from beginning to end. Before any dams in the 1800s a handful of people did exactly that in small boats, one in a rowboat, overcoming not dams as obstacles but raging rapids in places.

RESEARCH FOR STORIES SOMETIMES ADVENTUROUS

--

Above Mica Dam at the Big Bend of the Columbia River in northern BC the river always was wide and active.  Canoe River and others added their drainage to the Columbia, too. At the right in this photo is Lake Kinbasket, always a natural lake that received the melt water from the huge Columbia Icefields that lie between the Columbia and Jasper AB. Kinbasket was known as one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, and still is, just even larger than its original lake and very remote. Its only access, essentially,  is from the south end of the lake or, as shown here, above Mica Dam. At a point at upper right in this photo was Boat Encampment on the original river, to which  David Thompson and his exploring crew came originally to escape attacking First Nation warriors on the flats above.

Yes, research can sometimes be dangerous or, at least, adventurous. When I was at the point shown, a dam employee agreed to take me out on the above body of water. I soon asked to return. The water was rough and filled with many loose logs, any one of which could have collided with our small rowboat only about 15 feet long. However, in explorer days well before dams, this particular junction of rivers was really a suicide trip.. It led (to the left of photo) through a narrow gorge and rapids that upset explorers' early boats and drowned not a few persons. Most detoured around it.

I am a lifetime writer for diverse magazine articles, as well as books.  One of my adventures was in the North Cascades Mountains of Washington. A group of Texas prospectors was exploring for gold on the face of a very steep peak called Church Mountain near Mount Baker. Seeking publicity for the work, which was the first time anyone had moved a gold drill by helicopter from one site to another on a mountain, the company sent its helicopter to pick me up to photograph this event. Fine... I left my kitchen (as I was more housewife and mother and less roving writer at the time) and climbed in. Within a half hour's flight the pilot set down the helicopter on a platform barely larger than itself that was attached to the mountainside. Another such platform served as a kitchen and eating site, and a third was for the six crew members  for their sleeping bags.

With little delay I followed the directions of the pilot and gold crew and climbed with my big camera (not a point-and-shoot type) up a slope to position myself where I could photograph the helicopter as it hovered over a prospect hole to pull out the drill and move it elsewhere. I was well aware of the slope's danger, as it must have been about a 60-70 degree rocky site. I positioned myself up-slope from a small tree. If I lost my balance, I thought I would be able to stop rolling by grabbing it. OK, the helicopter hovered. I clicked away at the drill gradually arising from the hole. What none of us had considered was that the helicopter's blades stirred up a torrent of snow and mud that landed all over me and the camera!

The photos completed, I started across a landslide of old rocks bisected by a foot trail maybe two feet wide to the other side of the slope about 300 feet across. Halfway there (with my bulky camera, mud and all) I noticed the dense cloud of fog rising up toward me from the canyon below. I was supposed to get across the rockslide, then ascend about 600 feet on the mountain to take photos of the drill being lowered into a new hole. However, I had been hiking in mountains forever and recognized that I must return or I would be unable to see anything on this dangerous foot trail. This was verified by the crew member that I met coming to get me off the mountain after I had turned back voluntarily. He said, "You have to get on the helicopter pad right away and get off the mountain or you will have to stay here overnight with the crew." The pilot tucked me into the copter and we rotated down again. He immediately left and returned uphill, and I was left alone to find my way back the short way to a small coffee shack and arrange to get back to my home, 50 miles away. I sat and drank coffee for a long time first, reviewing this adventure and asking myself, "What am I doing, anyway!"

True, not all a journalist's life is that exciting, but every now and then....well.... The story and photos, mud spots and all (film not digital), was published in an aviation magazine.

Spring certainly has arrived in Washington State. Hosts of flowering trees line streets. Evergreen trees that cover so much land in the state is interspersed with lighter greens of the deciduous trees leafing out. This morning I had time to monitor about a quarter of the terraced gardens in my yard and plant marigolds, geraniums, and a daisy called osteo..something-or-other. I will tackle another quarter tomorrow after dealing with my writing tasks.

The San Juan Islands between Bellingham WA and Victoria BC  enjoy such a benign climate that foxglove four feet high grow wild. Wild strawberries are coveted by islanders. Of course, shell fish thrive on beaches, a portion reserved for native American harvesting. Because the islands are surrounded literally by the North Pacific Ocean, even if it is within a huge inlet and outlet, sea life abounds. Orca whales are residents, and gray whales sometimes thread through the island channels during migration.

 One morning my young teenage son, an avid fisherman, returned from an early foray, his eyes wide and voice up an octave. He told us of seeing a large weird-looking sea creature next to his small boat. It was, indeed, an unusual sighting for this area of an elephant seal. Perhaps it was because sea otters were hunted so mercilessly by early explorers of the northwest coast, or perhaps other factors prevailed, but in the SJI river otters are commonly seen on island beaches. A fresh water or river variety they have adapted to salt water with ease.  One day at a marina my four-year-old daughter was lying on her stomach peering into the sea, when a young sea otter popped up in the water just inches away.

The lore of settlers who came to this semi-remote and lovely world entertain readers in the book: San Juan Islands: Into the 21st Century.

HUGE GLACIERS ONCE COVERED THE SAN JUAN ISLANDS

Horseshoe Lake on Blakely Island in the San Juan Island group probably once was carved out by moving ice.  In the distant past glaciers from what is now Canada continued on to an area beyond today's city of Renton WA, south of Seattle. The ice overhead at Bellingham and the North Cascades (yes, all the way over the Columbia River, too) is estimated to have been 5,000 to 6,000 feet deep in most areas described. When climate changes occurred and the glaciers melted, the huge volume of water overwhelmed the mountains and valleys west of today's Bellingham, drowning them to create the islands of today, most of them just the mountain tops of the prior range and valleys. This leaves a pleasant group of 172 islands and islets we call the San Juan Islands. Marks from this prehistoric glacier can be seen in the North Cascades Mountains west of Mount Baker at Church Mountain. Imagine this ice deposit thousands of feet thick!  Several San Juan islands still have deep lakes for people and trout to enjoy.

Today the islands are a playground for boaters and kayakers, as well as encompassing fertile lands with crops and animals. The North Cascades range running roughly north and south and parallel with the Pacific Ocean shores about 40 miles west remains as a barrier between western and eastern Washington, causing widely different climates in the state. It is cool and seldom snowing on the west with daytime temps from about 45 to 80 degrees year round and an average of about 33 inches of rain annually. The east side is partially a former lava plain interrupted by valleys, hills, flatlands, and forests that averages more like 25 to 100 degrees annually but is rich in rivers and water so is a farming paradise. (Temperatures are my estimates and not official.)

Several of my published books carry tales of what went on in this extremely variable land: The Columbia River, Stevens Pass, North Cascades Highway and The North Cascadians, San Juan Islands: Into the 21st Century, and others that touch on featured people or occurrences of the humans that settled these beautiful and challenging lands. I have traveled along all 1243 miles of the Columbia River, and my family has had a log cabin in the San Juans for more than 50 years.

Washington's dramatic mountains and islands vs. desert

I had to visit Arizona this past week for the sad reason of attending the interment of my oldest sister. However, visiting Phoenix's Botannical Gardens was a pleasant respite. Here I found my own Washington State's Dale Chihuly's creations enhancing desert displays. Chihuly's famous works are created only minutes from the tragic Oso mudslide that has made international news this past month. Perhaps his colorful work helps to heal the sadness of both my personal and our state's citizens. The tube like creations were featured in several different colors and enhanced large desert shrubbery, too, if it is even possible to enhance Nature's beauties. 

So much beauty at all seasons is in our Washington State. Now spring along the Columbia River and in the warmer areas of the San Juan Islands is helping natural flowers to open their blooms to accent the already lovely forests and island seascapes of both areas. Rhododendrons, foxglove, and lupine, and acres of daisies of several kinds grow wild in the Northwest spring. Rhododendron are wild mostly on the Olympic Peninsula, foxglove waist-high in the islands, and lupine lines higher mountain roads and clearings.

You may wish to read about the Northwest in several of my books available nationwide and online, especially the recent San Juan Islands: Into the 21st Century and The Columbia River. There are others, too.

CA and WA both wonderful states.

CA flowers in
Februaary.  A former LA resident, I enjoyed soaking up desert charms in February, while home in WA enjoyed the beauty of unexpected snow in significant quantities. However, I was told that it did not last but a few days, and it seldom ever does stay. We all live in a beautiful world. Deserts with their own special beauty, islands scattered off our coasts, majestic mountains that start north of the Canadian border and never slow down until close to Mexico, and even then, pick up again to adorn the lovely Baja California lands. Rivers like the Columbia River and Mississippi, and islands like the San Juans and Gulf Islands in the West Coast waters. Add these sights to the beauties of rolling wheat fields and blue lakes farther east, endless sand beaches in the southeast, and forests of the northeast. Be sure to help Nature take care of all this, and help us to share with the world.

San Juan Islands, Washington Staqte, Fun in the Water

The book, San Juan Islands: Into the 21st Century was published less than two years before The Columbia River. The San Juans are scattered across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, recently renamed the Salish Sea, between Bellingham, Washington State and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. They enjoy a relatively warm temperature -- average about 75 days and 60 nights in summer. The waters are part of the North Pacific, so never really get warm. However, with the sun overhead, islanders and visitors enjoy paddling around and waterskiing, sometimes in dry suits. This man could use a couple of kayak paddles but doesn't seem to care.

The San Juan Islands are a vacationer's paradise at least six or eight months of the year. Even in winter it is rare to have any snow in this part of the world, but it does occur occasionally -- and leaves within days.  In the 1800s would-be gold prospectors headed for the Fraser River of Canada had to go first to Victoria to get a license and often paddled their boats through the calm San Juan group. Only four of the larger islands (about 172 islands plus others more popularly called rocks) are served by Washington State Ferries. Residents on other islands must take a small boat, commercial small boat, or a barge rented to take vehicles or other heavy gear on and off islands.

The North Pacific Ocean waters farther south at the mouth of the Columbia is the villain that sends formidable swells at times to confront the outflow of the river and make it difficult for boats to enter the ocean. Essentially, the north-to south coastal shore of Washington stretches from around the San Juan Islands and Olympic Peninsula to the mouth of the Columbia River.