Tag: Travel

July Hiking Report

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Scenic Point.  (For a description of the photo above scroll down under the Hiking Stats.)

The highlight of my hiking in July was a trip to Glacier National Park. A beautiful and scenic wonder.

July 2011 Hiking Report

7/2 –   4.8 miles, 500ft. 2 hours, Redwood Regional Park- Stream trail,

7/5- 7.98mi,2,347ft,  3h 2m  – PG&E trail O&B

7/10-11 mi, 1800 ft, 4h40m– Woods Trail,Barlow Rd,Mt Umunhum Rd, Bald Mt trail- Out and Back

7/15- 7.90mi, 1,896ft 3h 00m – Vista Point Out & Back

7/15-3.6,mi  ft.not much, time not long– Mirror Lake, Yosemite Nat. Pk

7/17- 3.35mi, 250ft, 1h– PG&E trail to Wildcat Loop-PG&E trail

7/21- 9.77mi, 1200ft, 5h– Iceberg-Ptarmigan Trail, Many Glacier,Glacier Nat Park

7/23-7.8mi, 2,853ft, 4h40m– Scenic Point, Two Medicine,Glacier Nat Park

7/23- GPS coordinates at Trail-head 48.480005-113.361676

Total miles hiked-

56.2 miles

Total ft climbed-

10,821ft- does not include any guesstimate for Mirror lake hike.

 19 days to Cloud’s Rest!

Photo information

This is Scenic Point. I am on a ledge which is about 5ft wide seeking shelter from the wind along with my fellow hikers, and Pat Hagan our guide.

Looking this direction you can see the road into Two Medicine and above that Hwy 49 I believe. Looking further out toward the plains is where you’d find the towns of Kiowa, and Browning… I think.

I sat on this ledge and had a quick lunch. A Hairy Marmot peeked out of the rocks on the ledge and was hoping for his lunch too. I’m sure many people feed them, or just happen to leave big crumbs behind.

I want to come up here again. Hopefully, next summer. The deeper I hike into this park the more I fall in love with it.

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 17-35@ 28mm| f5.6| 1/200 sec.| ISO 200| Manual Mode| Hand-held

Here’s the Hoary Marmot

Photograph by Deborah M. Zajac

This is a ledge that I was sitting on just under the point up at Scenic Point in Two Medicine Glacier Nat. Park.  I’ve cropped off the tip of my boot from this photo. The ledge was only about 5 feet wide. The trees you see down there…that’s 7,000+ foot drop!
While having lunch and resting from the climb up this Hoary Marmot popped out.
He didn’t seem too shy. I’m sure he’s quite used to people.
It was the first time I’d ever seen a Hairy Marmot or any other for that matter. He’s cute!

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 17-35 @ 35mm| f5.6| 1/320 second| ISO 200| Manual Mode| Hand-held

“Remember the dreams you had as a child and realize it’s never too late to make them come true.” ~ Constance A. DeFlitch

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Via Flickr:
Copyright © 2011 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

I got to spend a full day with my friend Big Jay while in Montana. I had read about a Mission in St. Ignatius,MT and wanted to go tour it . Fortunately he was game. While in St. Ignatius we spotted this Barn and pulled over to shoot it.
I was busy photographing it when a young man drove up to the gate and unlocked it to let himself out. Big Jay asked if we could come around the gate to shoot the barn a bit. The young man was very sympathetic. He said he was a painter and was doing an acrylic of the Barn himself. He said he comes out to this very yard with his easel and paints. Wouldn’t I love a photo of that! I also wish I could paint like that. He left the gate open and told us to take our time, and have fun. We stayed about 30 minutes walking through many of the fields getting different angles and views of the barn. I liked this view with all the wildflowers growing over the fences.

Nikon D90| Nikkor 17-35@ 19mm| f8| 1/40| ISO 200| Manual Mode| Tripod| Self Timer

On a clear day…

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On a clear day…, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004-.

Via Flickr:
Copyright © 2011 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.
On this Sat. morning I rose a bit later than usual and took a leisurely 1.5 hour drive over to East Glacier to meet Ranger Pat Hagan. Pat was leading me and several other hikers up the Scenic Point Trail.
Pat expanded on the trail giving us more of an idea of what we were about to take on going on this hike.
He said, “We’re going to be hiking up roughly 23 stories today, and, we’re taking the stairs.”

The trail has 16 switchbacks getting longer the higher you climb. Every 4th switchback or so Pat had a story. Most were about bears. Bear management, behavior, and safety which I found interesting, and educational.
I turned around to look back here. I’m about halfway to the top at this point. It’s windy up here, and worth the effort to get here. Look at this view! That’s Two Medicine Lake, and way down there by the waters edge is a campground where many of my hiking companions were camping, and about half inch above the Z in my signature in the right corner is the parking lot my Va-Va is parked in under a shady pine tree.
Hike details
7.80 miles rd trip
2,853ft elevation gain
5h57m total time

The trail is steep, but the switchbacks help make the going easier.

See my complete hiking stats here.

My GPS unit is this one here.

Nikon D300s| Nikkor 17-35@ 24mm| f5.6| 1/250 second| ISO 200| Manual Mode| Hand-held

Ed Hendler Bridge

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Ed Hendler Bridge, originally uploaded by dmzajac2004-.

Via Flickr:
Copyright © 2011 Deborah M. Zajac. All Rights Reserved.

On the way the Glacier National Park I spent the night in Pasco, WA. I was told about this bridge last year and wanted to shoot it then while on my way to Glacier, but arrived late and tired. This year I arrived earlier so wasn’t too tired to scout out a location for a night shot of the bridge.

This is looking south toward the Blue Bridge, and Kennewick, WA. This bridge looks gold at night, but it is white. Last year the people at the hotel called it the White Bridge when I mentioned wanting to photograph it. Keeping it simple I thought since it’s so close to the Pioneer Memorial Bridge which is blue and called the “Blue Bridge”.

For the historians:
“The Cable Bridge, officially called the Ed Hendler Bridge and sometimes called the Intercity Bridge, spans the Columbia River between Pasco and Kennewick in southeastern Washington as State Route 397. It was constructed in 1978 and replaced the Pasco-Kennewick Bridge, an earlier span built in 1922 and demolished in 1990.

At the time, the bridge was thought to be the first in the United States to use a ‘cable-stayed’ design and is constructed almost entirely of pre-stressed concrete (knowledge of the Captain William Moore Bridge, an asymmetric cable-stayed bridge near Skagway, Alaska, which was completed three years earlier, was not widespread outside Alaska. The bridge towers were constructed first, with the bridge deck, which was cast in individual segments, raised up and secured to each other.

The bridge was named after Ed Hendler, a Pasco, Washington insurance salesman, as well as the city’s former mayor, who headed up the committee responsible for obtaining the funding for construction of the bridge. Hendler died in August 2001.

A controversial feature of the bridge was added in 1998, when lights were added to illuminate the bridge at night. Many thought this was unnecessary and a waste of both electricity and money. During a power crisis in 2000, the lights were turned off, but they were turned on for one night to honor Hendler’s passing. Now the lights are turned on at night, and turned off at 2am.”~ Wiki-pedia

Nikon D90| Nikkor 17-35@ 17mm| f13| 13 seconds| ISO 200| Manual Mode| Tripod| Cable Release