Our original backpacking plan was Tuesday-Saturday, but the Akawa Butte Fire (InciWeb) was dumping smoke into Three Sisters Wilderness and then a Red Alert for thunderstorms and possible additional fires in same area. We waited until after the Red Alert cleared and left Thursday morning for Devils Lake TH. Driving to the TH haze and…
With this year’s OR snowpack so far below averages, I was backpacking Three Sisters Wilderness 2 weeks earlier than any summer in last 10 years. Context on how this year fits into the last decade: the 2025–26 winter was one of the driest in the Cascades in years. Peak snow water equivalent in the Central…
Part 3 of the Danube River photos is all about the Magyar Cowboys in Hungary. Their ‘ranch’ is about 15 minute drive from the river, and they put on quite a show. Fancy riding, great horses, and 3 generations of cowboys in the show. The youngest stole the show! Weather was extreme for their show…
Part 2 of the Danube River cruise is all about the river itself – especially the narrows where the river goes through a gorge of limestone cliffs and caves. Bridges at sunrise either done or under construction showed the human impacts recently and in several places old Roman forts still confound ‘how?’ On the river…
Leaving the woods and entering different human worlds’ images sometimes make no sense, sometimes make me wonder “how did they do that?” …. Cruising the Danube River from Bucharest to Budapest with a stop in Istanbul found these roofs photo worthy. The contrast and similarities in architecture through the three religions (Islam, Orthodox and Catholic)…
My sister passed this on from Beyond Parks https://morethanjustparks.substack.com/… voices about why wild public lands are so important… for all creatures great and small 1. Abraham Lincoln, 1864 …the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time. That’s the language of the Yosemite Grant Act, which Lincoln…
For several nights, my sister, her partner and I camped at Walton Lake in the OR Ochoco Mountains. This was my third visit in four years, and their first time. Seasonally, this was the latest I’d been there even though same on the calendar. Snow was complete gone even above 7,000 ft. Large mammals non-existent,…
On the way to Portland to visit friends, I stopped over at Silver Falls State Park for a quick trip through the 10 Waterfalls. My car was the first in North Falls TH parking lot and that early start gave me about 3 hours of solitude. By 10:00-10:30, the parking lot was full and humans…
Central cascades snowpack remains historically low and suggests that early June could be the start of Willamette National Forest’s great mosquito gauntlet – a couple weeks early traditionally. If you have not experienced that gauntlet, don’t … find another hike. I headed to Mckenzie River trail to add the lower, wild section downriver from Koosah…
A warm, balmy day threatening rain all afternoon, but the scrub oak meadows were full of summer flowers, interesting lizards, new song birds … how better to spend the afternoon? I left North TH around 11:15 and hiked Mt Pisgah via trails #3 and #4. Human traffic was seasonally low – almost none. The threatening…
