Kate goofin’ for her Dad’s camera. Posin’ on the Burroughs Loop Trails at Mt. Rainier one hot Thursday in July of 2019 waaay back yonder in the early 21st Century C.E.

Ti’Swaq’, the Mountain that Wipes the Sky, or simply, The Sky Wiper, as the Alliance to Restore Native Names wants to call Mt. Rainier, looms above the surrounding Cascade Mountains to 14,411 feet or 4,392 meters in elevation. Taken from Sunrise Point.

What happens when Daddy doesn’t pay attention to what shoes he grabs outa the closet in the dark. I didn’t realize this ridiculously comical error until I was in the parking lot at Sunrise Village. Ended up wearing my worn Chaco sandals I drove up in out on the hike. Glad Katie & I weren’t on a more serious climb! Worn my Chacos on plenty of hikes in the past. They’re old & worn out now, tho, & pebbles & grit tend to get caught between sole of foot & top o’ sandal. But how in the world?! Two Altra trail shoes! Same brand, aye, but for the same left foot and two very different models, HA!

Earlier views of The Mountain from Sunrise Point (6,100 feet).

Looking down at Sunrise Lake & the mountains beyond from the Point.

Zooming in on Sunrise Lake. I dream of backpacking down in there and out to the north. Thursday 25 July 2019.

Looking south toward the Mt. Adams stratovolcano. It soars to 12,280 feet high. Hey, wait! Wikipedia says Adams is 12,281 feet high. The US Forest Service, Summit Post, & the Mountaineers all state 12,276 feet in height.

Mt. Adams is massive. The Alliance to Restore Native Names wants to call it Pah Do. Other Native American names are Pahto and Klickitat.

Tamanos Mountain & Colwlitz Chimneys & Banshee Peak? Rugged, carved-down, chaotic volcanic rock & melting glaciers beyond Goat Island Mountain.  A network of trails including the Wonderland Trail must loop around these forbidding peaks. My goodness, it’s hot outside, and this summer weather feels good up here in the alpine.

Back on the road. Leaving Sunrise Point. Driving higher up to Sunrise Village. Dad drove. Kate snapped this foto.

Lots to see along the way!

Parking lot’s full at Sunrise. We found a spot anyway. Then I found out I had two left-footed shoes!

One of the buildings to survive old-timey era fires. There aren’t any functioning lodges up here at Sunrise anymore. Water scarcity and overly-abundant sewage issues remain paramount.

Ti’Swaq’/Rainier compels us forth with its mass & gravity.

We hit the trails, my daughter & I. The weather’s hot & dry. Feels so arid. Yet we are grateful we are not inundated in clouds of wildfire smoke. I stop to slather on sunscreen. I hate sunscreen. Really do. And big hats. But both parents had skin cancers, altho both also died of other types of cancer. My maternal grandparents had little skin cancers, too, and my paternal grandpa died of lung & brain cancer. Now I have a mess of AKs, actinic keratoses, solar precancers.

Kate the Great as we set off onto the Sunrise Rim Trail part of the Burroughs Loop Trails. And…the Story of Hats…hats shade faces & thus mess up fotos. Oh well. Doesn’t matter. She’s 20 & ready to go!

Kate.

Aye, I love this girl of mine. Adopted her as a newborn. Came into my life imbued with such natural power we called her “Hurricane Kate” even as a child. Nowadays she poses totally different when she’s with her college buddies posing for Instagram shots than like today’s pics when she’s with one of  her, uh, um, parents! Yup, relationships between adult parents and their adult children sure are funny! Even so, I love all of my kids regardless of their habits and explorations.

Hint of Moon over the mountains. That’s part of Burroughs Ridge in the distance. Feels hot & dry out in the solar radiation today.

Looking across the Inter Fork of the White River & Glacier Basin (both out of sight in the foto) to a milky-green glacial lake & the East Fork of the White River where it emerges from beneath the moraine covering melting glaciers. The worn down ridge of Goat Island Mountain is on foto left. Its highest point rises to 7,288 feet or 2221 meters in elevation. Mt. Rainier looms to foto right to wipe the sky. The milky-green lake, however, is fairly recent. It isn’t on my 2010/2016 Green Trails Map 269SX of Mount Rainier & the Wonderland Trail nor on my 1989/2009 National Geographic Map 217 of the national park. The 2019 Google Map online at the WTA.org website for the Glacier Basin Trail, however, shows the lake. There was a highly destructive flood there in 2006, and each year seems to bring hotter and hotter temperatures. Climate change. Global climate disruption. Global warming. The Holocene/Anthropocene mass extinction. We’re between Ice Ages, but we may not get another ice age if we flip as Planet Venus did beyond a point of no return into a runaway greenhouse apocalypse. Of course, the debris expected to be kicked up into the sky from a supervolcanic eruption, a gigantic asteroid or comet impact, or all-out nuclear war would darken Earth’s skies more than enough to usher in an equally unwelcome ice age.

Looking above the source of the White River’s East Fork to Little Tahoma, the 3rd tallest peak in Washington State. Altho still a part of the greater Rainier volcanic massif, Little Tahoma’s spire juts up to 11,138 ft / 3395 m in height.

Kate ia absorbed with her smartfone camera while at a significant lookout on the Burroughs Mountain Loop Trail.

Another perspective of Little Tahoma Peak and the glacial melt streams with those new “climate change” lakes below. Foto by Kate.

Kate takes a picture of herself taking a selfie.

Kathryn on the Burroughs Mountain Loop Trails with Mt. Rainier in the background, Thursday 25 July 2019. Photo by her Dad.

Kate grins again.

Uh Oh, my turn to burn! Foto of me by Kate.

William Bass at 60.

Aye, that’s me! Foto of a father by his daughter. Summer 2019!

COULD be prancing around Ti’Swaq’ in a kilt. Instead I float in a hazy dream. Foto by Kathryn.

Kathryn Elizabeth pauses to mess with her Osprey daypack. Aye, I love doing stuff outdoors with my children.

The surface of Mars? Minus green growing thangs, yeah? And little bugs & microbes, too, eh? Wait till we get back to the Red Planet!

Views from the trail with so much to see! Goat Island Mountain, Little Tahoma, upper forks of the White River, parts of the Fryingpan & Emmons Glaciers, Little Tahoma Peak, and the barren beauty of glacial moraines and snow free stretches of Burroughs Mountain itself.

Man, I am getting so sunburned! Roasting my solar-radiated actinic keratoses! And WHO is that fotobombing my picture in back?

Goofy Daddy, yo! Truth is aging hurts sometimes, & ya just learn to keep going anyway & enjoy the time left before our inevitable extinction. And, uh oh, she’s doing it again! Fotobombing my picture! With her…her…with her THUMB!

Yup

La La La La … she’s quite a character, my Kate.

Yes? Oh, again, huh?

So Daddy takes pictures of rocks instead. 

An old firetower squats atop the steep, rocky slopes of Mt. Fremont. The Mount Fremont Lookout Tower Trail provided Momma Gwen, Morgan/Dylan, myself, and Toddler Kate with quite an adventure as Big Sister kept trying to save Little Sister from running off the edges as if to fly thru the air. Many years ago by a decade & a half or so…

Staring across at the jagged, broken-up castle-like currents of Sluiskin Mountain with its 2 sub peaks, The Squaw to the left and The Chief to the right. The Chief reminds me a little of Shiprock near Four Corners in New Mexico. Here Sluiskin’s Chief stabs 2,142 meters or 7,026 feet up into the sky.

A school group of foreign exchange students work their way down the dusty trails towards the more distant summits of Burroughs Mountain.

Steamboat Prow, the bow of the mountain ship, points at about 9,725 feet or so just above Camp Shurman. The prow points straight up the Emmons Glacier to Columbia Crest & the summit of Ti’Swaq’/Rainier. I climbed the Emmons Route with the Seattle Mountaineers back in the summer of 1996 on a 100° F heat wave day. Such was considered unusual at the time, but seems more commonplace now as Global Climate Disruption takes it toll with global warming.

Adventure & Exploration fills the illusory emptiness of the expanse.

Beautiful Sleeping Monster of my Dreams.

Kate.

Eye of Mystery. What thoughts & feelings rise & fall within one’s Inner Sanctuary?

Steamboat Prow & up the Emmons Glacier beyond.

William Bass. Foto of Father by Daughter.

Feeling 60 years young on this trip. Woo Hoo! Foto by my 20 year old middle daughter. Thursday the 25th day of July 2019.

Sometimes I can sense the sand of time pouring down thru the crux of the hourglass.

Down out from Burroughs down at Berkeley Park and the small valley below.

Grand Park sprawls beyond yon peaks out of sight. Beautiful trails lead there as well.

Pausing to look back as we descend down the side of Burroughs Mountain.

Katie strides off down the mountain and across a steep, snowy slope. But what is she looking at?

Kato gotta be checkin’ da Fone, yo.

KEHB. Up close. Texting. In the snow.

There she goes! Most of the work in maintaining these trails is accomplished by volunteers with some paid ranger staff. All of our out there were grateful for their services.

Foto by Kathryn Bass as she looks back up Burroughs towards Rainier. Who is the silly fool on the left slip sliding around in the snow with a pair of slick ass sandals? Why, it’s me her Daddy, of course. Remember I’m wearing Chacos as I grabbed the wrong damn shoes outa the closet in the dark.

Kate took this foto of me & another hiker waiting for me to slide & wiggle on down around past her.

Dust & Rocks between Sky & Snow.

Kate on the Burroughs Mountain Loop Trails.

Workin’

Frozen Lake. With much less snow & ice, too.

Ice is a skeleton melting. Reminds me of a certain melting toughness. Giant pelvis evaporates. Inner core collapses. 

Gazing across the expanse of the alpine and subalpine zones.

Foto by Kathryn Bass as we look back across these summerlands towards the ridge of Burroughs Mountain as Ti’Swaq’ looms up behind to wipe clean the skies.

The beauty of desolation.

We approach closer to skirt the perimeter of Frozen Lake. It’s fenced off to further protect its resources as the main water supply for Sunrise Village.

Moving on away from Frozen…

Layers of Nature, stark harbingers of change.

Looking down on Shadow Lake from the Sourdough Ridge Trail on the way back from Frozen Lake to Sunrise. 

Shadow Lake in full afternoon July sunshine.

Back in the car & going home! Woo HOO yeah! This time Kate insists on both driving back, after all it is her car, & fotobombing my peechure! EgAd, lookit me hat hair!

See my head? Oh, the curse of being mammals with hair!

Am I dignified yet? Kate? Oh well, she’s busy driving steeply downhill on curvy, narrow mountain roads.

Dignified. And seared by solar radiation.

Fun times with Daughter at the wheel. Bad selfies, too!

Goofin’ wi’ duck lips & cockscomb whips.

Foto by Kathryn Bass. We made it back to Seattle in time to celebrate Dylan (formerly Morgan), my oldest, and say farewell before she moves to New York City for grad school. Left to Right in the picture are Gwen (my 2nd ex-wife & mother of Dylan & Kate), Talia (daughter of my 3rd ex-wife Kristina & my youngest, well, stepdaughter, actually) & my oldest, Dylan. Kristina & me are there but not in the foto. Kate, of course, snaps the shot. Sunset alpenglow at Carkeek Park in the north part of Seattle on the edge of the Salish Sea, same day after a wonderful summer dayhike out of Sunrise in Mount Rainier National Park. Thursday 25 July 2019. I love all of these people!