Wednesday, 8 June 2016

Crystal Mountain

The final major destination for our weekend out of town was Crystal Mountain, a skiing resort near Mt Rainier in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forestwhich has all the usual chairlifts, chalets and cable cars. It was a ride on the last named that really attracted us because the views from the top, at an altitude of  2137 m (7012 feet) were supposed to be fabulous and the journey up starting at 1192 m  (3192 feet) meant a massive increase in height (of almost 1000 m) during the ride. Everything lived up to expectations. This is, by the way, my nine hundred and first post to my blog.

You can probably just make out the cable car's route up the mountain-side, now almost bare of snow after some very hot weather, and the view of distant snow-capped mountains from the car park was alluring.



We met a couple in the car-park who had their cute little dog with them wearing sun-glasses to avoid the glare! They kindly agreed to my taking this amusing picture.


Here we are awaiting our carriage or gondola, which nicely seated the six of us and Emily and her family clearly enjoyed the 10 minute ride.



As we rose higher the local snow-capped mountains became more prominent.



And the views from the summit were breath-taking. In the distance in the photo below is the cone of Mt Adams, a potentially active stratovolcano 3,743 m high (12,280 feet). And of course Mt Rainier itself was highly visible, this time showing its southern face to us. The first image was taken without any telephoto enlargement, and the second magnifies its size





The main range of the Cascades in the far distance.





Emily, her family, and Dot relaxing and even tossing the odd snowball.






And talking of active volcanoes, here in the distance is the shattered summit of Mt St. Helens, which erupted causing huge damage in 1980 - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens.


And so to base!


 AS

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