Tag Archives: Smoke

Oct4

A pivot to and Elk and a King – Hiking the Elk Mountain to King Mountain loop

Posted on by
Standard

Sunday, 20-Aug-2023


The day before, Jess and I had gone to a work event of mine – a fairly impressive shindig at a nearby resort, where we got the chance to meet and greet with various coworkers, play games, and give a rather epic showing for ourselves at Laser Tag.

We had our backpacks packed and ready in the car, so when we left we headed directly East, toward Mount Hood for a weekend of backpacking… nothing heavy, mind you, but a good opportunity to get the legs moving and get ourselves into the woods to relax and disconnect from the world.

Unfortunately, this was the Pacific Northwest in Wildfire season… and the Wildfires had turned on us a bit overnight. The air was rough, Jess’s asthma was kicking in, and the sky had taken on a singularly ominous “blood orange” hue. Backpacking up on the mountain simply wasn’t in the cards.



Instead, we simply laid low – headed back to Wilsonville, had a lovely relaxing afternoon and evening, and then headed out toward the coast in an attempt to evade a bit of the smoke.



Our goal was a hike I hadn’t done in years – the Elk Mountain and Kings Mountain loop. Interestingly, I’d last done it with Daniel, during another bout of wildfire-induced smoke… Thinking back, it wasn’t any less smokey then, and it wasn’t any less smokey now…

Maybe this isn’t the best hike to do in the smoke?


Ehh, we did it anyways.




The nice thing about wildfire smoke, if there is a nice thing to be said, is that the light can be stunning. It’s a sort of golden hour that lasts all day long… if you can push through the burning lungs and painful eyes, some great views can absolutely be had of the Sunlight filtering through the clouds and smoke and into the trees.

We hiked, we rested, we ate and drank. We drank tons of water, and even took a few moments to fly the drone around… not that it got any particularly good views, but it was definitely fun none the less.

default
default
default
default



After the drive home, we stopped to grab dinner from the grocery… and saw our extra little neat view of the day – a “do it yourself convertible”, complete with an anti-theft Club, since… you know… doors didn’t exist.

Kinda cool. Interesting weekend. I’ll take it.

Sep29

Oregon Wildfires – the air was not good. Mid-September, 2020

Posted on by
Standard

September, 2020

 

Man.

2020 is just… not great, man.

It’s scary – I saw someone say that we shouldn’t think of this year as the worst wildfires in a decade… but instead, think of them as the best wildfires for the next decade.  Every year, they get a little bit worse… hopefully we can reverse it, but realistically…

Well, let’s just simplify it and say that I’ll be buying a heavier-duty respirator, instead of the small one that I’ve got now.  Maybe one of those ones with a self-contained tank, or hip-filter or something?  We’ll see.  I’ll look on the fire-fighters supply store and see what I can source this coming Winter.

For now though, the fires burn, and I stay indoors.

From the 10th to the 17th, roughly, Wilsonville stood on the world stage as having some of the worst air quality in the world – top 10 for almost every day, and literal worst for a few hours on the 10th.  My worksite was closed that whole time, though thankfully I already have a working from home setup, so it didn’t affect my ability to get things done too harshly.

Physically, it was rough – headaches, light nausea, that sort of thing… but again, thanks to already having a full fridge and a good set of facemasks, I was pretty well protected from the ash and smoke.  I just stayed home, and did my best to not refresh the air quality page and the evacuation orders page too often.

 

There’s not much else to say, really… I took a few pictures to give some visuals to it… so sit back and enjoy this quick glimpse into what living on Mars will probably look like.

I guess, since we’re having so much trouble getting a manned mission to Mars set up … we’ve decided to bring Mars here?

Sorry, that was the only viable joke I could think of for this whole thing, so I had to fit it into the blog post somewhere.

Sep20

Hiking to Duffy Lake, Mt. Jefferson wilderness – 06-Sept-2020

Posted on by
Standard

Sunday, 06-Sept-2020

 

Wildfire season has started.

Growing up, I was used to the four traditional seasons – in Winter we had blizzards, Spring had rain and sometimes hurricane remnants, Summer we melted, and in Autumn it was beautiful and perfect.

Out here in Oregon, we sort of have three seasons.  Rainy, Sunny, and on fire.

Right now, we’re on fire.

 

I don’t want to get into the specifics and stressors of said fires, since that’s just unpleasant and not something that I can really affect in any way, so instead I’ll talk about the hike I went on right before the fires hit.  Immediately before, in fact.  Like… very close before.  I started the hike before the fires were really bad… and by the time we got back to the trailhead, the wilderness was closed due to the fires.

The trail in question?  Duffy Lake, out in the Jefferson Wilderness.  Nothing crazy or long, or with huge elevation gain… but a lovely looking trail, and a really great way to get out into the woods.

 

I really enjoyed it, got to meet and pet some horses, and had amazing views of the lake while eating lunch.  At this point the smoke from the nearby fires was pretty minimal, and instead of cloying the smoke just sort of hung above the forest, giving this interestingly misty / ethereal haze to everything.  It was… beautiful, in a way.