My mountain climbing partner and I had picked a weekend in August, yet on this occasion we logically assumed that there would be other peak bagger mountaineers doing the same ascent and that they would arrive on Friday or Saturday, and depart by Sunday. So on our journey we opted to arrive on Saturday about mid-day, make our ascent on Sunday, and depart on Monday.
We spent the first day, Saturday, driving north there from Portland, arriving at the parking lot at mid-day, thus giving us a reasonable half-day to make the initial approach hike up to high camp.
Indeed, up there at high camp were a number of other summiteers camped at the bivouac site at several of the flat landing spots along the moraine near the lower terminus of the glacier.
Early Sunday morning we departed upward summit bound; that same morning everyone else departed downward trailhead bound.
We marched slowly but steadily across the two-and-a-half mile wide glacier, meandering around numerous crevasses, en-route to the final steep snow ravine near the summit plateau.
Above that final snow ravine it was a basic long march across the flat summit plateau to the lone subtly higher real summit perched roughly some 400' higher than the nearby surrounding snowy terrain. It took all day for the adventure but we returned safe to our high bivouac campsite near the moraine late in the day.
At that moment a unique situation clearly struck our innermost senses, for not only were we the ONLY party up there at high camp in the early evening hours surrounded by an entire alpine zone all to ourselves, but we had also managed to pick the perfect weekend of banner blue skies with nary a hint of clouds anywhere in sight. As we relaxed at our bivouac site in cotton T-shirts and cotton pants, there was not a hint of any chill temperature, nor a strong breeze in the air.
And for miles around us at the alpine level, between the deep green forested slopes below us, and the rock and snow peak world above us, lay an immense treeless alpine world of infinite colorful bloom with every imaginable flower available on full bold display.
I had brought my Canon DSLR 40D camera with me, and while my climbing friends proceeded to prepare our evening dinner, I took a long wide slow walking tour amongst all of the very colorful meadow floral beauty that surrounded our campsite, taking many dozens of photographs of one of the most impressively amazing floral displays I had ever seen on the west side of the northern Washington Cascade Mountain range.
