The Narrative Image

  Mt. Adams as seen from the Cooper Spur shelter ( Mt. Hood ) on 09-22-12 Mt. Hood ’s lengthening shadow, straining for the eastern horizon  Smoke from the fire doing a pretty fair impersonation of clouds   The timberline trail spirals on around the mountain  Toyed with the idea of composing a shot here, but Lola the dog was feeling territorial  Mt. Adams beyond the shelter  Mt. St. Helens   As night falls, the source of the smoke becomes evident  The scale of the fire is slowly revealed as the sky gets darker  An inferno about the size of a mountain  Swirling winter clouds ride autumn’s cool night air into the valley, like circling predators patiently waiting for a flickering campfire to go out.  Detailed information about the fire can be found here:  http://inciweb.org/incident/3249/

Monkey-cam had been monitoring the internet for weather reports and once he saw the little smiling sun symbols in the weekend boxes, he began begging in earnest for another chance to see Cooper Spur before the onset of serious snow. Regular viewers may recall that Monkey-cam was in the process of testing some boundaries and chose our last Cooper Spur expedition as the scene for acting out his new found sense of independence. I kept suggesting lower altitude hikes because I was pretty sure the last weather front had deposited snow down to the 4000 ft. level, but when I got an email from Mr. Lloyd (of Long Shadow Photography - www.longshadowphoto.com ) reporting that the road to Cloud Cap was still open, I relented and started rounding up the hiking gear. Mt. Hood as seen from the Parkdale Ranger Station where you can’t get forest parking permits on Sunday because they’re closed. It’s a fairly long drive from Portland to Mt. Hood so I was glad to have Monkey-cam’s company. We tried to ca...