Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Last weekend I shared pictures from a 24-hour backpacking trip to Island Lake. Today, I have a few from a dayhike and another overnight near the same area. Next week, look for a few teasers from a week of kayaking in the Broughtons (Canada, near the north end of Vancouver Island). In late June I took a friend out for a hike to Mason Lake, which actually is very close to Island Lake (the trail is one of the options for reaching it).  You spend a long time climbing through the forest.   Bear grass along the trail.   Eventually the trail breaks out into a clear area as you approach the ridgeline--and Mt. Rainier begins to appear over the hills! Columbine near the lake.   Mason Lake. Even on a weekday this one is busy, with people swimming and having a good time. I was kind of sorry I hadn't come prepared to swim (I mean, I am always prepared to swim, but there were too many people around to make skinny-dipping a good option).   About a month later, I loaded my pack...

Maybe due to indolence, maybe to spending most of my weekends selling books, or to my protracted struggle to get my new WIP (Work In Progress) to cooperate, I haven't gotten up to the local mountains as much as I intended this summer. To be precise, I've done one dayhike and two quick overnighters. In this post, and maybe one for next weekend, I'm sharing some of the photos from those trips. Today I'm featuring an overnight hike to Island and Rainbow Lakes, just off of I90. The I90 corridor is hugely popular with Seattlites for the obvious reason that it's a super-short drive. I worked all morning, left my house about 1 p.m., and was on the trail by 2:15. It's hard to beat that. There are several ways to get to Island Lake; I chose the one with the least elevation gain and maybe the least crowded TH. Starting that late in the day meant I had no trouble getting parking, as the early hikers were already leaving. It helped that it was a Wednesday, not a weekend. Ab...

This week's book review comes from my "outdoor adventure and environmental studies" pile.    Title : North to the Future: An Offline Adventure Through the Changing Wilds of Alaska Au thor: Ben Weissenbach. Read by the author Publication info : Grand Central Publishing, 2025. 11 hours. Hardcover same, 320 pages. Source : Library Publisher's Blurb (via Goodreads) : At the age of twenty-one, college student Ben Weissenbach set out into the Alaskan wilderness armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What meets him there is a landscape both stark and awe-inspiring—a part of the world seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities. There’s Roman Dial, the larger-than-life field scientist who leads him on a five week journey into the Alaskan backcountry. There’s Kenji Yoshikawa, the isolated researcher who leaves Ben alone for eleven days to care for his remote cabin, whe...

Wow, where did the last week go? Anyway, here I am again with more from the Gila Wilderness. The third day of our trek was a shorter hike up the Middle Fork to the point where we would be crossing over to the West Fork.  Heading out. We'd been in no doubt that we weren't alone out there, passing many piles of bear poop on the previous days. We'd spotted a bear early in the second day's hike, as well. This morning, we found fresh tracks shortly after leaving camp. My size 9.5 (40.5) boot next to the print. The same bit of sandy trail also provided some tracks of a mountain lion (spoiler alert: we never saw any of them). We carried on, being sure to announce our presence before pushing into the brush.   We seemed to be coming out of the narrow canyon, with more and larger open spaces. That just left us more exposed to the sun, and things were heating up. "Meadow" and pointy bits of eroded rock.  Not sure about the ID--my app says Black Locust. Beautiful pink blo...