Summer's over?

Apparently classes start tomorrow, which explains the madness getting from point A to point B in town. That means summer is officially over! Though the sunny weather likes to stick around this time of year in Seattle, making it my favorite hiking season by far. Ripe blueberries and huckleberries, yellow-to-red leaves everywhere, yes please.

I've gone out of my comfort zone this summer and climbed two big peaks, Granite Mountain in Montana (its highest peak), and Mount Stuart in the Cascades (7th highest in WA). Both had class 4-5 rock which means that ropes were duly appreciated (or desperately yearned for). There was plenty of exposure which made both climbs entirely beautiful and sometimes terrifying.

Here are some nice photos from Granite (not mine):
http://xpda.com/mountains/granite/

And here's a photo of Stuart (not mine):
http://peakery.com/static/images/items/main/mount-stuart.jpg.910x580_q85_crop-top.jpg


Both were absolutely thrilling, and luckily I had a fantastic group to go with on both trips that helped immensely during the toughest bits. We got to see Yellowstone, too, and discovered that it takes forever to drive through there at night due to bison disappearing and reappearing all over the roads. Wouldn't recommend it, though I would highly recommend visiting the park during daylight hours.

In other news, grad school is still plodding along. I've stopped taking a picture a day after missing a week of photos (flu + food poisoning did me in), and I'm still working on finishing a classic book for each month. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not a quick read with its southern dialect.

Today might be a garden makeover day in time for the autumn crops: bok choy, lettuce, spinach, swiss chard, onions, leeks, and kale.

Ski season isn't that far away already. What happened to summer?

Old photo of the day: Fires near Wenatchee