Harry's Ridge — Thursday, Jul. 10, 2014

South Cascades > Mount St. Helens

What an amazing day! Perfect weather, flowers, vistas, trail conditions and location. Harry's Ridge is a real keeper, especially for mid-July when the wildflowers are just thick. The Devil's Elbow portion of the trail is a bit creepy but only requires real attention in one narrow spot where the trail has slid. Otherwise, just don't try walking and looking through your camera's viewfinder at the same time. The drop on the western side is long and steep. It looked to be about a 100% grade. Most of the time, the tread is as wide as a city sidewalk. Right from the start the views are stupendous. We flat-landers are unused to seeing things so big and so distant that Mt. St. Helens looks more like a painting on the sky than an object on the ground. At any point in the trail you could sit and study near and distant detail until your eyes got tired. The capper was in rounding the base of Harry's Ridge when the full width of Spirit lake is revealed with Mt. Adams on the horizon. Added to all that, the wildflowers were in absolute profusion with the south-facing slopes offering up warmed, scented breezes. Weather? Sunny all day with kindly light winds.