Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

This is an almost-real-time photo post--these pictures are cell-phone photos (easiest to handle away from my home computer) of a hike on Thursday in Saguero National Park East. I fled down here a week ago to get some light and reset my winter brain. Predictably, while Seattle has been awash in rain, the desert SW has been horribly dry (a part of the reason for the LA fires). I noticed the effects of that drought all around on my hike. I started from the Douglas Springs trailhead on the far fringes of Tucson, and hiked a loop incorporating the Douglas Springs trail, the Three Tanks trail, and the Garwood trail for a 6.25-mile hike with a modest 1100' of climbing and descending. Yes, Petey Possum came along! The hike started with easy walking along the valley floor before beginning a stiff climb up and around a hill. This is the Sonoran Desert, and the iconic plant of the Sonoran (at least, the northern part) is the saguaro--outlined against the horizon. I hadn't been walking lon...

Last weekend I shared photos from the hike in to Skoki Lodge and one of our outings from that base. Today we'll finish off my fall trip to the Canadian Rockies with some amazing peak-top views and the rather wintery hike out. On our second full day at the lodge, the weather was iffy at best, and only two of the three of us were crazy enough to head out for our planned hike up Skoki Mountain. At about two and a half miles round trip and a 1600' climb, it's not a huge undertaking, though a bit steep (you can make it even steeper by taking the "scree trail" which goes pretty much right up the side of the mountain, but we took the longer route).  We lounged around for a bit after breakfast, but there appeared to be some clearing around 9:45, so Tom and I headed up through the trees. About the time we hit treeline, the snow resumed. Still, visibility wasn't zero, and Tom's weather app said we'd get clearing about eleven, so on we went. If you look closely...

It's the weekend, and time for more eye candy! Back at the very end of August I joined my brother-in-law and his nephew in a 4-night, 5-day backpack on the Timberline Trail around Mt. Hood in Oregon. At about 42 miles, with around 10,000' of up and down (if you think a trail that draws a circle around a mountain stays at the same elevation, think again!), we chose to take our time. We met a startling number of people with a different approach: trail runners doing the whole thing in one day. I admire them and envy them, but my days of imagining I can emulate them are definitely over. Since we started with a four-hour drive down from Seattle, we didn't hit the trail until 2 p.m. the first day. That meant hiking until dinner time to get to a particularly scenic campsite in Paradise Park. The first photo is by my brother-in-law, photographer Tom Dempsey, whose amazing work can be found at Photoseek.com . At the risk of making you lose all interest in my post, his take on the tr...