More pictures. Mt. St. Helens.

I apologize for not posting more pictures recently. I've been doing all sort of productive things:

• Ordering textbooks from Amazon


• Applying for the Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification Exam through the Project Management Institute. This will hopefully help land me a job when I finish up graduate school.


• Reviewing the Top 50 Most Prestigious Consulting Firms of 2009 according to Vault.com


• Applying for positions at many of the firms on that list in hopes of some interest. I'm sure I'll get a few callbacks.


• Following up with some contacts that I have at firms. I think I should have done this sooner....oh well.


• Catching up with friends.


• Preparing for school starting up this week.


• Finally getting my Title and Registration changed from Ohio to Illinois.

The majority of my time...anywhere from 6 to 10 hours per day has been tied up in the whole job thing. Sometimes I think it is more arduous finding a job than actually doing the job. Look at the presidential race for crying out loud. Barack Obama before and after. He's got some gray on him after the past 2 year of campaigning.

Anyway, on to the pictures.

Starting the journey....


From a Portland tunnel to a Portland bridge.



Driving along the Highway to St. Helens.



Still driving long the highway....driving through a lot of VERY small towns in Washington. But, I liked seeing the "Blue Mountains" in the background and also the giant lakes.


Yay...finally here. 460


Holy cow....snow in August at 3800 feet?!?!


Starting the climb up the mountain...through the forest.



Clearing the forest and heading into the mountain.


Getting prepped. As you can tell my cousin Brian and I were prepared. I have my jeans and polo shirt with plastic bag. No poles--no hiking gear--no camel back.


The first ridge...little did my cousin and I know that there were a few rock ridges to come. A 2-hour estimate round-trip to get up turned into over 4 hours just to get up the top. The glaciers in the background were cool.


Glaciers......


My cousin Brian excited about approaching what we thought was the top of St. Helens.



Brian a little disappointed that we had a LONG way to go.


The clouds come rolling in....yep. Clouds, not fog.



Through the clouds we go.


Ahh...above the clouds. Yay.



Yep. I added a rock to the pile. I'm pretty cool.



It's hard to picture...but this is nearly straight up. And not pleasant...very soft ground. After all, it is ash from the volcanic eruption. Actually, if you squint your eyes and look at the "path" you see 2 black dots (or a black blob). That is a group about 30 minutes ahead of us.


At this point, we're WAY above the clouds. It almost looks like this picture could have been taken from a plane.



A look down the mountain.



My cousin heading down from the summit. I took 3 pictures basically from where the last picture was (but up). You see the TINY speck moving. It's him.



Halfway down the mountain. Kind of neat to see all these glaciers....


Nearly running down the mountain so that we don't get stuck up there at night.


Approaching sunset.



Yay! We got out of there before sunset. It was then time to celebrate our climbing expedition at one of the new spots of Portland. Hooters.




After we finished at Hooters. We then drove to Bend, OR. Apparently we drove through such cities as Damascas, Boring, Zigzag,etc. Who would have thought that there were such strangely named cities in Oregon.

In the next post I guess I'll be showing the trip to Seaside, Oregon. Now that I've finally realized that what I'm doing is trying to hit the Picasa Web Album that I'd apparently created with my account...I can upload pictures REALLY quick and link to them.