Mt. Hood, Oregon, U.S.A.

Hiking time: 421 minutes and 14.83 seconds, or 7 hours and 1 minute. Took my ice axe and my tripod. Shot everything at ISO 100 and took photos inside the Tilly Jane A-Frame, one requiring a 25 second exposure, my longest ever. Pretty radical.

The Tilly Jane Ski trailhead starts at 3,850 feet, and climbs to Cloud Cap Inn at 6,000 feet. Total ascent including uphills on the way back: 2,300 feet. Total hiking distance: 6.8 miles.

The Polallie Ridge Trail has lots of pitches at a 20% grade or even steeper, as did the Tilly Jane Ski Trail on the way back. Because of many very steep pitches on Polallie Ridge Trail, it was very slow going. Coming back was much faster on steep Tilly Jane Ski Trail but near my destination I ran into a professional photographer that I talked with for about a half hour, trading war stories. Hardly ever get a chance to do that.

Both trails I hiked today mainly went through the burn that swept across the east side of Mt. Hood a few years back and there were many striking scenes along the way, both going up and coming back. Burns in many ways are more varied and interesting than living forests.

At the Cloud Cap Inn there was a completely open view of Mt. Hood.

I encountered troops of hunters using bows and arrows. In the morning I met one dressed to the hilt in expensive hunting gear whispering to me that he shot an elk and wanted me to be very quiet because it takes three hours for the wounded elk wandering around (in pain -- he didn't mention that) before he dies. Later coming back I ran into his troop again and he told me he never found the wounded elk. I told him it wasn't very smart to go hunting on Mt. Hood on weekends because the trails are packed with hikers but he said he didn't have any choice.

Hunting with bow and arrow may be more challenging for the human, but it promotes a complete lack of compassion for the wounded animal. Better to shoot the animal in the brain with a 30 aught 6 solely to feed his family and not for his animal predatory instincts, which should be bred out of our species. But that's not as much "fun" as silently tracking down prey and killing it for "sport."

Took 99 photos, of which 59 made the cut.