Manastash Ridge and other sights

I was driving to one of our agencies today and found I just could not drive past the observation point on Manastash Ridge without stopping for a notice. I can’t recall a time when I drove this route without at least swinging through the loop road for a quick gander. And for good reason – it affords a fantastic view.

The terrain falls away in front of you and across the wide valley, the wind farm marches into the distance with the snow-capped cascades beyond. Ellensburg is in the middle distance with the towers of the university in plain view if you know what you’re looking for.

As you pan left to right, you’ll want to traverse slowly lest you miss any detail of the farmland that fills the bowl of the valley. Then, more wind farms on the ridge to the far right just before the high ground ends abruptly as the Yakima Fold Belt is cut through by the Columbia River Gorge.

Beyond the Gorge, Eastern Washington is a totally different animal. But that’s a story for another day trip.

Breasting the ridge and continuing south, there’s so much more to see. A somewhat scary bridge (for those of us who don’t appreciate high structures) spans a canyon whose breadth and depth doesn’t seem it could possibly have been cut by tiny Selah Creek.  

Coming down the retrograde, one can hardly miss the view of Mt. Adams to the southeast and Mt. Rainier to the Southwest. They are two of the ten volcanoes in Washington State.   Adams hasn’t erupted for over 1,400 years. Rainier has produced massive lahars much more recently (about 1,000 years ago) and geologists estimate that the next big one will easily make it to Puget Sound, thirty-some statute miles away. That’s as the crow flies; as the slop slurps is a somewhat greater distance.

Seeing these two behemoths in the same view reminds me of how tiny we are and how vast the stage upon which we play out our lives. It occurred to me, looking at Rainier, that the mountain is utterly oblivious to the ant-like humans who regularly ‘conquer’ it with their crampons and oxygen bottles and ice axes. One medium-sized shrug of its glaciated shoulders and the volcanic detritus would drown tens of thousands in a steam-temperature mud slurry. Of course, the mountain won’t care. It’s not paid to care. The mountain’s job is to hang out and every now and then, spew death. It’s our job to care. Not that we can do anything about it…

The drive continued through the vineyard and tree fruit farms from Wapato to Richland and of course, this being Fall, the colors were to die for. (I didn’t want you to think I spent the whole remainder of the drive worrying about spewing mountains.)

It was a good drive.