A Busy Week on Tap

I've got a busy work week on tap this week. After last week felt packed with just three work days, this week has 5 of them. Here's what I've got:

• Monday (today) isn't too busy, though I do have a customer call starting at 7:30am. After that are a few short meetings around lunch. Though it's possible by 9am a few more will be added to my schedule. Update: already there's another meeting wedged right after the first!


• Tuesday I've got several meetings in the morning then a trade show in San Jose in the afternoon. I'll be attending partner workshops for a few hours followed by setting up our exhibitor booth in the evening. I volunteered to do that and hold on to a few boxes of gear as we wound down the previous trade show two weeks ago. I'll know Tuesday night if that was a foolish offer.


• Wednesday the trade show runs all day. Like, all day— from 7:30am until 6pm. And then there's tear-down. Anyone who schedules trade show hours like that should be slapped. It's brutal to the exhibitors. And the day's not even over after that.... I'll be driving to Roseville (2.5 to 3 hours away) for a Thursday morning meeting.


• Thursday I've got an onsite customer meeting in Roseville, a suburb a Sacramento. At first I planned to drive out there in the morning rather than spend another night away from home with 9 days of travel coming up (see below). Then I considered how early I'd have to leave in the morning to get there on time allowing for traffic slowdowns crossing two metro areas and decided staying the night Wednesday night was the lesser of two evils. So at least Thursday morning wil be calm. But then I'm busy all afternoon from the end of the meeting, through driving home, to the stuff I've got to finish up by end of day.


• Friday looks gentle at the moment... but that could all change by end of day today. Friday evening Hawk and I are leaving for a 9 day trip to the east coast. So with my Tue-Wed-Thu schedules packed, anything anybody wants me to do in the next 2 weeks is going to have to get done on Friday. And then we pack and head to the airport Friday evening for a red-eye flight.

Falls Creek Falls, part 2

North Cascades Travelog #13
Okanogan National Forest, WA - Mon, 4 Sep 2023, 11:15am.

Have I mentioned I'm glad we bailed out on hiking Falls Creek Trail yesterday afternoon and came back this morning when we were well rested? Yeah, I've said that twice already. As we started up the trail this morning the hike was easy at first, to the first falls, then got significantly steeper. Yes, first falls; it turns out there are actually several falls on Falls Creek in this canyon where pluges down through a rocky ridge. And after the first one they take a bit more effort to get to.



This falls into a deep grotto came after the first steep uphill stretch. The trail past here veered away from the canyon. We spotted an obvious use trail partway back down into the canyon and followed it to where we could see a waterfall between the trees. The waterfall did not disappoint.



Back on the main trail we climbed ever higher up the hillside. At this point (photo above) we were well above the water level in the canyon and could see the mountaintop. We could also see the burn area from a wildfire a few years ago. The scars of the burn make it starkly beautiful.

As high as we seem to be at this point there was still one more really steep part before we'd see the upper falls.



We huffed and puffed up one more hill to reach this overlook point. Here three of the drops in the upper falls area are visible. There's a fourth right below these that's under the rock ledge. They don't photograph well because of the steep angle from up here.

We looped around a bit to the right to get a better falls of the uppermost tier.



This is basically the top of Falls Creek though not the top of the trail. The trail continues up from here over one more hill that forms the canyon wall and then drops back down to creek level in a high meadow. At least that's what I figure from studying the contour map. One hiker in a group that was near us continued up toward the top; everyone else agreed with my map reading skill and headed back down from here.