Sketches in the North Cascades

I just returned from my fourth consecutive field season with the North Cascades Glacier Climate Project            . I had yet another awesome, adventurous, exhausting trip, and I completed a few more sketches this year to show some of the beauty! I brought up colored pencils to some locations, and watercolors to others, adding to the same field sketchbook I have used the previous three years - it's getting pretty worn out! I will post more pictures from the trip later this week :-)

An alpine type of buttercup, right at our campsite below Columbia glacier (8/2/12)

A quick sketch of  Blanca Lake from the ridge above camp, right before the terminus of Columbia glacier (8/3/12)

The beautiful view of Mt. Baker from our campsite on Ptarmigan Ridge near Camp Kaiser. The shadows on the snow are so beautiful in the evening (8/5/12)

Turn around at the previous campsite, walk up to the little ridge right above it, and you can see Mt. Shuksan!  This would be our destination, where we would be hiking the evening I painted this. Note the crevasse on the snowbank just below camp, that was a first! (8/7/12)

The terminus of Lower Curtis glacier on Mt. Shuksan. The big seracs are so awesome, we can explore right below them, and sometimes in little caves where the bedrock beneath is exposed -- not a good sign for the glacier though (8/8/12)

In my last post I mentioned that I would be working on a crevasse measurement research project that I plan to continue each season I go to work on the glaciers. I did a quick sketch here of a crevasse in the blue ice near the terminus of the Easton glacier. (8/10/12)

I had a blast doing this drawing! I am sitting on snow out in the middle of this beautiful melt lake at the bottom of the Iceworm glacier on Mt Daniels (8/14/12)

Last glacier measurement day, and a tough one! I drew this quick sketch at our lunch spot on the Lynch glacier on Mt Daniels. It shows Pea Soup Lake at the terminus of the glacier, and the snow coverage on parts of it! Gorgeous colors in person! (8/15/12)