City vistas

Any new arrival to the city of Seattle and the surrounding metro area will initially be struck by one simple observation – the mountains. It is hard to do justice to this impression but driving to downtown Seattle from the airport provides an amazing view of the area’s topography; and it seems as though the city is totally enclosed by mountain ranges and great expanses of water. The horizon is abruptly halted by the effortless dominance of these ranges which stand like huge bastions of Nature’s might overseeing the life and times of the city.

When I consulted a map I realised that this initially topographic impression was actually fairly accurate. Seattle is located on long and thin inlet from the Pacific Ocean called Puget Sound and is the largest of approximately 8 or so reasonably sized towns and cities that stretch along the Sound and up the coastline to the Canadian border and Vancouver. Towards the east of the city is the Cascade Mountain range and then towards the west across the Sound is the Olympic Mountain range. These two ranges and the Sound are what give the city an atmosphere of natural topographical encirclement and most definitely account for the soon to be arriving autumnal (or should I say the Fall) rainy season.

The only escape from this natural encirclement is seemingly to the south of the city, which on a cloudy day appears clear and inviting. However, during my first and probably last bout of sunny and clear spells for sometime over the weekend, it is more than apparent that this is not the case. To the south of Seattle lives a gargantuan monster of a mountain….

This is a photo taken of Mount Rainier, from the top of Capitol Hill in Seattle. I had to fight some visiting Japanese tourists for camera space but I got a good shot in the end!

According to my well informed hosts, Mt Rainier stands tall at over 14,000ft and 4,300m. As you can clearly see from the photo, it has permanent snowfields all year round and stands like a benevolent citadel protecting the city. It is impossible to described how this mountain just hits you in truly poetic fashion as you travel across the city and it is understandable why Seattleites refer to it simply as ‘the Mountain.’