Happy New Year!

View of Mt. Rainier from I-90 floating bridge at 9:30 am

Sami and Jeanne, two of my hiking buddies, decided that a snowshoe outing was just the way to celebrate the first day of the new year. We settled on snowshoeing up a forest road near the Gold Creek Sno-Park that ends up overlooking the Kendall Lakes. This trail cuts across the face of a hill that overlooks I-90 as it descends Snoqualmie Pass (if you're going towards Spokane), and because of this, it can get some wild weather. Today the wind was blowing 30 - 40 mph at the summits around Snoqualmie Pass. Great potential for blowing snow, cold-cold-cold wind, and, as we found out, faulty equipment! More on that later.

Maple wings

It was a beautiful day when we arrived! Fortunately, we weren't in the path of the winds on the side of the hill we were walking until we reached the area at about 4,000' where you can either continue upwards to the top of a hill where you see lakes in the summertime, or over to an adjacent unnamed hill just south of Guye Peak. We could see clouds of snow blowing off its top as well as the summits of Silver Peak, Denny Mountain, McClellan Butte, and Snoqualmie Mountain. Rampart Ridge loomed to our SE and because of the temporarily clear weather, we could see contours of nooks and crannies accentuated by the snow that usually don't stand out as well.

Rampart Ridge

Denny Mountain

Snowman kit
Jeanne getting ready to head downhill

In addition to the normal 10 Essentials that one should carry with them out in Nature, one should also have a bandana or two. The front gripper of one of my wonderful 8 year old bright red snowshoes broke away from the metal connector and all of a sudden my gait was somewhat crab-like. Hmmm. It was easy to sink down 1 - 2' in this great powder, so I really didn't want to just walk in my boots. But I remembered that I had a bandana - color-coordinated a nice red - so I tied the gripper through the first strap and around the side of the snowshoe. It actually held very well and even though I had to drag that shoe a little in order to reduce snow buildup under my boot, it didn't slow us down going either uphill or downhill.















Happy trails and great journeys to everyone during 2008!

A White Christmas

Lake Keechelus

10" of snow fell Christmas Eve, traction tires were required on Snoqualmie Pass, and the 4WD had a full tank of gas, so obviously I had to head out for the first snowshoe of the season! My destination was at the Hyak exit east of the pass where the parking lot was already full of new plastic sleds and lots of happy little folks under 4' tall. I followed part of the Iron Horse Trail, dodging large pickup trucks and many off-leash dogs all the way down to the lake. A smallish peninsula juts out into this stump-filled reservoir, and that looked like a nice place to sit for a bit and take in the scenery. Since it was 22 degrees and a chilly wind whistled through the pass and over the lakes along the highway - which gave the back of my head an ice cream-type brain freeze - I didn't stay too long. Here are a few pictures from this sojourn.

Interesting conifer