Kim and I took off with Preston and his friend Chris Saturday morning to do some snowshoeing. Preston and Chris just bought snowshoes, but we were a little worried that we wouldn’t find a place to use them since snow has been so hard to find lately. We initially wanted to do a route near Skykomish, but there didn’t seem to be any snow below 4000 ft so we kept going to Steven’s Pass were it was just barely cold enough for snow. Kim and I had already done a lot of snowshoeing on the north side of the highway, so we found a route in the book that went straight through the ski resort. It followed the Pacific Crest Trail, but it’s covered in the winter and passes through a lot of the ski runs so it’s hard to find.
We ended up hiking too far east and didn’t go the route described. We got to the top of a chairlift thinking that it was the one we wanted, but it turned out to be a different one that went to the top of the double black diamond runs. Thanks to Chris and Kim’s perseverance (aka stubborness), we decided to keep going up the very steep slope. After a LOT of hard work, we made it to the top and took some pictures of the nice view and the sunshine. We sat down to eat and enjoy the view and saw a huge wall of fog coming. Next thing you knew we were in the middle of a cloud and it had started snowing.
When we got back I was wiped out and Kim and I decided not to go out and play poker with Preston and Chris. I’m glad I didn’t, because I slept 10 hours and think I could have easily done more.