Continuing my trend of bringing moisture to whenever, wherever I recreate, the Pineapple Express moved into the Seattle area shortly after I touched down at the airport on Saturday.
A slight dusting coated the metro area as I landed and by the next day, the thermometer climbed and we were in the mid to upper 50s at night. The deluge continued through the night and the next morning.
Monday saw Mike and I relaxing, drinking coffee and catching up before getting our lounging butts in gear and going for a nice hike up Cougar Mountain. We went a little this way and that picking trails as we came to their junctions. We wound up turning around after going to Coal Creek waterfall.
I was informed that this is normally a nominal trickle in the summer. After the bombardment of rain the area had received, this thing was powerful enough to move big diesel trucks. We were wet - well we were wet anyways, this is western Washington after all - from the spray generated by this torrent, frothing like a El Salvidorian mutt.
We never went and collected our stipend from King County Natural Resources for all of the trailwork we did. We diverted some channels to get standing water off the trail, removed some debris that was blocking streams and broke off the branches off a large hemlock that decided to lay down over the trail and take a rest.
Just got back today from spending time up at Hyak on a ski tour. Mike was floundering in his snowshoes as the snow crust was that flirtatious, "I'll hold your weight. Nope, I won't." It was rather taxing for him. So after a mile or so in, I got out of the nice ski tracks laid down and broke trail on the side. It was much easier for him and slowed me down as well.
We had rain, snow and wintery mix - swear to God, NOAA used that term in a forecast. Some of the peaks occasionally showed through the dreary cloud cover, but for the most part, we were surrounded by mature Douglas Firs, hemlocks and the occasional cedar and the gray mantle of mist that blew over Snoqualmie Pass.
After around 4 miles, it seemed like a good turnaround point; we didn't want to use up our legs and not go out on Thursday. So off came the climbing skins and much fun was had on the way down for me.
Thursday a quick tour and some serious turns are scheduled off of Alpental. The avalanche danger has subsided greatly after a deadly weekend - two people were buried and killed up near Snow Lake and three snowboarders are still missing out by Crystal Mtn.
I'll get to show Mike how to dig a snow pit and do a shovel shear test. If all the signs are good, we hopefully will get some nice bombardier runs in the Cascadian concrete.
And hopefully we'll remember the camera this time!!
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