Welcome to the Pacific Northwest. Here, we love to hate the rain, but if we really hated it that much we'd leave. So the secret is that we love it. Good thing, because there's no shortage of it. Especially in the fall.
But more fun than heavy rain is heavy warm rain after an early snowfall. Just a week before there was so much snow we couldn't make it to our destination without snowshoes. (And why didn't I bring snowshoes? Don't ask.) When the warm Chinook winds bring rain from the south it washes all that snow out of the mountains and into the valleys.
I was all set to go to Snow Lake. It's one of those hikes where the reward is disproportionate to the effort required to get there. In summer it's so popular and crowded I usually avoid it. On an early Sunday morning in the pouring rain it wasn't quite as busy.
Perhaps that was because the cliffs that had held a couple feet of snow just the week before were now dumping all that snow as water. The dry creeks that cross the trail in summer and are usually icy in winter were positively raging. So much so that the bigger creeks were nearly impassable.
I'm sure we could have made it across that last creek/waterfall, but it wouldn't be dry. The likelihood of being swept over the ledge below the trail was low, but why? Snow Lake wasn't going to be a sapphire surrounded by snow or a spot to escape the heat. Not in these conditions. So we turned back toward the trailhead.
I felt bashful when we encountered a group of trail runners heading up. I'd seen them at the trailhead so they would know I'd chickened out. Dang. Why did we turn back?
At the car, Treen and I decided we needed more than the mile adventure we'd had before turning. On the other side of the valley the PCT heads south to Lodge Lake. It's not the most scenic or impressive destination, but it's something.
The trails were more like creeks, but at least they weren't threatening to knock us off a cliff like on the Snow Lake trail. We crossed the bare slopes of the ski area and entered the woods past Beaver Lake. That's where I ran into the runners again. They had also turned at the waterfall and chose Lodge Lake for a secondary. I felt redeemed, but now bashful about caring so much about what they thought.
Lodge Lake was about what I expected. It's pretty much a watery hole in the trees. The lodge is long gone, but it was a place to turn around. So we did. Besides, it was raining off and on and we had done what we needed to do. We stretched our legs and got muddy.
The nice thing about the Northwest is there's always somewhere to hike. It's just a matter of figuring out where to go. If you're not sure where that is check out the WTA's Hike Finder Map. And then never say there's no place to go.
