During the day storms lashed downtown Seattle in bands. The rain and wind beat against my window and made me question whether going to the mountains was really that smart a plan. When I saw the avalanche forecast was for considerable danger in all areas and travel was discouraged I almost called off a trip with Les... almost.
I did let him know I was considering changing plans and in fact I did change plans. I was hoping to go somewhere interesting, but instead opted for safety. East of Snoqualmie Pass about 10 miles there are a series of sno-parks with flat, avalanche free terrain. I did a little bit of research and decided that unless the Big One happened to strike during our trip we'd be safe.
By 8:45pm we were in the Crystal Springs sno-park. I've frequently used the exit to head up to places like Mirror Lake and Tinkham Peak, but never in the snow. I was surprised to see the road ends in the sno-park.
We parked and geared up. Tokul and Les's dog, McKenna, explored around the car and up the trail a bit. Tokul was wearing her flasher so I could see her even in the dark, but McKenna would just disappear until we got close enough to see her.
The snow was lousy. It'd been raining earlier in the day, but the sky was clear when we started. We tromped along and found a trail marked for snowshoers. I had a headlamp, but Les was in the dark other than what I provided. We followed the trail or... what appeared to be a trail.
In the dark any semi-clear path through the trees kind of looks like a trail. This wasn't. It petered out and dumped us out under the power lines. The lines hummed and buzzed so loudly that I was sure my poles were going to light up and Les and I would get a quick jolt.
We found a map posted to a sign and headed off toward the Troll Bridge, but we never did find it. Eventually we wound up at the Iron Horse trail about eight miles east of Hyak. We turned back and took another turn. This started up a hill. With high avalanche warning I was uneasy getting into the hills so we turned back again.
Returning to the map we figured the way back to the car and headed that way. Throughout to the evening we could hear snowmobiles and saw their tracks even though we were supposedly in a non-motorized area. Tokul had been getting more and more liberal with her interpretation of what was close enough. She popped over a ridge and I couldn't see her or her light. We stopped and after a few long minutes she returned.
Back at the truck the clouds were rolling in as were the snowmobiles. The quiet of the dark was broken by the grumbles as they loaded into their trailers.
It was a much shorter trip than I had hoped for, but at least we got out and Tokul had a blast playing with McKenna.
Total distance was only 2.3 miles and about 250 feet of gain over the rolling hills.
