My friend Paul and I headed down to Mount Rainier National Park to take advantage of a rare clear November day. The forecast was for cold weather but we knew the views would be great and some snow had fallen the day before so we hoped for some good turns on our skis and splitboard. The park didn’t open the road to Paradise on Saturday which is super inconvenient for those who tried to ski then but really amazing for us since it meant opportunities for first tracks. Note: I broke my camera last weekend so all of this post’s photos are…
Heliotrope Ridge
With Maura and Jack in Minnesota and 6-9″ of fresh snow in the forecast I decided it was a good time for my first splitboard tour of the season. I’d had my eye on Heliotrope Ridge after seeing a couple of trip reports from early November on Turns All Year. I left work a little early to pick up my friend Dave at a park-and-ride with a plan to meet our friends Kelly and Cary at the Skagit River Brewery in Mt Vernon. Traffic was pretty terrible until we got past Everett but it wasn’t nearly as bad as our trip to Phelps Basin…
Mount St. Helens
I have been planning to ski Mount St. Helens with my two friends, Paul and Watson, since fall 2013. Our first scheduled date in early March fell through due to high-risk avalanche conditions. Luckily, we were greeted this weekend with weather that couldn’t have been better, the forecast called for sun and temperatures in the 60s! This hike can be done as a snowshoe or a backcountry ski tour. We used the new Backcountry Skiing and Snowboarding Washington book to plan the trip. You can also find out more about the trip through the Washington Trails Association. We split the…
Skyline Lake
Snow has fallen over the peaks of many of the mountains in the Cascade range. Hikes without snow are becoming more and more scarce. We decided to go all out this weekend and headed to Stevens Pass for a short snowshoeing trip! Skyline Lake is a short and sweet snowshoe with some pretty amazing views of the pass throughout the trek up. At only 3 miles and 1100 feet in elevation gain it is a brief but difficult snowshoe. It never ceases to amaze me how inadequately prepared we are for our first snowshoeing trip of the season. Not in gear…
Hex Mountain
Last Sunday we headed to the eastern slope of the Cascades to climb Hex Mountain. I picked our snowshoe destination based on the fact that it was a clear, sunny day and the avalanche danger level was only moderate for below 4000 feet. The highest point of our hike was 5034 feet but the route follows the spine of a ridge that is protected by trees for the majority of the trek. Even though I did a ton of research on the route and had our GPS out, we still ended up going way off trail. The hike starts on…
Lake Serene/Bridal Veil Falls
After weeks of hitting the slopes at The Summit at Snoqualmie along with a couple of intermittent and non-noteworthy snowshoe treks, we decided this weekend was the time to challenge ourselves with a difficult hike/snowshoe adventure. Our original plan and destination was thwarted by inclement weather along Stevens Pass resulting in chains being a requirement for travel through the pass. Not having chains and already an hour from the city we pulled over and began researching our options. Using the Washington Trails Association (WTA) website we found just the thing for us. the Lake Serene/Bridal Veil Falls Trail. The hike…
Icicle Canyon Snowshoeing
Maura and I planned to go snowshoeing to Skyline Lake but the parking lot at Steven’s Pass was completely full. After navigating the narrow lanes of improvised parking jobs for 45 minutes we decided to bail and continue along Highway 2 to Leavenworth. Being the geniuses we are we’d forgotten to bring a guidebook. I’d also failed to download any maps to my phone and cell service was pretty spotty so we were pretty much on our own. I knew there’d be somewhere to snowshoe along Icicle Canyon because I’m a guidebook nerd so we drove along the canyon road until…
Franklin Falls
We have spent the past two Saturdays snowboarding at the Summit at Snoqualmie West Ski and Snowboarding Resort which means that our poor Latigo has been denied an outdoor adventure for far too long. Though a bit sore from our previous day on the slopes we decided we should take our dear doggie out for a romp in the woods. We also realized that with Christmas coming and a trip home to Minnesota on the calendar we won’t be able to have an adventure next week, so why not have a double header weekend to compensate! We got a late…
Snowshoeing the Snow Lake Summer Trail
Saturday, December 1st proved to be a glorious day. With a threat of storms beginning in the evening and continuing on into Sunday we headed out midday for our weekly adventure in the Cascade Mountains. Bobby and I have been anxiously waiting to try out the new Tubbs Snowshoes we purchased in September from www.backcountry.com This is a great site for purchasing outdoor gear at a low cost. The snowshoes can also be found on Amazon. We decided that it would be best to try an easy and shorter trail for this first outing considering I haven’t snowshoed since the winter of 2008…