Keep on Digging

According to some people, too much snow can be a bad thing, and it nearly was for our planned trip into the mountains last weekend. Fortunately, the highways opened just in time and the people who went on the trip were a hardy group, willing to literally crawl on hands and knees to get to my friend Calvin's cabin. This year the group consisted of Lena, Aaron, Chris, Cindy and I; a big improvement over last year's group: me, myself and I. Personally I had a blast going to the cabin and getting to hang out with some great people. The icing on the cake was taking a few downhill runs through near bottomless powder on the slopes near the cabin!

This year's trip definitely required some work though, especially for those on skinny skis. Both Lena and Chris were reduced to postholeing and crawling through waist high powder for the 1/4 mile between the cabin and the snowmobile track. Lena made it to the cabin but only after an hour of crawling up the hill. Fortunately ultra-man Chris was too tough to give up and hand over his pack to me or Cindy (it looked like he brought the kitchen sink!). Cindy didn't exactly have it easy on her skinny skis either. Once we were at the cabin, Aaron and I had to do quite a bit of digging in order to get to the well and the outhouse. At one point I was virtually swimming mid-chest high through powder trying to get to the cabin front door. I have never seen so much snow at the cabin!

The trip almost became a bust even before it started, since Snoqualmie pass had been closed for several days due to high avalanche danger. On the morning of our trip, only a couple of hours before we were to drive over the pass, WSDOT opened the pass to vehicular traffic. Chris and Cindy actually ended up getting detoured around the pass when returning home on Sunday, still due to avalanche danger. I wonder when WSDOT is going to learn how to keep highways open during the winter. Maybe they should get some lessons in mountain highway design and avalanche control from Colorado or Utah?

Thanks to everyone's back-breaking labor getting to the cabin, we had enough food for several days, even though we were only there for two. So a good portion of the trip was spent eating up all the food and hanging out in the warm cabin; just what the cabin was meant for. On Saturday afternoon and Sunday mid-day Aaron and I made a few trips up the hill behind the cabin and skied down through knee high powder.

Like usual, the trip was far too short and we all skied out on Super Bowl sunday, in order to get back to civ before monday. An added bonus was that very few sledders were on the trails for the whole weekend. I'm guessing the pass closure and Super Bowl kept most of the sledders away. So the ski back was relatively quiet. Just the way it should be in a snowy winter wonderland.