More Fun in the Snow

I decided to take a day off last week and play in the snow. Tuesday night I loaded up the super trooper with winter weather gear, boots, goretex bib, snow shoes, gaiters, etc. I always feel a little silly loading up all of this cold weather gear into my car when it is 50F and raining, but I do it in the garage anyway. That helps me stay dry and conceal from the neighbors how much a of a gear freak I am. Sad.

Maxwell Butte, a measly 6250 feet though it may be, turned me back twice before. So, I decided to make it up this time come hell or high water. Wednesday morning, I left for the mtns as Akiko was heading off to work. She was not happy about that.

On the drive up I started to get worried, because there was a lot less snow in the mtns and the temps were a lot warmer than in previous weeks. I did not want to march through slush. 100 miles later I was pulling into the Sno-Park parking lot still not convinced that I wasn't going to be walking in corn mush all day.

People who have ridden in my old Scout or traveled across the country with me in my VW will appreciate this part of the story. At the trailhead parking lot, which is about an eight of a mile long, the restrooms are on one side of the lot by the entrance exit to the highway and the trailhead is at the other. I parked the super trooper near the potties for a quick pee-break. When I got back in to drive across the lot to the trailhead, I turned the key and got little more than a quiet "click" from the starter.

I got out and started pushing, once I had enough speed, I hopped in and popped the clutch to get it started. No problem. When I parked it on the trailhead side of the lot, I made sure I had pointing downhill...easier to pop start using gravity.

At the trailhead we were alone with the blue skies and a balmy but strong wind. It was about 40F with lots of big tall grey clouds on the horizon to the south. Franny and I headed up the trail at a quick, but not crazy pace. We made it to the trail junction at the lake (see previous entry) in a little over an hour. I stopped to check out the summit, which you can see from the lake. I feel silly calling it a summit, but that doesn't matter, because I couldn't see it anyway.


The "top" of Maxwell hidden by clouds. That thing you can't see in the center of the picture is the top.

Up to the lake the trail had been pretty well packed out, but it was warm, the snow on the ground was sticky, and the snow in the trees was melting and chunking off. Kinda crappy conditions. That is, as far as walking around in the mtns in the snow on a Wednesday morning can be called crappy. Luckily the temps started getting colder and the snow "dryer" as we climbed further. At about 6000 feet there was 18 or so inches of new snow on top of a 10 foot-ish base. I turned around to snap this picture just before the clouds completely engulfed us.



Clouds moving in quick. This was the last time I saw the other side of the valley during this walk.

Up to this point I had been wearing shorts, long thermal underwear and my gaiters. It probably looks as bad as it sounds, but luckily there are no mirrors out there and Franny is not very judgmental as far as fashion faux pas go. I changed into my bib snow pants, because ahead of us was a labyrinth of snow ghosts and tall drifts. At this point in the climb the pitch was steep enough that I was kicking steps into the snow to make forward progress. I figured I might need a little more than shorts to keep the snow out.


The entrance to the labyrinth of snow ghosts and drifts that I had to navigate. It was a blast.


It took a while to get through the trees and the drifts, but we made it just as the snow kicked in.

There was no view from the top. So, I put on an extra layer found some shelter from the wind and ate lunch in the hopes that the wind would blow the clouds off and I could get a decent picture. After a half hour of waiting and walking around up on the top, there was still no visibility. So, we headed down.


Here is the little bit we could see to the southwest. All the other directions looked the same...


And here we are heading back down. Right about in the middle of the screen, where my tracks are no longer visible, is where I had to kick steps into the snow. The whole way down I was thinking about how much fun it would be to snowboard down this and wondering how badly I would mangle myself trying to ski down it.

Franny and I took our time heading back. All together it took us about 7 hours for the whole walk. I was pretty tired, but Franny was ready for more.

The super trooper fired right-up on the first try.