Westies like snow!
Saturday, Apr 28, 2001 Solo, with the trouble dogs (Maisie and Max) Maisie’s second summit, and Max’s first double.
I had been planning on doing Silver Star Peak this weekend, if the weather looked okay, but it didn’t; the forecast was for rain and thundershowers. So I woke up at 7:00 to a nearly blue sky. I thought it over, and thought it over and said "the hell with it" and packed up the Windstar with my old pack and showshoes, and called Del to tell him that Maisie and I were on our way, and headed north. I was a bachelor, and I hate to miss these free passes.
Past Lynnwood I realized I’d forgotten my boots, so I got to whip back home and pick them up. Then, when I was most of the way to Everett, I realized I should have grabbed my ski poles. Oh well. Stopped for Max, still trying to decide on a destination. I’ve been interested in this Huckleberry Mountain climb for a couple of years, but that’s 15 miles north of Darrington, and it would have been a good two hours getting up there as well. So, I wimped out and we went to Pilchuck.
I parked a hundred yards below the parking lot, because of the snow on the road. The last thing I wanted to do was spend an hour or to muscling that waddling truck out of the snow.
We slogged up the hill, me in my noisy showshoes, through thicker and thicker trees. It occurred to me that this must be what was the ski area: all the trees are about the same size, fifteen feet high or so. Thing got pretty wet and sloppy from water falling off the trees, though there was no snow, and looking down into the valley, you could see spots where the sun was shining.
Eventually we got out of the worst of the trees, and onto the trail that others had made. Maisie was pretty game, lunging up the hill, bottoming out quite a bit, Max wandering around as though it was flat and smooth as his front yard. I didn’t put on my gaiters, based on my experience on the Snow Lake trail, which was a mistake. I got plenty of snow down into my boots, and so my feet were completely wet, though not particularly cold.
Around now, I saw a guy come skiing down one of the steep hillsides. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera out, because it might have been a good photo.
A ways further up, we passed what looked like a Mountaineers group, working with avalanche beacons, apparently, and the only other dog was saw this day. There was a good dozen people clustered around there, and this leader was discussing the directionality of these things, and this black dog, a little smaller than Max, came over to see what was going on. We just slogged by, Max ignoring the other dog importantly.
One thing about these snowshoes, you can’t go straight up steep snow slopes. Which is just as well, because Maisie couldn’t either. I ended up angling up a couple of the steeper slopes, following ski tracks when I could, and during these times Maisie followed on my heels so closely, in fact, that she regularly got whacked in the chin by the snowshoes. They’re designed to hinge at the ball of the foot, but quite often the toe gets loaded up with heavy wet snow when you’re going uphill, and instead the bottom lifts up first and the little Westie gets it in her chin. She needs to learn to stay back a step or two.
At one spot, below the lower summit when it wasn’t particularly steep, she wanted to get picked up. She just stood there in front of me. So, I picked her up and carried her for a bit; maybe fifty feet or so. I don’t know if she was cold, or tired or what, but for that short time I was glad that I didn’t have my ski poles after all.
Ghost trees on Pilchuck
The visibility continued to deteriorate; we were thirty feet from the lookout before I could see it though the blowing snow and clouds. And of course, it was blowing pretty hard up at the summit. I’d been climbing in my long-sleeved t-shirt, and it was barely adequate, since I was working pretty hard; at the rocks below the lookout I took off my showshoes, and got really cold.
The lookout has a bit of a porch around it, with a handrail, and there’s a little bridge from a slanting icy rock onto the porch. I could not get either dog to get up there voluntarily; Maisie just yipped and whined and Max paced around looking concerned. I went on ahead into the lookout (which was all boarded up but for the door) thinking they’d just come, but they didn’t. So, I dropped my pack and camera, and went back for them.
I had to boost Maisie up to the bridge, just grab her and lift her right up. I figured Max would follow but he didn’t; he just stood there. I guess the icy rock was too slippery for his liking, so I drug him to the base of the lookout and boosted him up onto the bridge too. Man, he’s gained some weight in the last year. )So have we all, I suppose, but I'm not asking him to boost me up.)
There was probably a dozen people in the lookout, talking and bustling and all cooing over Maisie. I dug out the dogfood and opened the packets, and put them on the floor. Several people expressed dismay that I was going to make them eat dog food, these are DOGS, after all! Neither of the dogs seemed very enthusiastic either, I guess because I’d split a pack of pop tarts with them down below, but they both ended up chowing down and polished both the packets of food.
There was a lady there who probably fed half her roast beef sandwich to the dogs, one bit at a time. Max went around from one person to the next, canvassing for handouts. He's quite professional: "Hi there, what have you got for me today? Thanks. Hi there, how was your climb? What have you got for me? Thank you..."
The longer we stayed there, the colder I got. I had my green polypropolene shirt, and my coat on, and just got colder and colder as the wet soaked in. (In addition to leaving the ski poles behind, I’d left my earband, too.) So, I packed up everything and rousted up the dogs, and we left the lookout. Again, I had to boost them down off the porch, and then carry Maisie down from the rocks to the trail.
I didn’t put my showshoes back on; it wasn’t that steep.
Just below the summit, as we were descending what sounded like air raid sirens started going off. I guess they do that in a ski area if there’s an injury, but there are no ski areas anywhere around there that I know of. I never did figure out what that was.
A little while below the summit, I once again missed a great photo because my camera was back in my pack: a group of three or four people were coming up the trail, and the last one was carrying a big, flowered umbrella! The umbrella with thick with wet snow. The perfect "northwest climbing" photo.
We passed the campsite, where the campers were collapsing their tents and packing up. I was glad not to have to mess with a tent; by now just about everything was wet, from my skin out.
There were several steep slopes that I was able to glissade down; once I turned back to see my wallet out on the snow, so I stuck it in my coat pocket where it’d be safer. Max glissaded down the chutes after me, but Maisie didn’t, which was odd since she likes playground slides so much, she just ran.
The climb took about two hours, I’d guess, and the descent an hour. I didn’t check my watch particularly carefully, though.
Equipment notes: I have drug a camera up on my climbs from the beginning, and have always struggled with where to carry it. If you have it on your chest, it gets wet in the snow (especially on a day like today) or if it's hot, the viewfinder gets fogged up. And, it's always liable to get banged around. If you keep it safely in your pack, then it's five minutes to stop, drop the pack, dig around, get the camera, try to get the shot, put it back in, slug the whole thing back onto your back. After this climb, I posed a query on cascadeclimbers.com about how to carry a camera, and someone suggested a triangular bag carried on the chest. I got one (Lowe) and it works great -- it's quick and easy, holds extra film and batteries, and a filter or two. It was recommended that I clip it to the shoulderstraps on my pack with mini-caribiners, I tried that on Adams, but it didn't work, it bounced against my chest constantly. So I use the strap, carried diagonally over one shoulder, the pack on top of that, everything's great. I had to change the camera strap too, to the cheapest, thinest one I could find, to save space in the bag.