January 15, 2005, Mt Margaret
1/15/05
WA Snoqualmie Pass
2082
0
After hearing various reports from Thursday and Friday, none of us were up for having to make any serious risk assessments, and we weren't really psyched for a long drive despite the many fine lower angled tours out there (elsewhere on Tay someone asked folks to give up low angle tour "stashes" - check out the Mounty's XC Tours #1 and #2 by Kirkendall, for a few hundred). But we wanted a good workout and some outdoor time So what the heck, why not see how bad Snoqualmie is doing courtesy of the backcountry grooming quality of snowmobiles? As any New England resort skier can tell you, grooming can help a fairly thin snowpack prevent your edges from digging in to the ground. Just watch out off the groomers...
We were at the trailhead just before any biler groups showed up, so the blue two-stroke fumes were just starting to appear by my van as we skinned down the road. The east wind was blasting cold air in our faces until we pulled away from the highway. We only saw 2 or 3 groups of snowmobilers before we headed left up the hill off the groomed road. The gate cable there has been opened, so some bilers had been through despite the low snow cover, so our groomer just got narrower at this point. The top layer of snow off to the side seemed to be inches of graupel with hefty surface hoar forming on top. Trippy stuff.
I'd hoped we could get off the road where there's a little trail (I think it's the summer trail) heads off and eventually heads into the big upper clearcut basin, in order to work our way into pretty mature forest as soon as possible. However, a brush infested open creek a little way up the trail made the exposed and windy snowmobile track seem more appealing. If the creek was this open, how tedious would several hundred feet of climbing through the clearcut be? Back to the groomer and up we went. The road tops out at a logging platform on the summit ridge. The views were cool - the base of Rainier showing beneath the lowering cloud layer, Stuart etc. to the east, but we didn't really ponder the view due to the arctic blast blowing over from the east. There was wet westerly warmth blowing in well above us, but it felt like single digits on the ridge. At this point, we headed through the trees on the ridge toward the false summit, enjoying the pretty forest but realizing that the cover is still quite thin even above 5K in this area. The cold wind whistling over as we neared the false summit made progressing uninteresting, so we quickly deskinned and made conservative turns in the upper forest. There was barely enough cover to make turns, and I think we all experienced some wood contact. I focused on keeping in control and keeping my tips well out of the snow to avoid submarining under logs. The snow is still fairly unconsolidated, so it's easy to punch through to fallen logs and small stumps and so forth. So thoughts of a wimpy yo-yo quickly faded, and we instead started working left back over to where the road hits the ridge. I was uninterested in exploring a way back to the road lower in the clearcut, so we rejoined the groomer at it's peak (after some good snowplow practice in tight trees). An plume of snow formed an arc over the logging platform (but unlike Phil who was up in the warm air, I didn't even think to pull out my camera to document the cool, no, actually, rather cold phenomenon). We had a nice long green circle run back to the highway. There were many points where I had lots of fun making tight little bouncy turns in the unconsolidated surface snow off to the side of the track. We saw few snowmobiles until we got back to the parking area where they were all putting their sleds back on their trailers.
Not a wilderness tour to say the least, though there is pretty forest as a reward up high, and it beat doing the stairstepper at the gym for several hours. We all got a little practice with our cold weather systems. If the coming rain were just to saturate the snow and then it all froze up (and then, of course, it snowed on top), it would be a great thing for terrain above 4,500 in this area, but I fear that we're going to see enough melting to re-expose a lot of obstacles. It still feels like November up there.
We were at the trailhead just before any biler groups showed up, so the blue two-stroke fumes were just starting to appear by my van as we skinned down the road. The east wind was blasting cold air in our faces until we pulled away from the highway. We only saw 2 or 3 groups of snowmobilers before we headed left up the hill off the groomed road. The gate cable there has been opened, so some bilers had been through despite the low snow cover, so our groomer just got narrower at this point. The top layer of snow off to the side seemed to be inches of graupel with hefty surface hoar forming on top. Trippy stuff.
I'd hoped we could get off the road where there's a little trail (I think it's the summer trail) heads off and eventually heads into the big upper clearcut basin, in order to work our way into pretty mature forest as soon as possible. However, a brush infested open creek a little way up the trail made the exposed and windy snowmobile track seem more appealing. If the creek was this open, how tedious would several hundred feet of climbing through the clearcut be? Back to the groomer and up we went. The road tops out at a logging platform on the summit ridge. The views were cool - the base of Rainier showing beneath the lowering cloud layer, Stuart etc. to the east, but we didn't really ponder the view due to the arctic blast blowing over from the east. There was wet westerly warmth blowing in well above us, but it felt like single digits on the ridge. At this point, we headed through the trees on the ridge toward the false summit, enjoying the pretty forest but realizing that the cover is still quite thin even above 5K in this area. The cold wind whistling over as we neared the false summit made progressing uninteresting, so we quickly deskinned and made conservative turns in the upper forest. There was barely enough cover to make turns, and I think we all experienced some wood contact. I focused on keeping in control and keeping my tips well out of the snow to avoid submarining under logs. The snow is still fairly unconsolidated, so it's easy to punch through to fallen logs and small stumps and so forth. So thoughts of a wimpy yo-yo quickly faded, and we instead started working left back over to where the road hits the ridge. I was uninterested in exploring a way back to the road lower in the clearcut, so we rejoined the groomer at it's peak (after some good snowplow practice in tight trees). An plume of snow formed an arc over the logging platform (but unlike Phil who was up in the warm air, I didn't even think to pull out my camera to document the cool, no, actually, rather cold phenomenon). We had a nice long green circle run back to the highway. There were many points where I had lots of fun making tight little bouncy turns in the unconsolidated surface snow off to the side of the track. We saw few snowmobiles until we got back to the parking area where they were all putting their sleds back on their trailers.
Not a wilderness tour to say the least, though there is pretty forest as a reward up high, and it beat doing the stairstepper at the gym for several hours. We all got a little practice with our cold weather systems. If the coming rain were just to saturate the snow and then it all froze up (and then, of course, it snowed on top), it would be a great thing for terrain above 4,500 in this area, but I fear that we're going to see enough melting to re-expose a lot of obstacles. It still feels like November up there.
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