My hiking friends and I all live on the west side of the Cascades, but the weather forecast last weekend for the rainshadowed, east side of the mountains was for balmy temperatures in the mid 70’s, which sounded awfully appealing. My friends and I have been on a real, adventure-junky run lately, getting out into the mountains most every weekend, but all the trips have been in the snowy high country. Sunday, as three of us kicked around possibilities of where we might hike that day, Central Washington’s sagebrush country, with its snow-free trails and trek-in-shorts weather, beckoned.
Why then, am I posting pictures today of snow? Well, because, in the end, my friends and I decided to stay on our side of the state. We pointed our car toward Mt. Baker, venturing yet again into the high, white world. The coming months, we reasoned, will present limitless opportunities for warm weather hikes in a green landscape. We wanted one more day in the snow. We strapped snowshoes to our boots, and we trekked up, and up, and up.
These pictures are from a place called Schreiber’s Meadows on the south side of Mt. Baker, a landscape of white where the view of the pyramid of Black Butte just blew me away. It was a four hour, nine-mile trek to get to the meadow where the snowcovered peak stood out dramatically against the cloudless sky.
My friends and I stood in awe, looking up.
The hike-in was, of course, only the halfway point of our day. We still needed to retrace our steps to get back to the car, and it was getting late so we did not linger long in the meadow. Trees were casting long, late-afternoon shadows in the snow and we quickly scarfed a few trail snacks for energy, then started the nine mile trip back down.
It was dark by the time we arrived at the car and began the drive home. Eighteen miles is quite an effort on snowshoes, and by day’s end we were beyond tired. We were also happy that we had chosen to spend the day where we did, trekking one last time in a wintery snowscape and bidding good-bye to the season.
