Snoqualmie Mountain, January 24

When snow and weather conditions are good and there’s a boot track to follow, Snoqualmie Mountain is hardly even a scramble, just a long hike. However, Denny, Megan, and I must have subconsciously wanted something more challenging. We got on a boot track leading towards Guye and ended up a thousand feet above the usual route in the bottom of Commonwealth Basin. Not wanting to lose the elevation we gained, we stayed high on Guye’s shoulder and traversed to meet the trail to Cave Ridge. It was more interesting than the usual route – steep and awkward at times but not difficult because of the good snow conditions. Better views too. Of course, the price of that is that it takes twice as long.

Guye Shoulder

When we were almost at the Guye/Cave Ridge saddle we met a descending group. “Great weather,” we said sincerely. “Great weather,” they said ironically, and described 50 mph gusts. After getting on the other side of the saddle and getting a hazy view of Snoqualmie Mountain itself, we experienced this firsthand.

Our Objective

The wind wasn’t really dangerous — I only got knocked over once, and anyway it was blowing towards the gentle slope side of the ridge and away from the cliff side. It was certainly annoying, with the flapping my hood off, icing up my glasses (as if it wasn’t hard enough to see through the horizontal snow), and blowing my ice axe at my shin. I’ve been in higher wind before but the amount of snow carried made it seem worse.

Denny wisely decided to stop at a tree and dig a hole to hide from the wind while Megan and I went towards the summit. Eventually Megan, who was a few yards ahead, reached some sort of local maxima and stopped, so we turned around. Usually when I’m outside I’m a little disappointed to be going back, but this time I was looking forward to getting out of the wind (and hoping that facing the other way would help the glasses situation).

Summit

As we headed back to the shelter of the big trees, the wind calmed down, and the snow really started settling. The track that we followed and pounded in was starting to fill in, and by the time we got on the snowshoe highway in Commonwealth Basin there was almost a foot of new snow on the ground.

See also my photos, Denny’s photos.

• Snoqualmie Mountain, 6,278 ft