Friday till Saturday around 10 a.m.

I left Seattle at 4:35 and lost 30 minutes due to heavy traffic north on I-5. When I arrived up at the Mountaineers lodge at Mt Baker, it was quite foggy. It cleared after sunset and shooting stars were visible.

When I finally went to bed, here was the view from my pillow:


In the morning, I finally saw Mt Shuksan out the window, so I ran (literally) down to Picture Lake to snap some photos.





I led a hike along Ptarmigan Ridge. Out of the 40 or 50 Mountaineers there, only three signed up for mine, and they were all young men. I wrote "SNOW" on the sign-up list, just so there'd be no surprises. I guess that scared off the women and middle-aged men. Oh well.

Here's the view from the parking lot:

Note the creeping cloud to the left. Its friends will enter our story later.

With a view like that at the trailhead, it makes you wonder why you want to actually exert effort. But we were there, we were ready, and we didn't have anything better to do.

A mile-plus in, we crossed the first snowfield on the trail (not counting the snow around the parking lot.

It was still icy at this point, but we made it safely across. It was the next snowfield that we had an injury on. As Kyle stepped off the snow and onto the rocks, he slipped, just about fell headfirst down the snowfield, and managed to turn around and stop himself by digging in with his fingers and knees after only fifteen feet. He didn't notice at the time (even when I asked), but he scraped up his knee quite a bit. A little blood, but no need for a bandage. We're manly men!

All in all, I figure we hiked on snow for two or three miles out of the total eleven that day.



More this evening! (Once I get home and upload more pics.)