Mt. Adams Ski

Emily and I decided to take advantage of the boiling hot days in Seattle by driving down to ski the south spur on Mt Adams. We took a leisurely start from Seattle and began hiking at about 3:30 p.m There was still quite abit of snow on the road, and we were forced to stop driving about 3.5 miles below the Cold Springs camp ground. Before we had reached the cold springs trail head, we ran into a guy wondering around with one boot on. He was so releaved to have found us, because he had been glisading on the upper mountain by himself, when he inexplicably lost a boot and became lost on the rest of the decent. We pointed to our path and continued on our way.

Dave skiing up. Photo by Emily

WIth the addition of the hike up the road, our approach had taken longer than we had anticipated, and we decided to camp at about 7600 feet rather than continue all the way up to the lunch counter. We were able to camp completly out of the snow on a nice rocky area.

Out of the snow and in the sun, it felt like we were camping in the desert or something..

The wind began blowing as we were going to bed, and the flapping tent kept us awake. By time we finally got to sleep, we had just a couple of hours before the alarm was scheduled to go off.

Taking pictures instead of sleeping. Photo by Emily

When we woke up the next morning the wind sounded like it was really blowing, and we decided to sleep awhile longer and see if it would die down. Upon waking the second time, it was still pretty windy. The weather was sunny and clear, but already we felt a little time crunch because Emily had to be back in Seattle to catch a ferry that night. We decided that rather than try to summit and risk being turned around by the wind, we would take a leisurely ski down and do a little sightseeing on the way home.

Em skiing down the lower slopes

Once we got down into the trees, we couldn't feel any wind at all and we looked back at the upper mountain with a feeling of hesitation. We were both teasing outselves with thoughts of skiing back up, but decided that we had made a good choice considering the ferry situation. Routefinding got a bit tricky once in the trees. We first ran into a guy wandering around by himself, who was also very happy to see us. He said that his GPS had lead him astray and he didn't know where to go. Again, we pointed to our tracks and continuned on our way. Lower down, we ran into another group who was also lost. Unfortunatly, they had come from another state and lost so much time being lost in the lower woods that they never actually got on track for the summit.

We drove home in the sweltering heat, stopping three times for popcicles. We stopped for a little while in the most oppressive heat of the afternoon and cooled off by the columbia river. An hour and a half further down the road, Emily realised that she had left her shoes back at the beach!

Happy Emily before she leaves her shoes here.