Hike of the Week: Nordic Pass

It is May 30 and Im setting in my kitchen catching up with six months of pictures to be posted on my blogs. It is the perfect thing to do on a cold winter day, which in Seattle, apparantly occurs on May 30. I dont remember feeling this cold in any of these snow pictures I'm about to post. I headed up to Nordic Pass, really just to check out how much snow was there. It was only December 1, but already the snow is deep enough for good snow shoeing. There is a good winter out in front of us. I headed up the hill and came to Hyak Lake. I've been here many times, but only stumbled across the sign once. It looked like something out of a real estate developers dream. Perhaps someone has torn it down but the lake is always interesting.

And like so many Northwest Lakes, the snow depth on it varies from many feet to open water. It has been my experience that it is never good to snow shoe across an open meadow surrounded by trees unless you really know that it is an open meadow, and not a lake. But you don't have to be very observant at Hyak Lake. There is usually open water visible where the stream enters the lake. And there is usually an interesting challenge of trying to get across the outlet stream with its six foot snow banks at the exit to the lake. However, there is usually some interesting ice formations at these two points. You can see the ice crystals that have formed on the grasses . In fact, the tecture of the snow was one of the interesting parts of this trip. People say, usually in an attempt to demonstrate the meagerness of our language, that eskimoes have eleven words that mean snow. Well, the Mountaineers Book as fourteen words just to describe the surface of the snow. This one is called hoar frost.The one I hate the most is cascade concrete. It is heavy and sticks to your snowshoes like concrete.

I'm not sure which of the fourteen would be used to describe this. We may have to add a fifteenth word to the book.

I ran into this guy up at the top of the ridge. If you look closely at his snow board, you will see that it is mounted atop of a doubled ended ski. I believe he called it a skate board and he could turn 360 degrees in the length of the board. The coiled cord that you see dangling is th.e run away strap. If you fall off, which he said is the most likely thing to occur on this device, it immediately heads to the bottom of the hill. This is hand made and not yet available in stores, though he did give me the name of someone in Mamouth that could make me one. I'll get you the name if anyone is interested.

The view from the top was as always, great