Seven folks gathered at Eastgate shortly after a passing shower and hoped that the wet was over. It looked a bit dark out to the east, but I figured maybe it was dry on the other side of Issiquah, and, at worst, there would be showers and sun. I could not have been more wrong. It started raining a bit harder again in North Bend, and by the time we got to the parking area for Dirty Harry's peak near the Fire Training Center, it was half rain, half ice pellets. We were woefully underdressed for this type of weather (shorts... minimal layers etc.) but reason has never stood in the way of a good hike before, so off we went, new recruits and all. The rain/ice pellets didn't last too long and soon we were slogging up the ankle-breaker logging road towards Dirty Harry's balcony. Joan comments "this trail looks like a shallow stream bed". Shallow here....it gets deeper higher up. I don't think I've ever hiked this mountain in nice weather, so all memories are of water, more water, snow on top, and Thursday added to the image gallery. As we approached the rock slide the sky to the South turned purple, the precip changed to all ice/snow pellets and thunder rumbled on occasion. I pulled out the digi camera; *flash*!! startled hikers. Sorry guys, that was just me with the camera flash. .
FLASH...KABOOM!!!!!!!
ok, that *wasn't* me. First time I've seen a lightening flash that looked really purple. At the foot of the talus we had to ask ourselves, do we feel....lucky? And after that last lightening stike, the answer was "hell no!" so we stuck with the trail. Precip was all snow at this point, and we hit snow line as well. With a very fast accumulting 2-3" of fresh on the old snow, we were trying to pick the packed "trail" by feel. Off the trail, it was more than knee deep, on the trail, only mid-calf. It was much like walking a balance beam you can't quite see. On the brighter side, the snow succeeded in completely muffling the sounds of I-90. The only sound's the sweep of easy wind and downy flake. and the occasional small arms fire from the rifle range of course. Somewhere near the top where the packed track stopped, we did as well, admired the snow on the trees in place of a view and headed down. Thanks much to Sherry who got out earlier, noticed that they didn't bother locking the gate and drove in to spare us the road slog out!
Next week: Mailbox!
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