As I sit down to write this, I can feel a slight chill in my room and my brain is trying to shut down so that it can start whining about the cold. Shut the fuck up, brain! I suppose I will write with my lymph nodes today, because they’ve been very good and haven’t complained one bit despite constantly have to battle every damned virus known to man that somehow makes its way to my office. Apparently game programmers and artists are dirty monkeys and they just keep getting sick.
Now back to a little recap. Saturday morning started nicely, we gathered and carpooled to the trailhead in my car. The beginning part was like any other trip, we got on the trail without snowshoes since the beginning parts were well stamped down and hustled along to look for a decent campsite. When we got to the first decent camp, we decided to move onto the next spot because the hike out had been wimpy at best. Most of our packs were 40lbs+ but because the hike was pretty flat, we felt a little robbed of good work-out.
When we got to the second site, we declared it awesome, dropped our packs and started setting up shop. Before we started, Fraser took off his shirt and told us how nice the sun feels. I was thinking he’s nuts, normally I would give him a run for his money on being the first to go shirtless because backpacking is some sweaty nastiness, but it was too cold for that. Then Jason took his shirt off and said the same thing…next thing Daniel, who never takes his shirt off, took his shirt off and declared the sun equally wonderful. At this point, I was thinking my buddies were lying their asses off, I figured soon as I took my shirt off, they’ll all put on their shirts and tell me I’m nuts just to fuck with me (hey, they are my friends, I wouldn’t put it past them to be an asshole like me)…but the sun did look warm and inviting. And god damned it was nice. We all worked on setting up without our shirts except for Sto, whose arm was tucked in a splint with a shirt underneath. The sun was so damned nice that while we were standing around chatting, we didn’t even face each other, instead we were spaced out and turned like rows of solar panels facing the sun while making our own heavenly chorus sound effects to go with our goofiness.
After camp was set, we set off to explore the area in snowshoes. We wandered around for a while, but didn’t manage to find any safe spots for some elevation gain so we basically followed the creek and crossed this bridge created by an avalanche because that’s obviously the safest path.
When we got back, we piled on all the clothing we had to hang out. I lucked out in picking up a nice down jacket right before the trip with my buddy Jason, who when I was torn between two jackets, one that’s super light and will compress to nothingness or a slightly heavier jacket with a nice big hood, told me to always go for the hood because that thing will keep you warm. Since I was still obsessing over getting my pack as light as possible, I was a bit dubious about the choice. That was the best advice anyone could give for a newbie snow camper because when I randomly decided to push my hood back for reasons known only to someone that completely lacks any common sense, my warm swaddled snuggly world turned straight to dry humping witch’s teats.
While we made dinner, some of the boys decided to build an igloo, without a top because that apparently required more skills than a bunch of clowns stacking uneven snow bricks, who would have guessed.
Still it was great, we had a nice wall and enough seating for all of us. We had food and of course booze (only for the purpose to keep warm and not to get shit-faced, because we’re a bunch of little angels) in there.
As we got more shit-faced, the guys started singing at the top of their lungs. Then after we got even more plastered, we decided to run up the mountain and do some glissading (for those that don’t snow hike, that’s just a fancy term for sliding on your ass down a snow covered mountain). The guys started sliding heads first face down, then moved onto sliding heads first on their backs. Lying on your back and sliding down heads first sounds suicidal, but it’s not (it’s only slightly idiotic). It’s actually one of the more peaceful feeling things you can do. Just sit back and watch the moon and stars as you drift back…unless your down jacket happened to be slick and you catch air and hear all your buddies go “Ooomph!” as you land. We worked off a good amount of drunken energy running up the mountain and sliding back down.
After we simmered down, we had more food and bunked down for the night. I boiled some hot water, pour it in my water bottle, tucked that in my sleeping bag with me and had a warm cozy night’s sleep. The next morning was a whole different game. I woke up and as I peeked out of my mummy bag, I noticed there was a layer of frost on my sleeping bag where I was breathing on at night.
Everything was cooooold. We tried to make breakfast, but our gas canisters got so cold the gas in there wasn’t expanding enough to want to escape. I had my canister in my tent so it wasn’t completely frozen over, and I managed to boil some water which became quite the bragging rights in camp. Look, I boiled wah-ter! I rule! In the end, everyone had to tuck their canisters in their jackets until it warmed up enough. We tried to pack up, but the cold made moving very very slow, so we decided to just wait till the sun hits to really work. Sto checked his thermometer at some point and said it was 18 degrees, so we guesstimated that it had to be below 15 during the night. The moment the sun beamed across our camp, there was instant warmth and joy to be had.
We quickly packed up and left to get some real food at the Snoqualmie Pancake House.
Photo set here (same as slide from previous entry).
