Trip Stats
Trip Report
First: there are no pictures for this trip. I forgot to charge my camera battery and it died as soon as I pulled it out to take the first picture…
Tim and I decided to rendezvous at Factoria Mall at 4am, figuring we would get an early start and get back at a decent hour. We went for Chinook Pass and encountered a minor problem once over the pass; the road to Paradise was closed for the season. Almost 2 hours and gas-station pizza later, we reached Longmire, only to find out that they had not even opened the road yet because of the new snow that had fallen the night before.
We waited patiently amongst the carloads of skiers and snowboarders and around 10:30am they opened the gates, providing an escort up the windy road. On the snow around 11am, we picked our way through the freshly fallen snow and finally reached the final hill before Panorama Point. Getting up that final push was a little tricky as the winds increasingly picked up speed and blew the snow off the mountain, leaving a solid layer of ice.
Once at Panorama Point, we took a round-about way up through the rocks. The wind was constantly howling and the snow was virtually gone, replaced by ice. A couple of times, the wind would suddenly die and the sun appeared out of no-where, but just as quick as it appeared it disappeared. As we progressed up, the wind continued to pound us and the falling snow blew into our faces, stinging with every hit.
At around 8,500ft, we hunkered down behind a boulder to get some food and water and I asked Tim if he wanted to turn around. He replied “I was waiting for you to say that since Panorama Pointâ€. We had to constantly stop on our way down to figure out where we were. Luckily, it was not a complete whiteout, but it was close. The skiing was bad, as there was no snow left on the mountain until we were off the snowfield. We were relieved to get back to the car in one piece and out of the wind and snow.