Excelsior Pass attempt, again

Heading up the Excelsior Pass trail

I was intending to lead into this post with a picture of the group of Senior Trailblazers who decided to attempt to reach Excelsior Pass from the Mount Baker Highway today (fifteen of us), but when I looked back to see what I wrote about last year, that's exactly what I did, as you can see here. And it turns out it is just a week earlier than we attempted it in 2013. Today was a perfect day, as you can see in the above picture.

Mike took this, so he's here but behind the camera

We had two new hikers today, Chris and Rich, third and second from the right-hand side, standing. They had intended to join us many times before (they are experienced hikers), but Chris is a teacher and this was the first Thursday she could find where the weather was nice and the hike sounded interesting. Since school will be getting out soon, I hope the two of them will join us on some more summer hikes.

Chris and Jacqueline

We stopped partway up to adjust our equipment and have a quick snack. I caught the two ladies having an animated conversation. The dappled sunlight through the trees made for a perfect backdrop. But it wasn't long after this picture was taken that we began to find a little snow on the trail. By the time we reached 4,000 feet of elevation, the snow was pretty much solid. The trail wasn't easy to follow, and then it was noon and we decided to stop for lunch.

Our lunch spot, sitting on our blow-up seats

These kinds of lunch spots, sitting in the sunshine on snow, is where our blow-up seats come in so incredibly handy. You can enjoy whatever you brought along to eat and be perfectly dry and comfy on the snow. Not to mention the great company and scintillating conversation. We had a conversation about whether or not to try to get a little higher after lunch, but the consensus was to head back down.

Looking up towards the pass, which would be to the right

As you can see, there was a lot of snow that we would be plowing through if we decided to try to make it any higher at all. After we stopped for lunch, the clouds began to thicken and make it seem a lot colder, so instead of trying to gain any more altitude, we headed down.

Some of the group, making our way across the snow

Here we are beginning our descent. As you can see, the sun had pretty much disappeared and the nice dappled sunlight that warmed us was gone. Nobody was cold enough to begin to don cold weather gear. We knew we had about a short mile of this to navigate before we would be back down in the greenery and on a nice trail.

No more snow, and the sun came back out

It's truly amazing, the difference that a few hundred (or thousand) feet of elevation can make in the conditions of the High Country, but that's one of the reasons we love it so much. Although we probably didn't make seven miles total, some of it was on that snow, making it much harder to walk on, and we went up and down 2,600 feet, a significant elevation. Next week we'll visit the Church Mountain meadows near here, for a bit longer and a bit higher trip. I can only hope the weather is half as wonderful as we enjoyed today.

So here I am, finishing up my wine AND my post, and it's not even 6:00pm yet. There are at least three more hours of daylight, time for me to check my garden (especially those strawberries), before settling down for the evening. It was a truly delightful day, one I won't forget any time soon.
:-)