Day One:
Our arrival at Chinook Pass trailhead caused me some anxiety. Snow doesn’t melt as early in the Cascades as it does in the Sierra. Would we find good hiking conditions? Would we even be able to hike (shades of the June 2017 Crater Lake trip!)? The trailhead area was almost completely snow covered:
Looking back to the southeast, across last summer’s last PCT mile, caused more worry. The north-facing slopes were positively covered with snow! It looked steep in places and very icy. Would the trail ahead of us look the same? Here's a shot of the trailhead and the slope nearby as seen from a mile up the trail:
And although our first three miles of south-facing slopes were snow-free and dry looking, we had 1,000 feet of elevation to gain and then multiple north-facing cirques to cross. Damn.
Well, we’re here. There’s nothing to do but hike up and see what's there is to see. We hiked up toward Sourdough Gap to check things out. The initial hiking was dry and easy:
The south side of Sourdough Gap was snow-free (seen from a distance):
But things seemed to get worse as we progressed. We encountered lots of other hikers. These were all day-hikers though and we didn’t know anything about their experience levels. But still, they’d been to the gap and seen what was on its north side and, so far, we had not. The first two hikers we encountered had made it to Sourdough but turned back due to snow. They had snow creepers with them and hadn’t even tried crossing the north-facing slope. Yikes!
The next couple we talked with had reached the gap and turned back too. They talked about open, steep snow slopes and "one slip" leading to “catastrophe.”
I pictured slopes like the one we could see from the trailhead. And started kicking myself for not at least throwing in an ice axe.
We met another couple. They seemed more experienced. But she’d been unwilling to cross that north-facing snow and they'd turned back. She told us (literally) “the PCT does not exist as a trail on the other side of that gap right now.”
Alright, kick self, kick self. Damn me. Pretty sure by this point that we’d end up just turning around, regrouping with hastily-purchased ice gear at some shop in Seattle, and coming back, we continued on. With less than half a mile left to the top of the gap, why not at least check it out?
As seems normal these days, Tricia finished the uphill before I did. When I got there, I was shocked. Ice? Exposure? Long steep slopes? This is what we found:
Steep? Sort of. Exposed? Yes, no and maybe. It was a little exposed, but when I walked over to kick the snow (instead of myself) it was soft. It wasn't mushy, “walk-right-across-it” soft, but it was certainly soft enough to kick steps in. And if one did lose traction? Look at the angle - steep yes, to start with. But the angle softens (below the line of the photos) and then the slope becomes flat. All long before there’s anything to hit below. A fall would be scary. But it wouldn’t be particularly dangerous.
Maybe it’s the difference between hikers and mountaineers. We’d done crossings like this. We felt like we knew how to evaluate and handle them. People with less experience saw things differently.
I started across with fanatical caution (meanwhile the dogs romped and slid up and down and all over). Kicking steps and watching my body position, I made the crossing easily. Tricia used her poles and caution and wasn’t ever really worried.
Glad we’d gone for it, this is what we encountered to the north:
Clear sailing. To say the least.
The rest of the day’s hike was wonderful (really the early part of the day was wonderful too - but filled at the same time with a certain level of worry). We had very little elevation change on the PCT itself; ridge-running predominated, first on one side of the crest and then on the other:
Another snow patch was steep, icy, sustained and had a bad landing. It wasn't very wide though. So we moved down off the trail to get across it safely:
Soon we got a glimpse of Crystal Mountain Ski Resort - our exit point for the day:
Sometimes we hiked on the crest:
Lots of flowers:
The skies were blue in places, cloudy in others. We had more snow crossings:
And then we came around a corner and got a partial view of this behemoth above and behind the ski area (it's becoming increasing clear why locals tend to call this thing "the" mountain - it is just huge when compared with anything nearby):
One more section of crest before we headed very steeply down Bullion Basin Trail to the ski resort:
We met up with Vicki and did some scouting. We lucked out too and found a close-by, flat, and quiet place to bandit camp:
All in all, our first day made a great start to the season.