2008 December 30 - Lake Wenatchee/Nason Ridge

Octavian and I took advantage of a window between storms to dash over to the Lake Wenatchee Sno-Park and ski some of the trails up on Nason Ridge. I've been here many times in the summer, but I've never had a chance to ski here. We saw a few folks on the lower trails, but once we got a few kilometers out of the state park and away from the golf course we had the entire ridge to ourselves.

We didn't see much in the way of wildlife, but there were lots of tracks in the snow - some we recognized and some we didn't. Just before lunch, we spotted some tufts of fur in the middle of the trail and then we spooked a large hawk out of tree just above us. We heard a swoosh of wings and a crash like something hit a branch and then he was gone. A bit later we stopped for lunch and spotted this interesting pattern in the snow:

Then we noticed the hawk perched on top of an old snag on the hillside above us. He watched us like, well, a hawk the entire time we ate our lunch. I think he was miffed we interrupted his.

The groomed trails are all on old logging roads, and there are lots of roads on this end of the ridge, so there are plenty of trail miles. It doesn't look like they groom very often up here, but I guess that's part of the price you pay for the solitude.

The map shows an ungroomed trail that descends directly from the top of the ridge so we decided to head down that way. It turns out it follows the Nason Ridge motorcycle trail (#1583). There had not been anybody on the upper part of the trail so it was quite a slog in the deep snow with lots of brush bent down over the trail. But I've been up here when the motos are running and this is a lot better!

Like I said, there's plenty of miles of trail here - we only covered about 3/4 of them and it still got dark before we made it back to the golf course. You'd think by now Octo would remeber to bring a headlamp when he goes out with me.

Here's a link to the trail map http://www.parks.wa.gov/winter/trails/mapdownloads/nonmoto/Nason%20Ridge.pdf

I'll post a link to the photo album shortly...