2009 January 3 - Chiwawa Sno-Park

This was a big ski weekend for everyone here in the Northwest. Too much of a good thing meant it's been tough for anyone to get into the mountains on any of the weekends in December. Heck most of us haven't been able to get to Bellevue because of the snow, but today the roads cleared off and we hit the road with everyone else. But as we cruised over the summit at Stevens Pass, you can see we passed all those suckers as they tried to find a parking spot at the resort.

Instead of stopping at the summit, we were headed to the Chiwawa Sno-Park over by Lake Wenatchee. We were the first car in the parking lot and had the main trail almost all to ourselves for the first half of the morning. This is called the "See-n-ski" trail because of the great views of the Wenatchee River and some of the peaks up the White River Valley. We did the loop and made a couple of short side trips in the _DEEP_ untracked snow in the forest and made it back to the car easily by lunch time. There were a fair number of cars of there by then, but I'm still worried about the popularity of this sport - this was the major ski weekend of the season so far, and I would have thought the lot would have been packed.

Maybe all the self-propelled skiers were at Cabin Creek. After lunch I went over to the upper trails (Squirrel Loop and Flying Loop). These are supposed to be more challenging than the See-n-ski (blue and black respectively). Challenging they were, because the state doesn't bother to groom them and there's been a lot of fresh snow lately. I followed the tracks of a couple of snowshoers part way up the Flying Loop, but since I was moving faster, they graciously stepped aside and gave me the honor of finding the route and breaking the trail myself. Here you can see one of them just below the high point of the loop.

When I got near the top, I could see the haze of that obnoxious blue smoke and was a little disappointed to see the snowmobiles had been criss-crossing the marked ski trail - they just can't seem to stay on their routes. Oh well, I can't let that get me down. The return trip back down my tracks and through the tall trees and deep snow was great. Stopped at the 59er diner for dinner, and made it back over the pass just as the next storm was getting busy erasing all our tracks from the day...

See the rest of the photos on picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/trueguides/ChiwawaSnoPark##