1 February 2009 - Pipe Creek Sno-Park

I've always wanted to ski the Blewett Pass area. There's three Sno-Parks near the pass and lots of marked trails, but I've never managed a ski trip here. Since it's on the east side of the mountains, the weather is more likely to be good when the Snoqualmie corridor is stormy, but then I can't get to Blewett without a white-knuckle drive over I90, and when the weather on Snoqualmie pass is good, I usually just stop there and ski at Cabin Creek or head up Amabilis. We did drive over here last year near the end of the season and got out of the car at each of the Sno-Parks but never put on our skis -- there was so little snow, and what was left was so icy you would need crampons to walk up the logging roads.

There hasn't been much new snow the last week or so, and we knew we would be taking a chance on the conditions, but we decided to go for it and headed over on super bowl sunday. (This is traditionally the day for my first Mt. Si training hike of the year, but since I was up there once already this year, I didn't feel the need to go this weekend.)

We stopped at Swauk Campground and looked around a bit, but the conditions weren't very promising so we headed up the road to Pipe Creek. Pipe Creek is about 500' higher (3600') and with this poor snow cover we thought the extra elevation would help. The pass itself is even higher and has plenty of trails, but I hope to be in that area in a few weeks for the Hog Loppit, so we stayed down in the Pipe Creek area.

We chose the Diamond View Loop -- who could resist a trail with a name like that? Most of the trail follows a logging road, so you would think it would be pretty easy, but for some reason the sign does have that funny black-diamond shape.

The snow was deep enough on the trails, but the surface was so icy it was almost impossible to ski where there was any grade. You can see we had to side step up the steep sections, and there was even one point where we had to take the skis off and walk up on the edge of the road where there was a little dirt and pine needles for traction. This is where Karen told me she was putting skis up for sale on Craig's list as soon we got home.

After we gained the elevation to reach the actual loop, the snow was quite a bit better. From the east side of the loop, we had a nice view of Table Mt. You can just see the spot where a few years ago I accidentaly left the keys in the Jeep and Huck decided to take it for a spin.

There's another nice view off to the west on the other side of the loop.

After this we dropped back on to the icy logging road trail and slid back to the parking lot. We made it back without any broken bones and still had time for a nice dinner at the Sunset Cafe and we found some decent coffee at the new Swiftwater Espresso in Cle Elum. After we got home, K did list her skis, but she doesn't know I was the anonymous bidder and they're safely back in the Thule.