We took off Friday night, after work, to go camp near Mt. Rainier National Park. The road to campsite plan a was closed off by a pile of boulders, so we went up the forest road to plan b campsite. No fire, it was already too late in the summer for that, but Kurt and I got to sit around the campsite and enjoy a couple of ciders.
We got up the next morning, and packed up to head toward the NP at the Tatoosh Mountain Range. At the trailhead for Pinnacle Peak, we met up with Christy, Dave and Fred, strapped our skis to our bags and headed up to try and find some snow. Being July 17th, there was none in sight as we made our way from the parking area.
“There’s snow on this route, I promise,” said Kurt as we took off. In his defense, my statement of, “it’s all downhill from here,” is also only marginally true. We did a crumbly scramble to the top of Pinnacle Peak to have lunch. We sat at the top enjoying the view of Mt. Rainier and got a first sight of the snow and pond we would be skiing.
Once we made the sketchy decent into the basin, we were greeted by a number of other ski-in-July type of people.
We all took turns making turns on the snow field and skimming across the small alpine lake at the bottom. What a time to be having in July! The payment for our reward of great summer turns was a mild bushwack out of the creek area where the snow field ended.
for my friends who are moms 