Kamikaze Falls Hike

26 January 2011

The rain stopped a day ago and the sun came out so shortly after noon. C.J. and I took the short drive to the roadhead of the old Mt. Si road, now gated and supposedly decommissioned. There is enough room to park 4-5 cars without blocking the gate or encroaching on the school bus turnaround area, but we were the only ones there. C.J.'s watch showed about 1310 as we headed up the road.

About 1/2 mile in we turned right on a side road that quickly became an improved trail which paralleled the road as it climbed the flank of Mt Tenerife. In about a mile we came to an obvious junction and turned right, uphill, on a trail that had been cut through a talus field.

Above the talus field, where we stopped for a scenic lunch break, the trail had just started to switchback when it met the stream that issued from Kamikaze Falls.

Instead of a herd path that followed the stream, the well-designed but rocky trail used another dozen switchbacks to reach the base of the falls (at 2.4 miles,












but that may have been someone's measurement before the switchbacks were cut). We decided against continuing to the top as the sun was already sinking toward the top of Rattlesnake Mountain.















The trip down was considerably faster but the trudge out along the road seemed to take forever. We reached the gate long before we would have had to don our headlamps, but it was after 1700 and it was getting pretty gloomy.

Rewarding ourselves for seizing the day, we ordered up some pizza for dinner.

Windy Pass XC-Ski

19 Jan 2011

After days and days of warm rain C.J. and I were not sure how much snow there would be at Snoqualmie Pass. The temperature dropped below freezing on Tuesday and the Pass Report claimed 3 new inches. We parked at the not-yet-open Hyak Ski Area (Summit East, now) and found a couple of inches of snow atop frozen mashed potatoes.






The trail along the Cold Creek USFS road had not been groomed but there were a few ski tracks showing that three or four folks were out ahead of us. At about 5 km we passed the clearing which used to hold a yurt but now only had a porta-potti.









Beyond the trail began to climb, and switchbacked twice before we got high enough to start getting views of the nearby mountains, Tinkham and Silver. Pretty soon we found a good scenic lunch spot and settled down for some serious soaking up of the sunshine. After lunch we pushed up the trail to (non-)Windy Pass (about 8 km from the parking lot) and a view across to (probably) Kendall Peak through the low clouds.



The slide down took considerably less energy than the uphill slog. It would have been more enjoyable if the trail-grooming snowcat had not passed us just above the second switchback and turned the snow surface into ground-up ice crystals.





There were a couple of places on the way down where the trail had been slightly improved by the groomer, but you still had to be careful when crossing some of the washouts.

Granite Peak Trail

Midweek after Christmas we got a 2-3 inch covering of snow in North Bend followed by temperatures that stayed below freezing. Best of all, the skies cleared and we could see the sun. There wasn't much more snow at the base of Snoqualmie Pass at the Granite Peak/Pratt Lakes trailhead when we started out around noon. With several vehicles in the parking lot, and their occupants on the trail ahead, we weren't surprised to find no need for snowshoes. Even as we climbed higher, the tree foliage seemed to be holding most of the snowfall and the trail remained easily hikable on foot. At the one-mile mark we turned onto the Granite Peak Trail and started climbing more steeply. Another thousand feet of elevation gain brought us to the open slide path that the trail paralleled. We strapped on the snowshoes and stomped out into the thigh-deep snow of a clearing to a spot with a splendid view across the valley to Silver and Tinkham Peaks: another scenic lunch spot. On the way out we kept our snowshoes on until we started to run into some little stream crossings above the junction, then walked down the rest of the way.

Back at the car around 1500, I drove in along the road to Denny Creek CG to the end of plowing at the last private cabin. There were a dozen cars parked there - hikers heading for Franklin Falls (2+mi, or 0.6 mi from Alpental Road) or up the trail toward Melakwa Lake? Cars were also parked on the plowed road into the Annette Lake trailhead - looked like a busy day for snow hikers although we saw only three parties on our short trip (four if you count the family looking for a sledding spot in the woods near the Granite parking lot).