Lodge Lake Snowshoe Hike

Christmas Day 
December 2014

A bit of blue sky near Lodge Lake

Finally Snoqualmie Pass is getting some snow - not enough to open the ski areas but plenty to provide a winter hiking opportunity. Since we did not get started on the trail until 1215, we were surprised to find the trail untracked after a short distance. (We passed a family group returning from a brief foray into the forest.) Once through the woods we got into the deeper snow of the ski slopes and put on our snowshoes. The trail was reasonably easy to follow; someone had been through there a day or two ago and the packed-down snow had not been totally drifted over. Near Beaver Lake we guessed wrong and followed a snowmobile track up along the east side of the stream until we had to cross it to reach the real trail (part of the Pacific Crest Trail) on the other side. We used a drift and some bushes to get across the stream and then crossed a small inlet on ice before reaching the trail. Once we were in the forest, full of tall firs covered in a thick coating of newly fallen snow, the depth of snow on the ground decreased quickly to just a few inches and we were able to stash our snowshoes behind a convenient tree. Much of the rest of the 3/4 mile downhill to the lake was

Winter shadows and Guye Peak

on the gravel trailbed and across several unfrozen streams. We passed our 1430 turnaround time before we found the cutoff to the lake, but not by much. We made up for it by not stopping for lunch, or any sit-down breaks. With the low cloudbase there was not much to see except the frozen lake. The lodge built by the Mountaineers in the 1900s had long since burned down. On the way back we saw that someone had come in behind us on snowshoes and had stopped when the trail became more rocks than snow. We didn't replace our snow shoes until we had climbed to the 3500 ft high point on the ridge above Beaver Lake and had started down. Instead of retracing our route through the woods to the trailhead, we left the trail above the parking lot and went right down through the now-thinning crowd of sledders and other snow-players. It was 1615 before we reached the car and the sun had already set. Four hours to complete a three-mile snowshoe hike seemed a bit much but we got plenty of exercise and a good dose of winter scenery.

Holiday Letter 2014

 Happy Holidays, everyone! Last year it was Christmas at the L.A. airport, New Year's in the small town plaza of Roldanillo in Colombia, and spring equinox in South Africa. 2014 had to be one of our best travel years ever! We left on Dec. 25 and spent a week or so flying paragliders with friends from the Seattle area in Roldanillo. Four of us took the night bus across two mountain ranges for a few days flying near Bucaramanga and Chicamocha Canyon National Park before packing our wings and playing tourist for a couple of days in the capital, Bogota. Colombia was a truly remarkable destination and we enjoyed our whole three weeks there.

It seemed like we spent most of February preparing for our March trip to South Africa, making sure we had all the immunizations and meds we needed. Emirates Airlines had us overnighting in Dubai, and then on to Cape Town for a two-week flying adventure that took us to scenic soaring sites on the coasts of the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, inland for some desert cross-country flying, and some urban soaring at Lions Head, right in Cape Town. Our guides made a point of stopping at all sorts of interesting scenic and cultural points along the way, including the penguin colonies at Betty's Cove. We'd intended to spend our last week at Victoria Falls and Kruger National Park, but a national holiday had all flights back to Cape Town booked solid. So we instead signed up for a mini-safari of three days at Aquila game farm, just a few hours' drive from Cape Town. It was surprisingly fun, and interesting, but we're still hoping to one day get to the falls and do a real safari. We could have spent a week touring Cape Town; we squeezed as much as we could into our one day in the city, and borrowed a car to go climb the bluffs at the Cape of Good Hope.

It took us most of the spring to catch up on all of the house and yard work we had put off during our global gallivanting. In April we finally got some flights in the NW, our first since October. We scored some fabulous early summer wildflower hikes in eastern Washington at Steamboat Rock and Moses Coulee, and picked the perfect couple of days for spectacularly scenic kayaking on Baker Lake. In late June we made our 12^th annual trek down to Oregon for the paragliding Rat Race, then came back to eastern Washington to be volunteer launch directors for the 30-somethingth Chelan Classic. We stuck around in Chelan for the 4^th of July fireworks and the beginning of the National Paragliding Championships before coming home to continue harvesting our huge crop of blueberries (our freezer is bulging with berries!), and to stain the deck, a regular yearly chore it seems.

In August George got to play his Washington State “disabled veterans” card and claim a free campsite at Ft. Flagler State Park on the Olympic Peninsula. We paddled at Flagler (saw otters!!), hiked on Hurricane Ridge (past a big ol' goat lazing right alongside the trail), then on to Rialto Beach for a fog-shrouded walk in the heart of Twilight (the vampire novel) country. Ginny and Wally joined us the next week; we visited with Uncle Harry and did a quick tour of the Tacoma Glass Museum on a rainy afternoon, then paddled the Enatai Slough on Lake Washington in sunshine. We had barely waved goodbye to them when we left for the Oregon coast to visit with C.J.’s since-kindergarten girlfriend Paula and her family.

Our Labor Day adventure destination was the Sand Turn fly-in on the edge of the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. On the way we stopped to visit and paddle Payette Lake with long-time hang gliding friends Davis and Belinda. After the fly-in we paddled the Big Horn River through its deep and narrow canyon in the surprisingly un-populated Big Horn Canyon National Park. Then on to Yellowstone, where we saw a grizzly way out in a meadow, and enjoyed a frosty, scenic paddle on Lewis Lake. That was a lot of driving and fun-hoggin' packed into one short week!

October is our favorite hiking season, and we found some blazing fall-colors trails, one up a steep route to some lakes behind one of our favorite mountain flying sites, that we'd been looking down on from the air just a few days earlier. Then it was off to Florida for the USHPA board meeting and a busy visit with C.J.’s brother Rob, who appreciated the extra pairs of hands to help with house and yard maintenance.

Our last hike for the season was in the snow at Chinook Pass in November just before C.J. went in for some minor foot surgery to unclench the toes on the same foot as her bunion repair two years ago. Ginny and Wally drove up from the Bay Area to join us for Thanksgiving; our turkey dinner with all the fixin's was a truly traditional family feast.

We’ve kept up our square dancing on most Tuesdays, and we've started advanced lessons, not that we ever expect to go back to challenge-level dancing. We are season subscribers to the Issaquah Village Theater—In the Heights, The Tutor, and Mary Poppins are three of the plays/musicals we've enjoyed so far this season. And that’s about the extent of our social and cultural activity outside of hang gliding and paragliding.

Coming up soon is our big trip to New Zealand for the whole month of February—summer down under. We’re using our WorldMark timeshares for a week at Rotorua (North Island) and two at Wanaka (South Island). We’re hoping to meet up with flying friends, a flying friend's mum, and one of C.J.'s high school friends while we are touring around.

C.J. continues to pick up new skills in Photoshop as she makes digital scrapbook layouts. Those are her photo ornaments at the top of the page. George writes about our hikes, flights and trips in his travel journal at http://sturtevantg.blogspot.com. C.J.'s scrapbook pages are on her blog, http://sturtevantcj.blogspot.com.

We’re staying reasonably healthy and hope that you are, too. Best wishes for a happy holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous 2015!