"Can you hear me now?"
Weekly adventures of the intrepid cross country skiers!
In reverse time order...
Last year was kind of a washout due to lack of snow. There was a nice bit of it early, at which I did the only trip writeup (geez, I'm getting lazy)
| 12/3/05 -- Iron Horse Trail near Olallie State Park -- Cast: Me, Steve K, Michiko, Adrienne, Mark and Susan H. Since there was snow as low as Seattle, we thought it would be worth trying a lower elevation ski. We drove up to North Bend, and seriously considered going up to Rattlesnake Lake. But in North Bend there didn't seem to be quite enough snow so we kept driving. At exit 38 the snow was looking promising, so we got off I-90 and parked next to the road. A couple of other cars were parked and a couple of tracks headed up the road towards Olallie State Park. We skied up this road in the tracks of a couple vehicles that preceded us. After a quick stop at a thankfully open outhouse, we skied up from the state park parking lot up a small trail that had been blazed by hikers. It wasn't long before we were up on the Iron Horse Trail. The hikers had headed to the right, and since Steve had an idea that we could meet up with a trail to Cedar Falls, we followed their tracks westward. We soon found that the trail to Cedar Falls was steeper than we really wanted to deal with on skis, so we kept heading west, hoping to make it to Rattlesnake Lake. But we got hungry, so we stopped to eat at a clearing with an old railroad sign that said "Ragyar". Just as we sat down a guy came running by with his dog, and he told us that Rattlesnake Lake was 2 miles ahead. After lunch we didn't feel the need to go the whole way, so we started back towards the cars. But the guy and his dog had messed up our tracks, so it was bumpy heading back. The cruise down the hill from the Iron Horse Trail was fun, though you had to dodge a closed gate at the end. |
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LAST YEAR (Winter 2004 - 2005) -- That was probably the worst year for snow in recent memory, but we did ski a few times. Read our adventures on this page.
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