3/18, Saturday. Weather continued to be decent, in fact, the forecast said "decreasing clouds".
The organizer picked me up at the Starbucks on Mercer at 5am.
It's a long drive, but still didn't need to meet this early.
13 of us gathered in Ashway P&R and piled into 3 cars.
After a bathroom stop at the Safeway at exit 227, we arrived at the parking lot first. The small parking lot here has a stinky outhouse, with garbage scattered on the ground outside. I walked up to the picnic table area to use the trees, while waiting for the other cars to arrive. Chilly in the morning waiting for all to be ready.
The trail starts off in snow, and after a short stretch of dirt, we were on packed snow.
I'm slow today, but not the slowest.
The trail in the trees are well trodden, easy to follow.
At some point, I switched to snowshoes, and tried to cut a zigzag.
Same as yesterday, not worth the effort.
Following the track all the way to this flat area.
The summer route is to the left (west), and the winter route is to the right.
Everyone ahead of me went left.
But the right (east) approach seems shorter.
One lady snowshoed passed us said that in winter, the right is better, and it avoids the avalanche.
So the rest of us (minus 1) took to the right.
The view is actually better from here, you get to see Shucksan and Baker earlier.
It reaches a ridge, and a gentle travers to the north ridge (see the track on snow to the right), and double back to the peak.
The snow today is fairly sticky (warm), so I headed straight up from here.
There's one very short section that was hard to get up on soft snow.
I ended up slower than those routing to the right.
The summit is absolutely gorgeous.
However, the sun of high noon is making Baker very white-washed.
Our last person wouldn't show up for another 20 minutes.
Almost all of us took the alternative route to go down. Once in the trees, I started cutting zigzags. Going down is fairly easy to make fresh track. Surprised to run into TH who was also cutting, and B.Y. followed my track down. 3 of us continued to go down fairly quickly and surpassed everyone on the way out. The lower part is better on packed trail, because the snow was getting thin, and trees were less sparse with more exposed down logs and dead branches.
Only shortly after 3pm when we reached the parking lot. After everyone arrived and changed, it was still only 3:30pm. I moved to another car to go back without stopping for dinner. This driver, A.S. only eats his own food, because he counts his calorie intake. Even though I hiked with him a few times last year, never knew he was obese before. He was 240 lb in 2009, and now 140 lb! He showed us his photo in 2009, and he looked completely different. His conclusion: eat less + excercise. He cooks his own food (wife and children eat separatly) sets a daily calorie limit +/- a few hundred depending on what excercise he does on that day.
I took a bus and then lightrail to go home, arrive at 7pm. Not bad.
