Mt. Pilchuck

Mt. Pilchuck was one of those ski areas you always heard about, but never skied.  It had a couple of chair lifts, with the highest reaching just 4,300 feet.  Under Western Washington weather conditions, that just never seemed high enough to make the drive worthwhile.

The ski area was forced to close down in 1980, when the Forest Service refused to extend its limited use permit for that portion of the ski area that fell within national forest land.  Virtually no signs remain of the ski area today, aside from the parking lot at the trail head.

Yesterday was supposed to be "partly cloudy," and that sounded good enough to make the Mt. Pilchuck climb worthwhile.  Actually, at least where I was hiking, it was pretty socked in, with even a little rain at one point near the beginning.  From the summit, the clouds kept shifting, giving tantalizing views of surrounding peaks -- especially near-by Glacier Peak, one of the five volcanoes of the Washington Cascades, but not Rainier.

The round trip to the Mt. Pilchuck summit is only 5.4 miles, but that distance is meaningless when most of the trail is obliterated by snow.  The climb was far more strenuous than last week's Annette Lake hike, and the twists, slip and falls, and grasping for handholds left most of my muscles aching this morning. 

 The trail starts out through thick forest, and is, for the most part, well improved and maintained.  About half way up, the snow covered the trail.  From that point onward, hikers were following tracks others had left in the snow.  Eventually, I reached a point at which I thought the hike was nearly complete, with just a rocky butte to ascend.  A kindly fellow, on the way down, informed me that a much higher peak, far in the distance (see inset), was my destination.  I'd been looking at Little Mt. Pilchuck. 

The soft snow was difficult to ascend in the way that soft snow always is -- two steps forward, and one slip back.  But the real difficulty came closer to the summit, where the snow wraps around large boulders, forcing repeated decisions of whether one should trust the snow or climb over the rock. 

The boulder slopes gradually become steeper and more densely bouldered, leaving little room for snow, and a final boulder scramble delivers you, with a sigh of relief, at the 5,324-foot summit.  The Mountaineers have nicely restored, in recent years, a dilapidated fire lookout on the summit that had dated back to the very early years of the twentieth century.  The restored building is a great place to relax, eat lunch (watched carefully by large, hungry dogs), and study the photos and exhibits on display illustrating the original lookout and the way in which it was restored. 

The hike back down was almost as difficult as the hike up, at least until I returned to dry land.  The footing was always precarious, although there were some stretches that allowed for some enjoyable seat-of-the-pants glissading.

In August, when the snow is all or mostly melted, the Mt. Pilchuck hike is probably just a short, moderately steep hike to the top.  In late June, it was still a bit challenging -- not technically challenging, but challenging to muscles that had grown lazy as I sat about writing blog posts over the winter!