For the first time in several months (6, maybe?), we went hiking!!! It was a gloriously sunny day with snow even in Seattle! We had a dusting of snow on the rooftops, cars, and sidewalks. Justin and I met up with my friend Sara for a hike to Annette Lake. As we approached the mountains, the snow was deeper and the sky seemed more blue than ever. We even saw what Sara and I think were 2 caribou or elk on the roadside. The parking lot at the Annette Lake trailhead had only 2 cars, a mini-igloo, and a bathroom with bullet holes in the door. We didn’t really see anyone except for in the parking lot, which I will describe more in detail later…

Our hike was to be a 7-8 mile hike, but it didn’t turn out that way. First of all, Justin is recovering from pneumonia. Second of all, there was at least 3-4 feet of snow all along the path. The people who blazed the trail in the fresh show had skis, and we wouldn’t have been bad off with at least some snowshoes. The first 2/3 of the way there wasn’t bad–Sara commented that it was like we were in Narnia, except that the sky was more blue. The sun glittered through the trees and a light wind powdered us with snow from the trees. Everything had been freshly dusted with snow the night before. As we crossed bridges with snow as tall as a toddler on them and meandered along the trail, we enjoyed ourselves. We then came to sections where our feet would crash through the snow, covering our legs up to our thighs! This kept happening up the trail into what I thought was clearly NOT the trail, but the path that the hard-core cross country skiiers somehow decided to blaze.

As Justin’s cough got worse and as his toes got colder, we decided to turn back at mile 2, creating a 4 mile hike for us. Down was much easier and included a bit of butt-surfing on the snow (some intentional, and some unintentional). We finally reached the parking lot–home free!!! Except for the car. Our tires wouldn’t get us anywhere—not with twigs, not with pushing, not with chains lodged beneath them. After half an hour of trying everything we could think of, we got the car un-stuck and followed the monorail-type path back to I-90. I say monorail because, if you look at the illustration below, you can see that there was snow on either side of the car’s tires and in the middle, there was close to a foot of snow.

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Pictures to come eventually :).